“Somnambulant” is the song on this album that captures most what I feel Anopheli was trying to convey, musically, on this album. A lone bass plucks away a somber melody that wants nothing to do with the light of day. An accompanying drum rhythm kicks in with some cello harmony following suit; this introduction of […]
A sideways glance at the save-some-room-on-your-plate-for-gravy artwork and scraggly logo adorning Philadelphia’s newest dirty needle slingin’ export Pissgrave might lead one to assume that they’re looking at one of the innumerable third-tier groups that sit forever unsold clogging up the CD racks at metal fests. A second look reveals the Profound Lore logo tucked away […]
As bands like Funeral, Thergothon, and Skepticism took doom metal to its ultimate depressive conclusion in the mid ‘90s, the funeral doom sub-subgenre was born. Finland’s Shape of Despair formed around that time under the name Raven, but didn’t release their debut, Shades of…, until 2000. By this time, Funeral had moved on to something […]
Denmark never has a shortage of quality bands and Crocell return with their fourth long player, in their relatively short existence. I had never heard of them until last year when Deepsend Records label owner, Graham recommended them to me. I picked up their discography from him and have been a happy camper ever since. […]
Well, I’ll be damned…I didn’t have high hopes for High Testament, the sophomore album from Ft. Worth, TX’s self-described “heavy-psych power trio”, Fogg. Unfair of me, to say the least, being that I had never heard them or of them before, learning only minutes before pushing the play button, that they were a fuzzy, […]
New to me, Elffor is the long running side project of a Spaniard by the name of Eöl, who also plays keyboardist in Numen and Suffering Dawn. He has been releasing albums since 1998, and this expansive 2 disc compilation from South Korea’s Fallen Angels Productions covers all 6 albums and throws in a couple of […]
This is an interesting release. Way back in the late 1990s, black metal was in a sort of flux; many of the pioneering bands feeling their original raison d’être were no longer there for whatever reason. You started to see established bands like Dodheimsgard, Mayhem, and Satyricon moving on from their original pagan/naturalistic themes, to […]
I remember Prion from hearing their last full length, Impressions, way back in 2008. It was a solid death metal album, and since then these guys had kind of fallen off my radar; though we had to wait seven years for another album, it was worth the wait for this one. Boasting the same original […]
“SLAYERRRRRRRR!!!!” “PLAY SOME FUCKIN’ SLAYERRRRRRRRR!!!!!!” You hear it at every show you go to, it seems. There’s always that one or maybe two douchebags that scream at the band on stage to play some “fuckin’ Slayer, man”. I feel it’s more than likely one of the prime reasons why Slayer gets a mostly bad rep […]
Ahhh good ‘ole Middletown, NY. Growing up, my family and I would always pass Middletown, NY, on our way to The Catskills, in upstate NY. I remember this rest stop we would always get breakfast, memories…. This is where Morpheus Descends hail from. They added the Descends to the name in ’92. The band […]
I learned a long time ago that taking labels like “occult heavy metal” seriously missed the point. Except for the hood and robe crowd putting the music second to their image and dogma, countless bands have enjoyed great success embracing the supernatural imagery so often associated with metal without ever taking themselves too seriously. A […]
I kinda dug, Disgust, the 2012 debut from Indiana’s Yellowtooth, founded and fronted by Peter Clemens who has served in more death metal bands like Invasion (an underrated US band playing Stockholm styled death metal before it was vogue) and Nocturnal Torment. It was a groovy, crusty slab of southern drenched death/doom/stoner metal, and the follow […]
Having Dysentery rules! Said no one ever… Well, that is unless you’re talking about owning the new album from the aptly named slam death quartet from Massachusetts. This is their third full length album, and any fan of the slam death genre (one of my favorites), has no doubt heard of them. If not, then […]
Auric is a band from my home state of Arkansas; which has always had a tiny, but vibrant heavy music scene. Arkansas has contributed a couple pretty notable bands to the whole southern/sludge/doom lexicon, as well as a lot of really good punk and hardcore. And now we have Auric, who could be the fourth […]
Hailing from Indiana, Psychomancer are a death metal band who toiled on the scene in from 1997 to 2011, then broke up after two albums in the mid oos. Well they are reformed and have released a new EP on the home state label owned by Yellowtooth’s Peter Clemens. I wasn’t familiar with the band […]
Progressive, now there’s a word that gets a lot of use in the metal vernacular, maybe just under “brutal” and “cult”, or “kvlt”, depending how true (troo?) you are. I’m not going to lie to you, I’m not a progressive type of guy. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about progression in songwriting […]
I love NY and Brooklyn. I’ve been there twice in the past 6 months and its great and I’m itching to go back, so im a little bummed that I may have missed or will miss a opportunity to check out one of Brooklyn’s finest, Throaat. A band that goes for the their namesake in […]
This is an album full of cheeps, chirps, skronks, bleeps, bloops, beeps, boops, and blarps. Noisy noise rock, with a lot of analog instruments making digital noises, and digital instruments simulating sounds in nature. If nature was made out of machines. Osso make very tactile music. Imagine solid state transistors being alternately over-amped, then under-watt’d […]
Several years ago, Ohio’s TON reformed and now we are finally seeing the fruits of their labor. Bow Down To Extinction is their second album, their ’99 debut, Plague, is outstanding. I was a huge fan of TON’s demos, in the 90’s Internal Bleeding and TON shared many good times together onstage. They are also […]
I don’t claim to be any sort of Slam aficionado or expert, but a few releases have slammed the shit out of me recently; Bloodscribe’s Prologue to the Apocalypse, Abominable Putritidy‘s The Anomalies of Artificial Origin reissue, Dysentry’s Fragments, Whoretopsy’s, Never Tear Us Apart, Cumbeast’s eclectic Groovy Massacre, and this, the fourth album from Norwegian stalwarts, Kraanium. Much like […]
Falsifier and Born Hanged, the first two EPs from this UK downtempo/deathcore act have become the Sermon of Mockery among deathcore fans, being the holy grail of deathcore collectors and reaching stupid prices. So Black Tongue have parlayed that and their prior Infant Annihilator infamy (whose releases also go for high prices) into a deal with […]
“Heirless” is the perfect intro for this album. Equal parts foreboding, dissonant, and soothsaying; it encapsulates what is about to occur during the play through of Monarchy; Rivers of Nihil’s second album. On this sophmore release, this Reading, PA band have expanded upon the ability to tell a story, craft a memorably technical song, and […]
If you enjoy ultra-brutal death metal, played with extra hot sauce from good ‘ole Houston, Texas, well than look no further than Desecrate the Faith. I see the band being labeled in the deathcore territory. That’s B.S. I mean I do enjoy deathcore, but this is slam death metal and yes, there are differences. […]
There is something to be said about family members working together cohesively in heavy metal history that in starting this review of Oakland’s Dimesland is important to point out. You have The Cavaleras, The Van Halens, The Hoffmans, Vitek and Vogg, Dimebag and Vinnie Paul and I am probably forgetting a lot of others but […]
I had zero expectations for this album. Considering the label’s recent out put, that cover, the moniker and album title that reads as ‘mediocrity’ at a glance. However, with this sophomore effort, these Swiss vets (who have toiled in DarkRise since 2003) have actually , along with Epsilon’s Zu Richten and Tomb of Finland‘s Below the Green, are bringing a […]