It has been more than a thousand years since the minstrels, troubadours, and minnesingers of the Middle Ages strummed their lutes and cooed their poetry to eager and usually royal ears. Obsequiae, if they could travel back to those days, would have lulled the lords and ladies of court into wondrous reverie with a gentle opener […]
The first Hardcore record I ever got was Agnostic Front’s Cause For Alarm. I was in high school and I had never heard anything like it before. It was the early days of the crossover scene and until this point I had been listening to metal exclusively. That quickly changed. The short songs, the vitriol […]
Hot on the heels of Gruesome’s utterly wonderful Savage Land comes another slice of truly tremendous Death worship in the form of False Prophecies. The mysterious entity that is Undead have chosen to take a different approach to Gruesome however, the latter band choosing to emulate the early Death to such an extent that the resulting […]
“The French female-fronted metal band UNSAFE brings the metal scene to a new level”… or so says the band’s label Mighty Music. A tad ironic, being that that is quite a mighty claim in itself, the problem is that it is nowhere close to the truth. Not that Enter Dark Places is a bad album, […]
I am a giant Kolliasist. His debut with one of my all-time favorite brutal tech death outfits, Nile, happens to also be my all-time favorite Nile record. Blast beats are a given, but his take on the groovier, crushier Nile moments really sold me, and gave the band a compelling depth that has, in my […]
Last year Erik Thomas reviewed a band from Nashville Tennessee called Inferi who released an album called The Path of Apotheosis. To me that was one of the better melodic death releases of last year and kind of came out of nowhere. Zoom forward to present day Mariestad Sweden and Implode. Implode was formed in […]
It’s good to see that Incinerate is still hanging in there. Releasing only their 3rd album since a 2000 demo. Incinerate drop albums just after the brain cell crushing, wearers of unreadable band shirts have stopped wondering, “whatever happened to them”, snapping their necks back in place with Eradicating Terrestrial Species. Considering their recent […]
Okay this album is definitely going to be a grower, but that’s not a bad thing mind you, it’s just at times expectations can be a mindf**k. You anticipate, you dream and dwell on that one moment of what you envision or what you dream about forever ( in this case Sanctuary reforming ) and […]
Having been around since 2000, and with 6 albums under their belt already, Warsaw Poland’s Antigama continue to be one of the most underrated yet productive bands in Grindcore. and album number 7 shows no signs of the band letting up. The Insolent starts off with the very aggressive “Reward or Punishment”. If one could […]
Man, this is evil stuff. It’s not fast, it’s actually quite melodic but I’ll be goddamned if this shit doesn’t get by on sheer tonnage alone. The Dead hail from Australia, a country/continent with a rich heavy scene that doesn’t always get the credit it so rightly deserves. I’m coming into this review as an […]
Like a lot of you, Drudkh first popped up on my radar with their 2006 release, Blood In Our Wells. It really took me a long time to look beyond the hype that album generated, but I eventually came to appreciate it for what it was. What it wasn’t was The Second Coming of a […]
2015 brings the return of England’s Paradise Lost for their 27th year in existence. It also brings fourth their 14th full length album. In this day and age, it is amazing to have a band with this kind of longevity and productivity. Add to that the fact that the lineup is original except for the drummer, […]
Here is another example of how great French Death Metal bands are. Recueil Morbide, which translates to English to ‘Morbid Collection’ blast their ways into toad throat lovers everywhere this year with the release of their album which just happens to be called Morbid Collection. If there were any initial knock on this record it […]
I’ve read descriptions of this band as “psychedelic stoner metal”, “psychedelic doom”, “psychedelic (insert genre here)” and I must say, it’s too easy to throw that tag onto a genre if someone doesn’t understand the actually influences regarding a sound being conveyed. With Ufomammut I find that descriptor appropriate but moreso in the vein of […]
So Floridian black metal act Mindscar were around back in the early 00s with a few demos and such and back then, their guitarist/vocalist Richie Brown was the bassist for Trivium for a year, before Heafy and co got famous. But the band faded out of existence after a lone 2001 EP, However Brown reformed the band with in […]
I don’t have much patience with geeker-provenance or hero worship. I was pleased as punch to hear Carcass and Godflesh put out fantastic, true to form records after being away for a while, but for the most part I agree with Death Grips: “Fuck where you’re from, fuck where you’re going, it’s all about where […]
Black Tower is a Canadian trio that play a form of punk/thrash/power/heavy/black metal that’s a perfect fit for Unspeakable Axe Records, and might actually be their best release yet. And while that mish-mash of styles might overwhelm some, it’s going to appeal to a lot of folks, as it’s done with an awesome retro but fun […]
Even in the wake of their reunion tours stretching back to 2009, the reality of a new studio album from Faith No More, the kings of genre-bending alt rock-metal, seemed highly unlikely. At the height of their powers Faith No More shared a strained relationship with each other, a prickly tension and volatile chemistry that […]
Norwegian Avant Garde Heavy Metal has been something of an evolution over the last twenty years. In looking at Dodheimsgard’s 2015 release, A Umbra Omega we should first start with a trip back to 1996 and a double disc compilation called Blackened: The Black Metal Compilation. Disc two of this compilation featured a song called,” […]
I might be picking in the wrong season here. I’m growing a crop of doom/death when the weather consistently lures me towards faster riffs, heavy groove abandon or something that will have me speeding down the highway at 100 mph and swerving between lanes. The Ukraine’s Torrens Conscientium are not exactly band, but you know […]
Grind is a specific kind of metal that describes, band by band, a single aspect of being, more so than any other kind of metal – or music. The bands that make grind tend to live for that aspect, create for it. Maruta is about tension; sailing riffs on the edge of the world and […]
Symphonics/orchestration and brutal death metal aren’t uncommon bedfellows, but it isn’t exactly a thriving, saturated genre, due to the obvious dichotomy the two style provide. Fleshgod Apocalypse certainly elevated it to critical acclaim and mastered the sound but before that the likes of arguable trendsetters Nocturnus as well as, Agiel, Scrambled Defuncts, Ovid’s Withering and a few […]
I can usually tell of I am going to like or dislike an album after a few moments. A few skips from track to track, hear the vocals, the production etc. I can get a general idea pretty quick. Sure, there are anomalies, growers, late bloomers and stuff I’m just not feeling at that time in […]
So now France is finally joining the European masses like the Czech Republic (Brutally Deceased), Croatia, (Hezera), Italy (Undead Creep), Germany (Revel in Flesh), Poland (Ulcer), Greece (Wreckage) The Netherlands (Funeral Whore), Finland (Morbid Vomit) and even the US (Fatalist) getting in on the Boss HM2, Swedish death metal revival with the duo known as Skelethal. A […]
New Delhi trio Toxoid take an ain’t broke, don’t fix it approach to black metal on their debut album Aurora Satanae. They avoid shoe gazin’, there are no pop elements, over the top orchestration is left for the London Symphony and you can kiss those clean vocals goodbye. For those who like it right in […]