I’m a sucker for album art. If an album looks semi interesting in anyway shape or form, I will want it. The album doesn’t even have to be good, truthfully. I don’t have a standard or a preference or a guide by which I follow. I impulse buy and either reap the benefits of having […]
“Aliencore” eh? That’s what the band has jokingly called their deathcore/death metal style, and after listening a few times it actually does seem to fit (and of course everyone knows we needed another sub-genre in the metal world). If you took Beneath the Massacre and Obscura and mixed them together with every Atari game ever […]
Believe in No Coming Shore is the third full-length album from Cascadian black metal act Falls of Rauros, now into their tenth year since their conception. Through these years their sound has remained fundamentally unchanged, and perhaps for the better; their brand of rural, introspective atmospheric black metal has always been very endearing to me. […]
Black metal has become a gigantic and multi-faceted genre in the past 30 (!) years, and each sub-style offers its own emotional and aesthetic experiences. Raw, orthodox, war, symphonic, folk, progressive, depressive, Cascadian, shoegaze, post, industrial, ambient, death/black, black n’ roll – the list goes on. Despite the differences in style, what I look for, […]
So here is the result of a $60,000 Kickstarter campaign: Some killer old-school death metal Andreas Marschall artwork, a killer production, and a killer Obituary album. Pity that money could not have been used to fix John Tardy’s ragged vocal cords… After these death metal legends quickly churned out three albums after reuniting in 2005 for […]
The debut 2013 EP from this side project of UK doomsters, Eye of Solitude, was one of my favorite EPs of 2013 and I have been excited for a full length ever since it was announced and I have followed and lapped up every teaser of trailer since. And it was worth the wait as ‘Profane […]
Autumn’s Dawn is the relatively new project from Australian duo Tim Yatras (drums, guitars, vocals) and Matthew Bell (bass, guitars, keyboards), better known by their stage names Sorrow and Anguish. Furthermore, one or the other has been involved in various metal projects, including Germ, Austere, Rise of Avernus and Woods of Desolation. Autumn’s Dawn represents […]
Much like how they opened the year with the killer trio of releases from Corpsessed, Lie in Ruins and Lvcifyre, Dark Descent Records is closing out 2014 with a slew of more stunning releases from Horrendous, Phobocosm, Sempiternal Dusk, and this, the most twisted of the lot, the debut from Finland’s Swallowed. While Finland’s death metal […]
The Malaysian bulldozing death metal machine are back with yet another album, Battalion. Ever since their inception, in 2009, Humiliation have released eps/splits’7” and albums, and with this marking their 5th long player, one has to wonder are they over-saturating the scene? As we speak, I am pretty sure they have ideas for album #6. Prior to […]
Andrew D’Cagna of Nechochwen and Obsequiae has another passion apart from his excellent folky grey/black metal projects, and it’s old School Swedish death metal. And Eihwaz Recordings, the sub label of Bindrune, where the other projects reside, has allowed Andrew to release Between The Living and the Dead, an fine homage to the style that stands toe […]
Ellorsith’s 1959 possesses a gravitas rarely heard in a band’s first release. Inspired by the Dyatlov Pass Incident of 1959, in which nine ski hikers died mysteriously during a night on the northern Ural Mountains, the music is a fitting representation of the event’s cold and cryptic nature. Opener “Vvedénije” (it sounds spooky until you […]
Do you remember when real metal musicians wore all black, spiked arm bands, raised middle fingers, and said “Hails!” in interviews? Pepperidge Farm remembers, and so do Denmark’s Horned Almighty. It’s obvious from the start these guys are old school through and through. …or are they? How old does something have to be to be […]
As expected from the fickle metal community there has been both a lot of hype and hate towards the debut release from this one woman black metal project from Denmark. From the elitist ‘no women in black metal’ to ‘Deafheaven suck’ crowd and those that think this is the future of black metal. And as is normal, the […]
Prolific and consistent are two words that spring to mind when assessing the career thus far of Boston’s Revocation. Finding cunning ways to manipulate and expand their signature technical death thrash formula has been a key to much of the band’s success and creative progress. Yet when it was announced that their year-by-year release trend […]
First off, many thanks to Paul Shaw, the owner of Blast Head Records, for recommending this band’s debut EP, Song of the Crippled Bull awhile ago. I instantly knew these progressive death metal-playing Pennsylvanians were onto something special, and now the debut full-length cements that fact. For those lamenting Opeth‘s swing away from death metal and […]
While I’m sure upcoming reviews of the new Obituary and At the Gates albums will get well deserved traffic and attention, it’s releases and the opportunity to do reviews of releases like this that keep me interested in metal and this whole reviewing thing. Hailing from Chile, Siaskel’s debut album will more than likely be one of […]
Bondage babes, leather, chains, beer, sleaze and hellraising riffs are just some of the things that spring to mind when jamming the sophomore full-length from retro metal fiends, Midnight. No Mercy for Mayhem might channel very similar territory to its much praised predecessor, Satanic Royalty, but it does so with such infectious energy and skin […]
Tim Call is one busy son of a bitch. In addition to owning and operating the quite excellent label/distro, Parasitic Records, he provides drums and sometimes also vocals for various bands including Aldebaran, The Howling Wind, Weregoat, Sempiternal Dusk, Terror Oath, Ealdath, and I’m willing to bet he’s T in Ardour Loom. Just this year […]
Despite an impressive lineage from some of Canada’s best technical death metal bands like Atheretic, Neuraxis and Vengeful, the debut from Phobocosm plays more like Dark Descent’s typical, cavernous, devastatingly heavy doom/death sounds of Binah, Lvcifyre , Lie In Ruins and notably Corpsessed and it rules. But was there really any doubt? With a crushing Colin Marston mix, Deprived […]
We had to wait 13 years between Memoria Vetusta I: Fathers of the Icy Age and its second chapter, Dialogue with the Stars – which has since become one of my favorite metal albums of all time. Now Vindsval has only taken 5 years to deliver Saturnian Poetry. Don’t hold it against him; in the meantime, he’s started and completed the 777 trilogy, […]
10 years after Onwards to Mecca, one of the elder statesmen of New Yawk death metal, like Pyrexia last year, has reformed and are giving it another go on Unique Leader records. And like Pyrexia’s Feast of Iniquity, Imperium is a relatively successful reunion, if still in the shadow of Suffocation and Dying Fetus all these […]
I must confess I am not well versed in Krieg‘s back catalogue, being more familiar with Neil Jameson’s work with Twilight. I enjoyed The Black House but I haven’t listened to it in years. However, Krieg is a key USBM band that stands alongside the likes of Leviathan, Mutiilation, and Nachtmystium in terms of importance […]
If you ain’t gonna reinvent the wheel, then you might as well slap some nice rims on that bitch. That, my friends, is exactly what Septycal Gorge have done with their latest release Scourge of the Formless Breed. Septycal Gorge is a band I’d recognized from their first LP that I own, Growing Seeds of […]
So, if like me you were underwhelmed by the last Triptykon record, here is another Swiss metal act to fulfill your needs for controlled, slower, moody and progressive dark metal that is a real undiscovered gem in 2014s metal releases. Contradiction is Schammasch’s second album albeit my first introduction to this trio, but it won’t be my […]
Panopticon and Bindrune Recordings is a match made in heaven. A label that has released some truly special atmospheric, organic and naturalistic metal (Falls of Rauros, Nechochwen, Blood of the Black Owl, Obsequiae) finally releasing a more accessible and wider CD release of Austin Lunn’s 5th album under the Panopticon banner, a project that personifies organic, atmospheric and naturalistic. […]