Cleanteeth refer to themselves as “beard impregnating doom metal.” I’m not sure what exactly they mean by that. If this genre tag is a victim of the hyphen thief, it means that their music makes beards pregnant, a prospect which does not initially appeal to me. If not, they mean that their doom metal impregnates […]

I love surprises. Not the  “oh, you are putting that where?” surprises, but musical surprises where you get an out of the blue email from a completely unheard of band asking for a review (meaning our  little site is growing)  and that subsequent release ends up being pretty damn awesome. Such is the case with […]

Here is one of those 2013 releases that I slept on until now. From the label that brought the likes of The Great Old Ones, Ebonylake, Pensées Nocturnes comes some really interesting avant garde French black metal that is well…various shades of black. There is A LOT going on here. The band is, if anything, […]

I was genuinely excited for this, the debut album from now guitarist Steve Tucker, former Morbid Angel vocalist/bassist and recently Nader Sadek frontman. But now he has his own band under the moniker of Warfather and is aided by a few cronies such as drummer Diemos (Temple, Severe Torture) and Nick McMaster (Krallice, Nader Sadek, […]

There’s something about Cannibal Corpse. It just doesn’t get old. Generations of bands have come and aped them the way they want. There are two eras of Cannibal Corpse worship as well – the Chris Barnes one and of course the Corpsegrinder one. Germany is most notorious where it comes to Cannibal Corpse-influenced bands, especially […]

I had wanted to give this album the attention it deserved last year, but circumstances conspired against it. The digital promo impressed me enough to want a physical copy for review. Unfortunately, North American distribution was nonexistent, so it quickly became lost in the stampede of amazing 2013 releases that were available in US distros. […]

Even though the band’s moniker may lure in casual Nile fans, France’s Nephren Ka is actually centered around Frank Hebert (Dune author) themes, despite the fact their style of modern, clinical, technical death metal, still is actually a bit Nile sounding, just without all of the Egyptian instrumentation and sand in your crack. Unfortunately, the […]

There is something foul afoot in England. Not since the late ’80s early ’90s has there been this much of an explosion in quality metal arising from the once fair isle in the last couple of years. And it’s not just the quality, it’s the substance of the music that is surprising; Binah, Grave Miasma, […]

Calmed By The Tides Of Rain released the killer album, Phaeton, recently, that I raved about in my review on here and now the Russian slam deathcore band are back with a digital only 3 song ep, Hives. One of the things that I spoke about is that they had more death than core to […]

Norway’s In Vain, according to the Encyclopaedia Metallum, plays Progressive Extreme Metal. Progressive is a tag that gets thrown around a lot and can mean practically anything. In In Vain’s case, the “progressive” is the same as applies to Borknagar or Emperor but to a lesser extent. In Vain tempers their progressive tendencies with a […]

Cadaver Mutilator is a brutal death metal band, from Italy and this is their debut album.  One thing is for certain Italy is becoming the hotbed for ultra brutal death metal, these days.  Many of the bands going for the jugular in their approach to music and if you’re a fan of bands, like Putridity, […]

Hailing from Texas, Cara Neir is one of those bands that will drive grizzled old school black metal fans crazy but fans of  envy, Hiretsukan,  Quantice Never Crashed as well as label mates The Makai and black metal upstarts Deafheaven and So Hideous should check these guys out. Playing  a punked out form of  hardcore and  screamo tinged black metal, […]

While subgenres in metal tend to diversify (think of the many iterations of black metal or death metal going around these days), some genres seem natural pairs and have coalesced into genres of their own. Take for instance black metal and sludge. Ville Morgue, the first full-length offering from France’s Carne, plays riff-driven sludge metal […]

After tantalizing the death metal world and truly putting Dark Descent Records on the map with their 2011 EP, The Dagger & The Chalice, Finland’s strangely named Corpsessed have finally unleashed their debut album, and it, along with Dark Descent’s two other killer early 2014 releases from Lie In Ruins and Lvcifyre, have signaled some […]

It goes without saying that it’s difficult for a band to stand out in a crowded field. With dozens of bands all mining similar influences and plying similar styles, you either have to turn in an incredibly convincing performance that elevates what might otherwise be mundane or you have to apply a twist on the […]

Alcest is one of the very few bands for which I say: if you like it, you like it; if you don’t, you don’t. There is nothing bad about it. It needs to be taken on its own terms, and once it is, whatever opinion you form about it is your own, and it’s okay. […]

Dysmorphic is a technical death metal band from France and A Notion of Causality is their full length debut album.  They have a self financed ep from a few years back that I have yet to hear.  Some of the ep tracks appear on this full length and one would assume they have been revamped.  […]

After some demos and EP of fairly standard Swedish death metal, Necrophobic morphed into a black/death act and released a handful of pretty revered albums in 1993’s The Nocturnal Silence, 1997’s Darkside and 1999’s The Third Antichrist. However, it’s 2002’s Bloodhymns that I will always have a soft spot for, being one of my very […]

Cadaveric Crematorium is a special band – it’s trying to do its own thing in a sea of clones and redundant brutal experts. It’s not the most groundbreaking band but the best reference to give it would be Broken Hope in the 90s trying to get innovative, breaking away from its ‘The Bowels of Repugnance’ […]

On a recent road trip, I was literally telling my wife how I was wanting another Jaldaboath album, as the band had seemingly gone dark after 2010 Rise of the Heraldic Beasts, one of my very favorite albums form that year. Well, lo and behold Grand Master Jaldabaoth, via the sorcery of email sent me […]

Sol Negro is this obscure Black/Doom Metal band from Seattle, Washington, which has been around since the late 90s but hasn’t really caught the eye of the international press or fans for that matter. It’s such a shame because this is an intriguing band if any. While it calls itself Black/Doom, it’s not wrong, but […]

Back when I was fronting Internal Bleeding, Deathrune was one of the local NY acts that we played with and I became friends with their singer Kelly Izquierdo.  Killer dudes and a great live act as well.  Dark Blasphemies Records has put together an absolute beast of a reissue/compilation, containing all of Deathrune’s material across a […]

Hateful is Italy’s best kept secret in the Italian Death Metal scene. It’s built its reputation the hard way, without any fancy labels or big guys in the band line-up – solely on the basis of its music. This is not to take away something from the other bands, everyone has worked hard and met […]

So do you like your brutal death metal with a razor-thin production, monotone vocals and no real attempt at songwriting?  Well if so, then you’ll love the new full length from Italy’s Exhumer.  It’s a straight forward exercise in how to do brutal death by the book, without really even caring to open the cover […]

The Netherlands has been a quite fertile breeding ground for extreme metal in recent times. The impenetrable blackness of Gnaw Their Tongues and Post-Black Metal wizards Cold Body Radiation are to name but a few of the exciting artists emerging from this small Northern European country. Another band sure to compel many is Fluisteraars, who […]