There is an air of mystery and anonymity surrounding  Stockholm black metal act Flagellated Seraph and their debut album, Beyond Salvation. However, not knowing anything about the band or its members does not change the fact that Beyond Salvation is a killer release. Basically, Beyond Salvation is the very epitome of black/death metal. It delivers […]

Let’s go back a few decades, back to a time when rock ruled the FM waves. Not the ‘hang out at the mall and try on cardigans’ sort of rock either; this was the sort of rock that dove into everything dirty and grimy, bodily fluids notwithstanding. Regardless what your opinions on the 1980’s hard […]

I don’t think there’s any questioning Anaal Nathrakh‘s place in the pantheons of metal. Their debut, The Codex Necro, now 10 years old, remains one of the most frightening and apocalyptic releases ever recorded, and while the decade since has seen the band hone and polish their grinding black metal tones into a different sounding […]

Sabbath Assembly’s debut Restored to One came out of nowhere to become one of my favorite releases of 2010. The music, a fusion of 60’s psych-pop and gospel, was based on theology and hymns of an apocalyptic psychotherapy cult from the 60’s known as the Process Church of the Final Judgment. The founders of the […]

Wowsers, this is a pleasant surprise! Sporting a sound and musical approach that I never anticipated, Nova Art is back with their third release; an EP entitled The 3rd Step. The Russian band has been around for a dozen years but this is the first time I’ve ever heard of Nova Art, let alone their […]

You kind of know what you are getting just by looking at the cover of the debut from Pittsburgh’s Kamikabe; the logo, the artwork, the label, etc; yup- techy, brutal death metal/deathcore that culls from the likes of label mates like Fallujah and Halo of Gunfire, early The Faceless and Born of Osiris (minus the […]

Dorset’s Ramesses have quickly followed up Take the Curse with Possessed by the Rise of Magik. Though in the same musical horror show their previous albums occupied, they’ve returned with a nightmarishly frayed and fucked blackened production that is irritatingly hollow. It’s hard to be too negative though because I kept coming back even when […]

Is the wait for a new Revocation album already starting to get unbearably long? Yeah, it is for me too, that’s why just like many other metal bands recently, Revocation have just released a free EP made up of 100% new material through Scion A/V! Of course, I’m just seeing this as the next chapter […]

“Mountain,” the first cut from On the Steps of the Temple, bursts forth like a natural disaster. It’s cinematic and epic, the score to a looming apocalypse or a terrible revelation. It’s the sound of the earth shaking and crumbling loose to unleash something monstrously unnatural – some great and slumbering beast that cranes its […]

From the always reliable FDA Rekotz come some homegrown German talent on the form of Deserted Fear and their debut album, My Empire. It’s not a pure old school record or any sort of homage but instead a modern death metal record with some tangible old school nods notably Asphyx and Vader. Sound wise, My […]

Now this is just filthy.  And I don’t mean any kind of filthy, I mean FILTHY.  This is like the floor at the favorite hole in the wall bar where you’ve seen way too many metal shows.  But it’s a glorious filth that you won’t want to wash off any time soon.  Finland’s Hooded Menace […]

Nile’s Egyptian themed death metal has long since established the South Carolina veterans as leaders of the death metal pack over their decade plus recording career.  The death metal juggernaut can do no wrong in the eyes of many of their devoted fans.  But regardless of the accolades embellished upon the band, Nile are arguably […]

From rainy, foggy Sunderland in the UK comes the second full-length album from Wodensthrone, and to say the three-year wait between releases was worth it would be an understatement. Sporting an overall fuller sound and much more mature songwriting, Curse is everything that made their debut album Loss a pleasure to ingest and then some. […]

I owe Wisconsin’s Shroud of Despondency a huge apology. They sent me 2011s Dark Meditations In Monastic Seclusion last year for review, and I just never got around to reviewing in. In part because of my review backlog and in part because their take on folky, woodsy, progressive black metal wasn’t sitting well with me […]

What do the verbs “drink”, “fight” and “fuck” have in common? XII Boar (Say it with me: “Twelve Boar”). Judging from sound of their new EP, that’s probably all they do. I’m talking rocking, galloping, swaggering metal that tumbles along like a coked out Dukes of Nothing crashing headlong into Beaten Back to Pure. This […]

Hailing from Kansas City, MO, Marasmus are a no-bullshit US styled death metal act that cull heavily from the Floridian side of things (most notably Cannibal Corpse and Hateplow) with just a touch of Unique Leader, singularly paced brutality. The end result is a competent, if unspectacular, slab of American death metal. This is one […]

Here’s the deal. It’s tough to make a splash with an album that culls from the vintage Bay Area thrash sound without coming off as second rate imitation. Fortunately, thrash metal fans – probably even more than death metal fans – are less concerned about originality than the average fan of heavy music. In that […]

Easily one of the coolest reissues in recent memory, Horror Pain Gore Death Productions is kind enough to exhume the rotten corpse of the awesome Urine Junkies from the (sadly) defunct Abscess. Originally released way back in 1995 before the Bay Area sickos ever released an official full-length, Urine Junkies is a collection of their […]

I’m gonna say this right out the gate – I’m typically no fan of softer areas of possibility in my metal; even when it fits into the particular painting I happen to stumble upon. That being said, when I approached this Swallow the Sun album, I had a feeling I wouldn’t be able to get […]

Southwicked is a multinational death metal act that features some Belgian dudes from obscure bands like Blood Haven and Shattered Skull and Allen West of Obituary/Six Feet Under fame. So its no surprise that a majority of Southwicked‘s debut album sounds a lot, no, JUST like West era Obituary and Six Feet Under. You’d think […]

A decade ago, Katatonia made a daring and calculated shift in their style – something that few bands have attempted and even fewer have weathered – and succeeded with their artistic vision and metal reputation intact. Over time, we’ve heard subtle shifts and additions to that evolutionary sideways leap, from the eclectic stomp of Viva Emptiness […]

Do not assume that the lateness of this review is somehow indicative of procrastination resulting from indifference related to Abnormality’s Contaminating the Hive Mind. Said procrastination is the result of…well, whatever else might lead to procrastination. In any event, the Massachusetts’ act delivers a memorable effort here for which extra (figurative) points are awarded for […]

One of the recent forum threads here at Teeth of the Divine tried to define a signature sound or aesthetic for USBM (that’s American black metal for those of you in the dark). I arrived at the conclusion that it’s a meaningless exercise, because the term is so broad. Just as the United States contains […]

It’s often an odd and amusing circumstance when one receives an album from a band and when it’s popped into the stereo (or iTunes), it sounds nothing like you’d expect. The band has completely altered its sound, approach and logo like it’s an entirely new band. Then it hits you: this is a different band […]

Remember in the late 90s when In Flames and Dark Tranquility were exploding? When Children of Bodom were fresh and awesome and young energetic, but short lived melodic death metal bands like Lothlorien, Auberon, Ebony Tears, Embracing, and Eucharist were releasing killer albums? Well, if you long for those days of bouncy, busy, solo filled, […]