It’s not often these days that a brand-spankin’ new black metal band comes out of the woodwork and does the genre of music properly. Usually the young “kvlt” tikes latch onto the typical Dark Throne/Dark Funeral/Burzum/early Emperor coloring book and fail miserably. The general reasons for said failures is because the kids just don’t know […]

Dan Moore’s  (sHeavy) new band Wizards of Kaos is one particularly astonishing phenomena that came ’round the bend at the end of ’09. It’s hard to conceive an album like this new self-titled of theirs isn’t some kind of trippy direct export from the 70s; I’m hearing major influence from Sabbath, Led Zeppelin (especially in […]

Oh man, what a weird little album this is. Hail Spirit Noir are two guys from Greece, playing a kooky mix of black metal and late ’60s psychedelic folk. I wish Pneuma were actually 40 years old, and that I’d found it on vinyl in the back of some musty old secondhand store, all covered […]

Slumber’s demise was somewhat of a disappointment after their excellent 2004’s full-length Fallout. The album had its own character within melodic death/doom genre of the time, standing somewhere between Katatonia and Finland’s Rapture. The following turmoil between the band members and the birth and death of their new projects left me wondering whether or not […]

I’ll get right to it- Swedish duo Desultor present the same kind of musical/vocal conundrum as Blood Revolt‘s Indoctrine presented last year; that’s to say blisteringly awesome thrash/black/death metal but rather than any of the typical roars, growls or rasps, the vocals of Markus Joha are presented in a purely clean, power metal /traditional metal […]

The round-up of dudes busting their chops behind Barnes this time around certainly is bringing the Six Feet Under sound into one much needed metamorphosis on Undead, making it one impressively varied and positively lethiferous affair that took me aback. The addition of Rob Arnold (ex-Chimaira) to the band’s ranks has been breathing a considerable […]

Self released debut recording. Generally that means demo. In the old days everyone needed a label, not so much in the internet age. So when Massachusetts based Infera Bruo contacts me with a request to review their demo I am not expecting a demo, plus the band includes drummer Ardroth of Bothildir. So forget all […]

Italy’s Natron sure aren’t getting exhausted. Grindermeister is one aggressive hellion that goes far beyond the run of the mill take on deathgrind; the urgency of the tempo variations and tight as fuck subtleties in these songs stoutly backs up the fact that this band has been refining their approach and observing the Death Metal […]

Based on my experience, Canada isn’t exactly a hot bed of epic viking folk metal. My only real  first hand experience of such a thing was Bolero‘s Voyage From Vinland, a surprisingly solid release in its own right. And here is Quebec’s Nordheim–who I actually thought might be Bolero on first listen–and their debut album, […]

Pardon me while I pick my face off of the floor, Cop Problem just sheared my grill off with this rager of an EP. Intense d-beat and crust influenced hardcore that slays and slays for every second of its nine minutes. This is an urgent, ripping blast of catharsis straight from the streets of Killadelphia […]

Cattle Decapitation is a band that has grown a lot on me the past few years.  I wasn’t keen on their early work, but starting with Karma Bloody Karma and continuing with The Harvest Floor, this vegetable-loving four piece have continued to flesh out their crushing style on Monolith of Inhumanity. What is so interesting […]

Anathema has been doing their own thing for a while now ― the group’s metallic origins a distant memory ― touring and serving fans with their own progressive-oriented rock music. Last year the band returned to their formative albums on the Falling Deeper full-length, re-imagining classics to fit their current, softer expression ― just as they did on […]

Cthulhu mythos and Lovecraftian fiction have long been a part of metal, but in my experience it’s generally been in the realms of cavernous doom or gnarly, undulating death metal and typically a more nasty, disturbing musical representation of the subject matter. But here come France’s The Great Old Ones, and in typically elite French […]

Catheter?!?  What the hell?!?  It’s been seven years since these guys have dropped a full length, and having not heard much from them at all since then I had written them off for dead.  After doing a little research I found out that they have released two or three splits in that time (depending on […]

After a period of laborious research (read: browsing the web while the coffee kettle boiled), I was surprised to learn that very little has been written about the Ben Levin Group. Although their album ‘Pulse of a Nation’ is nearing its second birthday, I could only find a handful of reviews written for their album, […]

It’s not often you get to cover Buddhist-inspired metal, much less Buddhist metal from Portugal. I was very impressed by The Firstborn’s fourth release, The Noble Search, back in 2009. It blended prog and melodic death with thick, roiling sludge, not unlike Mastodon or Gojira, and then blessed it all with a breeze of East […]

So back in 2010, I reviewed The Moulting, the debut from this Canadian female Sludge duo at another site. I wasn’t particularly impressed and gave the release a pretty poor review , even throwing it some half-hearted sexist humor. Well,  the ensuing shit storm of comments on the review and on Facebook from the band […]

Fans of the slightly more brutal style of traditional death metal will surely gobble this one up and praise it for all its blood-soaked, gory glory. Excruciating Existence, the debut full-length album from Brazil’s Escarnium, is everything a fan of this genre of metal loves: it’s guttural, has crunching guitars, it’s straightforward, without frills, without […]

Dynahead is a band that has inspired some buzz in progressive metal over the past few years. Not unlike their fellow Brazilians in Mindflow, they play music that takes in influences from all across the prog metal spectrum, most notably Dream Theater, and Opeth. Although it’s safe to say that this more eclectic approach is […]

One of the best kept secrets coming out of the German black metal scene they have been overlooked for far too long. Secrets of the Moon are back with their fifth full length release. They have been kicking around in one form or another for quite a long time, with sG being around for all […]

If Satyricon weren’t boring they’d be Panchrysia. I hadn’t heard of these Belgian black metallers until recently so I had a peek through their back catalog. I was surprised to find how familiar the riffs were. After two releases with an oppressive, Zyklon-esque production, 2008’s Deathcult Salvation adopted more of the cold, clinical style of […]

Thy Serpent’s Cult, the debut EP from France’s Torture Throne has a lot working in the band’s favor. However, there’s also a cornucopia of issues working against it. This is a novice band just piecing together their visions of what great death metal should be so a ton of flack won’t be tossed their way. […]

Save for your factory-produced, target market-oriented teen pop sensations, all bands are ‘underground’ at some point or another. Doing some research into this band from Boston, it seems like quite a few people have high hopes for Protean Collective  breaking out to a wider audience, and after hearing their self-released album ‘Divided‘, I can see […]

The first impression that Lyriel’s Leverage makes on the listener is a little deceiving. After listening to the title track, which is the first real song on the record, I thought they were a pretty good Lacuna Coil knock-off with some traditional metal leanings. Heard it before, I thought, but I’m glad I pushed forward. […]

I have to admit I wasn’t at all familiar with Gianluca Divirgilio’s works in Arctic Plateau before digging into this release, but I’m quite pleasantly surprised and satisfied with what I’m hearing. The Enemy Inside isn’t a metal album by any means. Once that fact is straight out of the woodwork and looking you in […]