When I checked out Urna’s 2006 release Sepulcrum, I was struck at how similar it sounded to Arcana Coelestia’s Ubi Secreta Colunt. Both featured a fusion of funeral doom and black ambient, of cosmic light bleeding through waves of crushing darkness. A quick trip to the Metal Archives cleared up my hunch – they’re both […]

Arcana Coelestia’s last release, Ubi Secreta Colunt, was one of my favorite discoveries of 2007 – the kind of gem that makes a few hours of web-surfing and shot-in-the-dark downloads worth all the effort. Essentially one long composition, its four tracks delivered an all-consuming experience that blended crushing funeral doom with astral post-rock grace. I […]

Released last year independently and now more recently distributed by Saturnine Media, California’s Cormorant has released a stunning melodic death metal album that that’s adventurous, ambitious and brilliant. I’ve seen the likes of In Flames, Opeth and Slough Feg mentioned in reference to this band due to the prevalence of melodic riffage, heavy metal backbone, […]

Here we have the debut EP from Amorphead who hail from Italy and play a modern form of death/thrash. Psychotic is a 6 track offering book-ended by an intro and outro, cleverly titled as “Dreaming” and “Awakening”, respectively, leaving four proper songs. From what I can tell of these four, they have a slightly different […]

This new Finnish supergroup boasts members of Swallow the Sun, Amorphis, Moonsorrow, Kreator and October Falls. Given that line-up, you know Barren Earth is going to be awash in the lush, soaring melodies and crushing doom-death tones that make Finnish metal so recognizable. That’s convincing enough for me, but the addition of progressive-death structures and […]

Here’s another late 2009 release that is worth your while even if you can look past the fact that the moniker, label, logo, cover art and band’s looks scream Hot Topic deathcore. The fact is though, Australia’s The Red Shore, despite all the above going against them they are more along the lines of As […]

As usual for this time of year, I’m trying to get onto 2010 releases for review, but there are always a few worthwhile, late 2009 stragglers that I feel deserve a mention and your ear. One such release is the debut from Tennessee’s Enfold Darkness. I know Sumerian Records get a lot of flack for […]

If you think about it, for gruff metal heads a lot of us are accepting of some pretty mellow non metal acts: Tenhi, Nuen Welten, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, old Mortiis, Summoning, Dornenreich just to name a few, seem to get a free pass with metal heads and as artistically brilliant as many non metal […]

When I reviewed (for another site) the 2008 album, Behind Enemy Lines, from New Zealand’s Christian metalcore/hardcore act, I suggested that Facedown/Strikefirst Records would be a good fit for this band for their next album. Booyah. Ok, enough of that – onto the album. The fact this album is on Strikefirst (Facedown’s baby brother) should clue […]

With a name like Semen Datura, you’d expect something filthy, depraved and unpleasantly psychedelic. So I was surprised when opener “Fons et Origo” kicked off with the shimmering, punchy tones of Isis or Burst (and no, it had nothing to do with the mention of Origo – I didn’t have the songtitles in front of […]

Just as you’re recovering from last year’s Teitanblood assault, here comes The Beast of the Apocalypse to scratch the scabs from your ears and let the blood trickle out anew. A Voice from the Four Horns of the Golden Altar proves once again that you don’t need to use reedy, tremolo guitars and thin production […]

First off, the packaging from this EP is pretty unique, though its bound to drive storage-o-phobes nuts: the CDEP comes in a LP sized sleeve, with the CD resting in the middle on a spinner and the inlay is an LP sized folding poster. I just wish the music was as adventurous and creative as […]

Here’s the deal. If you get all uppity about black/war metal productions that are about 1,000 miles from Pro-Tools and can’t deal with a mix that, for the most part, buries the guitars in a maelstrom of blasts, includes a bass….ah shit, forgot about the bass, ain’t no bass, and hatefully sermonizes with harsh, abrasive […]

Featuring members of black/doom act Eyes of Ligeia and Crimson Moon, Atlanta’s Legions of Astaroth have been plying their trade since 2004, culminating in this solid debut of frosty, grim and mildly atmospheric black metal. While most of the metal media seems to take heed of the more artistic side of US black metal (Krallice, […]

2009 was a pretty strong year for grindcore (and Willowtip) with the likes of Blood I Bleed, Napalm Death, Defeatist, Insect Warfare, Afgrund, Mumakil, Magrudergrind and such delivering the grinding goods, and Willowtip put the cherry on top of 2009 with the 5th album from Polish stalwarts Squash Bowels. If you are familiar with European […]

Is there some sort of unspoken mandatory rule that a band has to have a live album after their 4th or 5th studio album? The reason I ask is that I’m not sure what the point of this release is. It’s only 8 tracks long – most live albums are packed to the brim with […]

I was a bit unimpressed by the commercial meets metal output of their sister band An Entire Legion, but Tricore fares much better while treading similar ground. Less than Man, More than Rabbit leans a little more toward a heavier sound, mixing radio-ready commercial hard rock with bits of thrash and just a few blasts […]

Without fail, the same thing happens at the end of every year; I submit my year end picks to various outlets, only to have a release cross my path that would have made the list. In this case the second self released EP from Long Island’s Painted In Exile would have hands down been the […]

Dead Man’s Hand hail from Norway, play a modern sort of European death/thrash, and The Combination is the bands debut full-length. It’s not much of a stretch to compare them to early period The Haunted, Dew-Scented or Hatesphere, but it’s probably a little too soon to be including them in that same class of ass-kicking, […]

An interesting fact about trolls: besides lurking under bridges, in forests and on message boards, they’re also able to change their form at will – usually to trick the humans they like to torment. I mention this only because Troll, the Norwegian black metal band started by Nagash (Covenant/The Kovenant, ex-Dimmu Borgir) in 1992, has […]

Ihsahn’s work has always been forward-thinking and progressive, but its roots have also been easily traceable to that of earlier masters. From the Wagnerian fury of Anthems-era Emperor to the baroque intricacies of Prometheus, The Adversary and angL, it’s obvious that Ihsahn has studied and absorbed classical music and theory in a way that few […]

And so Australia’s assault on excellent extremity continues with the third album from Tasmania’s black metal horde Ruins. My last contact with this act was the 2004 EP, Atom & Time, which to my recollection, was a traditional, frosty, clinical style of blistering black metal. I missed 2008’s Cauldron (even with its belated US release […]

Not every Finnish band needs to emerge from a Nosferatu-style coma to write a good black metal record. Beherit might get the most attention because they dropped off the face of the earth for almost two decades before this year’s strong comeback. The smart money is on Azaghal, a black metal outfit that seems to […]

For those that don’t know, John Peel (RIP) was a BBC radio DJ who championed the extreme and the underground. While BBC Radio 1 and 2 (back then), was busy playing The Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, Mel and Kim and other pop chart topping tripe, Peel and his late night Sunday radio show was playing […]

Guild of Destruction – a.k.a. G.O.D. – has got to be Australia’s best kept death metal secret. In a land known for its extra ferocious, Christ crushing, war fed metal, G.O.D. fits right in as a behemoth in its own right. It was 2007’s Into Oblivion that first got my attention; ah hell, it knocked […]