The marriage of traditional folk music (from many countries) with metal has become more than just an exotic sub-genre. The two united seems almost perfect at times and there is a rabid following of fans. However, when the band goes complete folk and abandons all metal ideals (Eluveitie’s Evocation I: The Arcane Dominion), it’s a […]

As much as I like The Funeral Pyre and respect Creator Destructor Records, this stop gap EP reeks of contractual obligation or a favor to the band’s former label. Heck, even the artwork seems rushed and obligatory. Continuing the sound on 2008s Wounds, the now synthless California black metal act blaze lazily through 5 rather […]

Here’s a promising, nicely packaged, self released, 5 song EP than will not only appeal to you retro thrash fans out there, but maybe fans of modern thrash like Trivium and Cerberus (US). Hailing from Tempe, Arizona, Hemoptysis (coughing up of blood or of blood-stained sputum from the bronchi, larynx, trachea, or lungs), have all […]

I could be lazy and simply tell you if you like Equilibrium, then you will like Finsterforst (Dark Forest) and be done with it. After all, they also hail from Germany, play lavishly produced, epic, bombastic synth laden folk metal that culls heavily from Finntroll, Turisas and Ensiferum and they are fuckin’ awesome. However, I’ll […]

Warning do not operate heavy machinery while listening to this disc until you are sure about how it will affect you. When I first heard of this band I knew it would be good, with the Destroyer 666 connection how could it not be? Highly talented veterans banding together to challenge each other to put […]

When Ondskapt members announced a side project a few years back, I jumped at it, who would not? I must say I was underwhelmed with IXXI, the self titled debut, though I still picked up Assorted Armament. I will freely admit that I was not planning on buying Elect Darkness but then it arrived in […]

Long songs, ambient heaviness with percussive power and speed, relentless punishment with crushing guitar lines that would please vintage Metallica fans, and wandering passages at full intensity reminiscent of Lunar Aurora greet the listener of Germany’s Mortuus Infradaemoni, who return with another hour of material for their second full length. Get Nathaniel, and Profanatitas together, […]

I really wanted to like this, and at first I did, or at least thought I did. It’s not that The Cancer Empire is a bad album, but just kinda plain and rather safe. These types of reviews are always the hardest to write – not bad but not particularly good, these middle of the […]

Tabula Rasa, translated as “blank slate” from Latin, is the fitting title for the new album from Sweden’s Power Metal six-piece Bloodbound. If you happened to hear the band’s previous two discs, don’t necessarily expect to be exposed to another act of replication, as often occurs with many metal groups in the present-day scene. In […]

Holy sh– No that wont work. Jesus Chri– That wont work either. God damn– Crap. Well roger me with a Yorkshire terrier and call me Sally- man this is good. Those Christians sure are bringing the pain this year. Not only is the debut from California six piece Earth From Above arguably the heaviest Christian […]

There is no dearth of bands aping the Stockholm death metal sound, is there? In fact, there almost seems to have been an upsurge the last couple of years, part of which is surely attributable to Daniel Ekeroth’s Swedish Death Metal book and the renewed notoriety it has brought to the sub-genre. That brings us to […]

Burning Human is the classic death metal band that was originally formed in way back in 1995, but they never officially released anything. Of note though is that Burning Human (then and now) features current Shadows Fall and former Crisis drummer, Jason Bittner. The band recently re-united and with the help of producer James Murphy (who […]

There’s been an almost Bring Me the Horizon/Bullet For My Valentine like buzz in the British media about this Brighton metalcore act and their third release- on Century Media records no less. However, after absorbing Hollow Crown for a while, it’s really nothing too special in the realms of noisy, occasionally melodic metalcore/hardcore and nothing […]

With the shrieking banshee desperately reaching for your delicious flesh on the album cover, The Horror is aptly titled and steamrolls you over with blood-curdling vocals and Dismember style buzz saw distortion. I don’t think I have heard such a Swedish ruckus since Evocation’s Tales from the Tomb. What we have here is a razor […]

Folks, THIS is how clean vocals on a metal record are done right. Plying a familiar form of modern metal that will appeal to fans of Killswitch Engage, All That Remains and such, Canada’s Odium add a couple of things to spruce up their sound: some heavy handed but well placed, dramatic orchestral synths that […]

I decided to review this self released Italian metalcore effort and the debut, At The Bottom from Canada’s Odium on the same day so you readers could get two slightly different examples of how clean vocals affect the totality of the album. In the case of Inside Process, their heavier, meatier take on metalcore (a la […]

Ah, Black Sabbath, how we’ve missed you. I know, it’s not officially “Black Sabbath”, but we all know it really is. God love Ozzy, but Dio has always been the man for this band vocally. And now Messer’s Dio, Iommi, Butler & Appice have come to show all schools, old and new, how Metal is […]

Here’s the thing. You don’t just throw Ruins’ Cauldron in the player and casually listen while baking cookies in the kitchen, nor do you use it as background music for one of your mind-numbing knitting circles. It’s just not that kind of CD. Cauldrons must surround you, it must envelope you; you must ultimately allow […]

This is one of the more satisfying projects from the blackened end of the spectrum that I’ve heard in a while. Of course, “blackened” implies that there is more on offer than your prototypical black metal release. That is in fact the case with Conspiracy’s Concordat, just as it it is with its predecessor Reincarnated. […]

A solid split of goregrind and deathdoom, The Cracks of Doom features two proponents of the extreme underground: Philadelphia’s XXX Maniak and Japan’s Coffins. The half-hour album is split evenly between the two bands; XXX Maniak boast twenty brief cuts between fifteen and sixty seconds, totaling the first fifteen minutes, while Coffins handle two epic […]

Band reunions are getting pretty goddamn tiresome, and I think that’s important to say though it’s been said already probably a handful of times on other publications. The timing has been great for quite a few of these bands, what with profitable tours, major (and not-so-major) label releases, and a stable of gnashing old school […]

With 2007s debut, Nailed. Dead. Risen, California’s Impending Doom rustled some feathers and raised some eyebrows with their attempt at  pure, brutal death metal from a Christian viewpoint. On some levels it succeeded, but it also felt a bit forced and gimmicky. So here is the follow up, and I’m glad to say, that for […]

Like this record, I’ll get xstraightx to it: 9 songs, 22 minutes of very impressive, incredibly hefty, heaving Straight edge hardcore/metal that’s some of the most impressive of this style I’ve heard since Black My Heart and Redline. Also, because some of the huge, open note breakdowns, this will appeal to the likes of The […]

I invite you to check out SelfMadeGod Records and the bands webpage after this review because the description they have of Mothra’s music is not only hilarious, it’s pretty dead on. Honestly, I am having a difficult time placing Mothra into a specific genre, but I am completely impressed by this Polish act. Dyes is […]

Practically every progressive rock band wants to record their own version of Tales from Topographic Oceans, the 1974 double album that was praised—or vilified, depending on the listener’s caprice—as Yes’ finest hour (and twenty minutes) of prog-indulgence. The fact that Yes weathered the loss of keyboardist nonpareil Rick Wakeman after its release and still came […]