Mysteria hails from Poland and promises an expansive, avant-garde mix of death, black and folk. Sounds intriguing…. Opener “Mulla Xul” kicks off the proceedings on a promising, if not familiar note. Churning thunder, monstrous growls and ancient, Sumerian-styled bombast. It’s heavily reminiscent of countrymates Behemoth, but less epic. Nothing terribly progressive or forward-thinking either, but […]

From the cover art by the great Gustave Dore, guaranteed to make me notice, straight through to the very metal album closer piano solo that Beethoven would have loved, Artefact challenges you to listen, no multitasking. Like current Primordial with seven troll steps back toward early Enslaved with a nod toward Ihsahn on the way […]

Pop this disk in and it takes only about twenty seconds to suspect it is Kampfar and less than a minute to be sure it could be no one else. All pervasive is the Kampfar sound and if you don’t know what that is by now expect to be turned into a frog by the […]

I’ll be the first to admit that the Gothenburg sound is probably the most overdone and over saturated style in metal, but I’ll also quickly admit that I’m a huge fan, especially when done right. Meet Finland’s Omnium Gatherum if you haven’t done so already. The Redshift marks the bands fourth long player, and fourth […]

And so the thrash resurgence/revival marches on. This time I have before me the debut full-length from Head On Collision (HOC). I first discovered the band while tooling around Myspace (hey, it really can be awesome sometimes right?) 2-3 years ago, looking for some fresh thrash. Not only did the band impress me, but they […]

Doubtless you’ve heard the name Abigail Williams by now – some of it hype, some of it curiosity given the band’s former incarnation as brutal-yet-melodic death-metal act Vehemence. A constantly rotating line-up, several moves around the country and a brief break-up have likely put the band through a number of trials (those of you familiar […]

People still labeling Metal as Satan’s music are most probably unaware of the current alignment of forces in the metal world of today. The number of bands propagandizing the name of Lord through the raging language of riffs and blasts is increasing on an almost daily basis and some of them can easily rival Devil’s […]

Fall is here for many of you (except those of us unlucky enough to live in the damn desert), which makes it a perfect time to throw on a pair of headphones and take a long, solitary walk in the woods. Those of you looking to recapture the dark pastoral glory of Bergtatt-era Ulver and […]

If I had to make up a metal compilation of this year’s catchiest metal songs, “Rock’n’Roll Devil”, the title number from the second album by Swedish Death ‘n’ Roll trio Helltrain, would pronouncedly fetch up somewhere there at one of the places atop. As you most probably surmised, the release at issue is yet another […]

Wow. Not only have Misery Index rebounded from the slightly disappointing Discordia and returned to the full on brilliance of Retaliate, they have responded to the gauntlet thrown down by the recent Willowtip triple headed assault of Kill the Client, Phobia and Maruta as far as American grindcore in 2008 is concerned. While one could […]

Look out, deathcore is now even in Australia. Admitted, its getting silly now. How many more bands, hold on, let me stress that, HOW MANY MORE bands will keep writing and writing these songs? Seriously? Well I don’t know, and you can call me crazy, but for some reason unbeknown to me, I keep listening […]

Aussie deathcore Part 2,  actually, this could even be the same review as Gallows for Grace, like their Australian brethren (and brothers in crime) Thy Art is Murder, play shredding, gruff deathcore, with plenty of chug, grunts and blazing Paul Waggoner wannabe runs to make lads and lasses in their asphyxiating garments cream until the […]

And guess what? Still listening. I won’t make this a secret, this was in my top 10 back when it was originally released in 2006, it still gets a lot of play and it will continue to get a lot of play until their next record drops, even more so with this re-issue with added […]

Its an interesting technique that Facedown have been employing, that being nurturing a band on their subsidiary Strike First and then ushering them forward into the big league if you will. Call to Preserve were a band I passed up on when Unsinkable, surfaced, can’t recall why, put something just didn’t pull me in. So […]

Considering my love of Between the Buried and Me, you’d think I’d be all over the debut from Indiana’s Exotic Animal Petting Zoo; Off kilter, jazzy, Dillenger-ish styled alternative rock and impossibly scattershot structures littered with lengthy ambient, introspective strains of clean vocals and progressive experimental textures. A must have right? Well not just yet. […]

Based on the 18-minute burst of a debut ‘full length’ that was Parasite , I didn’t exactly have high expectations for the sophomore album from this Michigan deathcore act. However, once I saw the cover, titles, new producers Dan Kenny and John Cinotta (Suffocation) and the mastering credits of Scott Hull (Pig Destroyer, Agoraphobic Nosebleed), […]

Arguably, The Fathomless Mastery is one of the most anticipated death metal records of year, partly due to the return of Mikael Åkerfeldt to vocal duties (which cancels out the loss of Dan Swano), and partly due to the fact that the bands two full length’s (2002s Resurrection Through Carnage and superb but slight step […]

It would seem that every time I come across a Cradle of Filth CD, I feel slightly more inclined to school people. Not proverbially school them, but literally. I cast aside grammatically challenged losers like moldy bread, begin using more sophisticated words like “assuaged” and “indubitably” in daily speech, and resume my lifelong quest to […]

Released with relatively little fanfare, Unearth’s fourth studio album shows that this Boston band, while certainly never able to attain the level of magnificence of The Stings of Conscience, is one of the most consistent and predictably satisfying American metal acts around. The formula, as with like minded act Killswitch Engage, is simple; deft Swedish […]

The strangeness that is Torche has returned to my speakers once again and I could not be happier. This album is in and out like the wind with thirteen songs in thirty-six minutes. They have often been described as a stoner-metal equivalent to The Foo Fighters and I don’t think that’s an off base comparison […]

Despite releasing now three albums of remarkable Metal music, England’s My Silent Wake seems to go largely unnoticed. Part of this, I believe, is that they don’t belong to a singular genre. The band deftly combines elements of Doom, Death and Folk Metal utilizing four vocalists while creating waves of melancholic mastery. One can find […]

These are the kinds of reviews that are hard to do. When there are things that are clearly very good about an album coupled with things that seem to hold it back from becoming essential, it can be confusing trying to write them. If the good is over-praised, you run the risk of disappointing people. […]

Memory Garden has been cranking out its own brand of Traditional Doom Metal (laced with Power Metal) for well over 10 years now. With its fifth release (and first since 2000) Carnage Carnival, the band proves itself to be a lasting force in the Metal scene. It’s easy to expect great things when the band […]

Bands like Kalmah are really true gems and they wear their hard work on their sleeves. Once labeled as a Children of Bodom clone, Kalmah have consistently matured and crafted their music into one of today’s most noticeable and dominating symphonic death metal sounds. Where Bodom and melodic death metal in general have failed, Kalmah […]

3 months ago, this was the perfect summer album; peppy, energetic, uplifting melodic hardcore with injections of pop/punk catchiness that you hummed along to while driving with the windows open that came across like a Christian Bane mixed with any popular pop punk act (Blink 182, Yellowcard, Sum 41, etc) but now in the grey […]