Admittedly, I haven’t given Daylight Dies very much attention at all since their debut Tribunal Records EP, entitled Idle. Back then, I saw them as a natural offshoot of Opeth (with hints of early Katatonia). They employed slower tempos, melancholic melodies, and an overall dark presence. With Lost To The Living being the first thing […]
It’s ironic that a band called Dead Congregation, with gleefully offensive song titles like “Feasting Angelcunts” and “Vomitchrist,” can be so pleasurable. The metal-uninitiated may not understand what’s going on in this relentless battery, but they also don’t have the same well-furrowed neural pathways that only comes from years of learning and appreciating all the […]
I remember seeing some pretty wretched reviews for Now, Diabolical when it was released – claims that Satyricon had finally deconstructed and dumbed-down their sound to a simplified parody of their once-feral greatness. I didn’t think so – sure, it was minimalist, but not toothless – it still seethed in the right places, and rocked […]
The debut, Memento Mori, from Atlanta’s Withered was a killer Stockholm sounding Doom/Death effort that got unfairly touted as a Mastodon clone due to the geography of the band. Three years later and Withered have returned with a new label and a slightly tweaked sound. But fear not the tweaking is a blacker, sicker, and […]
With over an hour of pleasure ahead of me, I inserted Massive Conspiracy Against All Life into my cd player, lamenting the demise of the band at the same time. I was fully prepared to bump “Shed This Skin”, “It Comes in Whispers”, “Hanged Man”, “He Whom Shadows Move Towards”, and “Ruminating in Hatemagick” from […]
While being chased after stealing Suttung’s mead, Odin was nearly caught and that close call made him wet himself, the urine raining down upon Midgard to inspire mortal poets. Obviously some spilled directly into Johnny’s glass shard filled drinking horn. Johnny’s vocals are getting harsher again, no mellowing with age here. Hedlund hear my call. […]
I vaguely remember long running Swiss act Sludge and their late 90’s releases (Sweet Daisy, The Well, Scarecrow Messiah), as they had a couple of Tomas Skogsberg/Sunlight Produced efforts, had Samael guitarist Makro in their ranks and plied a dirty mix of death doom and thrash that was a pretty heavy sound coming from the […]
Denmark’s Mevadio are either going to appeal to a lot of people or simply not appeal to a lot of people simply based on their wide variety of influences. Part thrash, part melo death, part Nu metal, part modern groove metal, Mevadio could appeal to the Strapping Young Lad/Skinlab/Machine Head crowd with their robust, beefy […]
It’s been a good few months for hardcore. Not stomp and romp bullshit like Terror, but real, punk rooted, emotional, melodic, tense hardcore; Brothers, Advent, Verse, Take It Back, Elder, Have Heart, and biggest of all the long awaited (at least for me) follow up to 2005’s killer debut, In Place Apart, from Sacramento’s Killing […]
I often get a lot of ‘odd’ albums for review here at teethofthedivine. Albums I can’t quite classify as metal, but also can’t completely discount, or albums I simply can’t describe adequately. The debut album from Philadelphia trio Spark Is A Diamond is all the above. In short, SIAD is a sort of screamo/punk band […]
First, let me get my bitching and moaning out of the way. Megadeth has been a favorite band of mine for several years now – they were one of the first “real” metal bands I discovered. I’ve seen them live twice, once with crappy support, and once with Exodus, but unfortunately, I missed them. Since […]
*sigh* Bland, boring, vanilla, unoriginal, uninspiring, unenthused, lacking of energy – all descriptors of Engel’s Absolute Design. Coming from one of my favorite metal cities in the world, Gothenburg (on top of the impressive list of musicians and their former bands – I’ll dig into this more shortly), I expected more – at least a […]
While The Crossfire is Fall of Serenity’s fourth full length album, they are not the same band that recorded 2001’s Dead Man’s Requiem. Even since their last album, Bloodred Salvation, bass player John Gahlert has taken over vocal duties, guitarist Alex Fischer moved over to bass and Ferdinand Rewicki joined the group filling the void […]
I love offbeat stuff, and when this record was pitched to me as “Elvis metal ‘n’ roll,” I just couldn’t resist taking a listen to it. I’ll start with what could very possibly be my favorite song of the year so far, “Sad Man’s Tongue,” the band’s tribute to Johnny Cash. It opens with a […]
On the surface, Florida’s Catalepsy, with their scrawled cookie cutter logo, 3 guitars (apparently dropped to G sharp, whatever that means), label affiliation (Jamey Jasta runs Stillborn), looks and deathcore tag seem like just another band of death metal wanna be kids riding the current trend of brutal deathcore along the lines of Rose Funeral, […]
We often throw around the word “operatic” loosely when discussing certain genres of metal. But every now and then, you get something that truly earns that description.Musically, Dantesco plays some pretty solid, if fairly standard doom. They offer up some nice, plodding riffs, often influenced by traditional metal. What makes the band stand out from […]
The thrash reunions continue. This time German band Headhunter, featuring vocalist/bassist Marcel “Schmier” Schirmer of Destruction, guitarist Uwe “Schmuddel” Hoffmann from Talon and drummer Jorg Michael, who has played with Saxon, Stratovarius and Grave Digger, among a long string of others.While I missed this band’s work in the early 1990s, I’m intrigued by what I […]
This new live DVD/CD from Germany’s finest thrash band, Kreator, is a re-package, re-edit and re-release of their 1990 VHS, Live in East Berlin. Included with the live show is the mini horror movie the band made for their Coma of Souls album titled Hallucinative Coma, a documentary type thing with interviews from around the […]
Based on the liner notes that accompanied this disc, it sounds as if Karelia have been searching for a comfortable niche over their 8-year career. They started as power metal on Usual Tragedy, and then downshifted to a more mellow, poppy experience on Raise. And with Restless, it seems they’re trying on the eyeliner and […]
If you’re going to name your band Klone, you’d better have something original to present, whether you hide that C behind a K or not. At first, opening track “Candlelight” seems solid enough, though clearly influenced by fellow countrymen (France) Gojira. A sludgy, low-end lurch, a very similar vocal delivery, and then, the chorus glides […]
It’s a shame that, in one of his prophecies, Nostradamus didn’t foresee that Judas Priest would one day record a two-disc concept album about him. Maybe he could have warned them that it may not be the best idea. The idea of a concept record about Nostradamus had me scratching my head to begin with. […]
Featuring current and former members of Neurosis, Tombs, Unsane and Swans, A Storm of Light is exactly what you might guess based on the title and cover: a massive tsunami of sound and thunder, intent on submerging you beneath its crushing waters. It’s progressive hardcore/doom with a tortured, nautical theme: slow, crashing slabs of guitar, […]
I’ll admit for having a bit of a soft spot for Sweden’s Deranged, because their self titled fourth album, was one of my very first reviews for digitalmetal, and I conversed with drummer Richard Wermen for quite a bit after that. So, I was a bit upset when I heard that this album was be […]
It’s about time that Motley Crue remembered what they do best. Since their first breakup in the early 1990s, they’ve struggled to find their identity. For those who haven’t been keeping score, it started with the heavier sound of 1994’s self-titled record with vocalist John Corabi. It was a solid record, arguably one of the […]
Just based on the cover, which features a skinned rabbit dressed in lacy dollclothes (rather than the usual demiglace), you can already predict that this will be some sort of loopy, eccentric goth-metal. Eths certainly has a touch of the avant-garde, but musically, it’s a more familiar blend of metalcore and nu-metal. Comparisons to Slipknot […]