“The Fastest and Most Brutal Deicide Album ever!” At least that’s what the cover proclaims, but it looks like Mr. Benton, after two creative critically acclaimed comeback albums in Scars of the Crucifix and The Stench of Redemption, wants out of his record contract with Earache and has reverted back to In Torment In Hell […]
Grave have been re-animated for about six years now and this is the fourth album they’ve released in that time. Unlike Unleashed Grave have hung a bit closer to their original style. This is fast, dirty, old-school Stockholm death metal in the vein of early Entombed, Dismember etc. This is the one failing this album […]
Anders Friden should be feeling pretty sheepish right about now. Sure, In Flames is probably selling tons of copies of A Sense of Purpose, but I think they had to cheapen and compromise their sound to do it. Scar Symmetry, on the other hand, took the initial seed planted by In Flames and Soilwork – […]
I knew nothing about this prior to putting it in, but the short track lengths clued me in that it would either be something experimental and ambient, or maybe grindcore. It’s grindcore alright, but executed with the speed and ferocity of black metal – like Anaal Nathrakh covering Slayer at double-time. Now, grind sometimes devolves […]
With its nighttime cityscape and tech-font title, I was pretty sure this side-project from current Susperia (and former Old Man’s Child) members Tjodalv and Memnock would be some form of industrial metal. Perhaps a futuristic update of the catchy, blackened thunder of those other acts, but replacing gothic pomp with synthesized deathscapes. Instigator is futuristic […]
They Bleeding Skies is a new band formed by Claudio A. Enzler of My Darkest Hate/Sacrificium and JJ Kontoniemi of Icon Clan and Chapters of Downfall is their debut offering. Melodic death metal in the vain of Amon Amarth is the order of the day here, and they do it pretty well. Thy Bleeding Skies […]
I had seen the debut full length from Greece’s Dead Congregation thrown around by those ‘in the know’, but for some reason never checked them out until I recently received the re-issued 2005 EP, Purifying Consecrated Ground (review coming soon), enjoyed it, and decided to go and find Graves of the Archangels. And boy am […]
You do not fuck with javelina. We have ‘em here in Arizona – big wild pigs out in the desert, usually sleeping under mesquite during the day but out foraging for food at night. Get too close to one – or worse, the babies – and they’ll charge you, running you down and tearing your […]
Wow, where did this come from? David Galas‘ background is in darkwave (playing with Lycia), but The Cataclysm melds goth-rock, doom, alt-country and the blackest of post-rock to create a lush, oppressive odyssey to get utterly lost in. I haven’t heard the other band, but I hope he sticks with this sound – it’s completely […]
First off, I will not mention that guitarist/vocalist Paulo posts on a message board I frequent (damn). Second off, I have to say that the artwork for Muay Thai Ladyboys by Scott Porterfield, is absolutely fucking fantastic. Unfold the inlay for a surprise that’s like John Baizley artwork (Baroness, Darkest Hour), but felched through the […]
I missed this Arkansas’ band 2005 debut, The Head and the Heart, so I had no real expectations for what this band sounded like other than I knew that had former and current members of Rwake in their ranks and that guitarist Chuck Schaaf did a great job producing the last Serious Grind album. But […]
I’ve been getting a lot of shimmery, melodic post rock influenced metalcore/screamo type stuff of late such as Tides/Giant, November 5, 1955, Empires, Day Without Dawn, At The Soundawn and such, but when I got this 3 track CDEP/10″ release that features members of Philadelphia rockers Balboa and Towers, (including former digitalmetal.com writer and site […]
Here’s a release that would seem really odd when you look at its actual parts: a 2 year old symphonic black metal album (originally rleased by Deepsend Records in 2006) from Canada, featuring former Ion issonance vocalist Sébastien Painchaud (going by the far more black metal name of ‘Ill-Fate’ here) as well as at one […]
Completely unfamiliar with the band coming in, I was advised before doing this review to do a little research regarding France’s Destinity, as it seems they’ve gone through some sort of direction change since their inception in the mid 90’s. After digging around at their website and Myspace, as well as their page at metal-archives.com, […]
Well for those of you hoping for a return to Engineering the Dead, there’s always next album. To be honest I liked the direction they were going in from Goremageddon on as I tend to prefer melodic death more to the bloodsoaked gore of their early albums. I’ve just never been that into gore for […]
Taking cues from legendary acts such as Neurosis and Electric Wizard, Italian Sludge-merchants Ufomammut release Idolum, their fifth full-length album, upon an unsuspecting world. With the raw aggression of a rabid wooly mammoth coupled with the psychedelic shadings of early Pink Floyd, Ufomammut’s sound churns and swells like an ocean of Post Metal muck, lapping […]
And so the omnipotent metalcore behemoth keeps rolling and seemingly unable to even slowdown a morsel, in fact, as more and more predict the sub-sub-sub genre’s extinction, more and more bands mushroom forth, prolonging its life. Given, the quality is becoming lower and lower but it is still amazing that a) there are plenty of […]
Believe it or not, in fact, you probably won’t, but once upon a time, Century Media put out some of the damn hardest hardcore albums in existence. Such classics as Merauder’s Master Killer, the superlative Kickback’s Forever War, and Turmoil’s The Process of, not to mention a slew of others that have gone on to […]
Seems like the whole retro punk/post-punk thing’s been around for so many years now that it’s become modern again. Band after band continues to crossbreed genres, reference points and each other to create output that maintains a core of familiarity, but still manages to sound fresh as well. New Hampshire’s Transistor Transistor sit somewhere in […]
The easiest way to explain Kataklysm of the past decade is a box of Cheerios. Listening to Kataklysm is like eating Cheerios, you know they are not the most exciting death metal band out there but it is a safe bet they are palatable. The most daring they have gotten in recent years is Honey […]
Last time I enjoyed a Kataklysm album through and through was Serenity in Fire, perhaps due to Martin Maurais’ ball-bustingly fast drum performance, so much so that it made me question whether the drumming was performed by a person or if the double kick pedals were cleverly disguised as a game of Whack-A-Mole, packaged with […]
Recently, I attended a Japanese Taiko drums show at my local performing arts center and during all the thunderous percussion, chanting, and Kai yelling I thought to myself how cool it would be it this stuff was mixed with metal… Enter Japan’s Birushanah. Leave it to the Japanese to take a tired metal genre, in […]
With all the complexity and technicality being thrown around in death metal this year, the third full length album from Japan’s Coffins is a welcome relief of earthy, primal mid paced doom/death metal that will appeal to fans of Cianide, Runemagick and Autopsy. With a phlegmy, hacking, feedback drenched, down-tuned guitar tone plying simple oozing […]
Although the name ASRA sounds like an obscure piece of Buddhist meditation jargon, it’s simply an acronym for Alleged Satanic Ritual Abuse. (Which, for some reason, brings to mind Lou Diamond Phillips in The First Power.) And even if they’re Black Box’s newest grind signing, ASRA is looking firmly backwards towards a more classic sound. […]
Progressive metal sometimes isn’t very progressive – it’s become easy to predict that an album in that genre is going to offer dense, snaky rhythms, soaring vocals and perhaps a smattering of synthy sci-fi grandeur. What you might not expect, then, are delicate female vocals laid over contorted compositions, with random bursts of smooth jazz, […]