I’m not a ‘rock’ guy, not at all. So when confronted by this Los Angeles alternative rock three piece featuring Queens of the Stoneage and Karma To Burn drummer, Rob Oswald, I was hardly quivering with excitement. The thing is though, Twenty-Six is really good and there are several songs I simply can’t get out […]

Here’s a tip. It’s probably not a good idea to name your band after a book that everyone is forced to read in school and hates. It doesn’t really inspire people to pick up your record. Tip No. 2: Never, ever – fucking ever – send out a press release that proclaims your singer “the […]

I devoutly maintain that France is a turd upon the face of Life, but damn if the Frogs aren’t croaking out some rad black metal lately. Maybe it’s simply the shame and horror of being born French, but something’s causing the weak circle-jerk of the Black Legions to become an outright beast. I was never […]

This three-song burn with the names of the tracks written in ink in the blanks on the back of the slipcase didn’t look very promising when I pulled it out of the envelope. Still I decided to give it a listen, and occasionally you get a surprise. Anything with the word “core” added on to […]

There’s nothing wrong with the fourth release from Michigan’s relatively veteran hardcore act Today I Wait, but there’s nothing that completely enamors me either. Basically culling from every big name in hardcore and metalcore, TID’s mix of intense, burly metallic hardcore and a few melodic metalcore elements and even a hint of more death metal […]

So here is the first release on Galactic Records, the label recently formed by Mithras main man Leon Macy, and let me tell you it’s a fucking doozy. Formed from the ashes of a few obscure English death metal bands (Infant Bile, Dark Earth), Birmingham’s Sarpanitum look to, (along with the new Mithras and Man […]

So there’s a reason you’ll almost never see me doing interviews; sorta my version of “front-row ballet” syndrome, I s’pose. Dig: I could give a fuck about the mechanics of creating music – I want to enjoy music as a part of my (self-created and maintained) environment, divorced from it’s “reality” as a performing art. […]

I honestly never saw the big deal with Embalmer. 3 ultra cult demos, then a ‘Best of..’ on Relapse Records back when death metal was a its very peak? Bug Whup. And apparently the rest of the metal world doesn’t see the big deal with them either seeing as they re-united in 2005 with little […]

Not since UK doom-riders Iron Monkey crawled back into their filthy warrens in the late ’90s has there been a worthier band to take up this mantle than Spain’s Moho. A typical power trio with a bassist/vocalist, they released the 2004 debut 20 Uñas to much critical fanfare, earning comparisons (and derisions) to New Orleans’ […]

When Testament guitarist Alex Skolnick jumped ship before touring for 1992’s hugely successful The Ritual, few fans seemed to notice on the initial dates (as there were no Internet postings back then). When the Return to the Apocalyptic City EP came out a year later, he was sadly absent, having been replaced by Forbidden axeman […]

If not for Cable, there may have never been Isis…or Red Sparowes. Bassist Jeff Caxide played on Cable’s eponymous 1996 debut then left to join Isis. Cable’s influential 1999 album Gutter Queen was release number 26 on a then-fledgling indie label in Boston called Hydra Head. Many noisecore bands copied Cable’s formula for success, and […]

UTD: Beneath the Odd-Edge Sounds of the Twilight Contract of the Black Fascist / The Wealth of the Penetration in the Abstract Paradigms of Satan is the latest offering from Norway’s Furze. Furze operates in an other dimensional plane of reality. Those of the “real” world cannot connect to his world without a spirit guide, […]

Surely there were a lot of disappointed Fear Factory fans out there when the band broke up a few years back and reformed several months later without guitarist and co-founder Dino Cazeres in the fold. Their next album, Archetype however was very promising, standing among the bands finest work, though the follow up, Transgression, was […]

Ireland’s Cruachan, for me, has always been a band of unfulfilled promise and annoyingly un-reached potential. Also, their ability to never quite settle of a style of metal, (be it the black metal of Tuatha Na Gael of the thrash of The Middle Kingdom or even just heavy metal for the Skyclad-ish Pagan) to back […]

Spinefarm/The End The fact its taken me this long to review this album despite the fact Moonsorrow is responsible for two of the greatest Viking metal records ever (Voimasta Ja Kunniasta and Kivenkantaja) as well as my rather non-committal response to the bands last, grittier album, Verisäkeet sort of shows what a hard time I’m […]

So this spring sees two fairly important melodic death records released from two once ‘rising’; bands; Omnium Gatherum on a new label, with a new vocalist looking to rebound from the lackluster Years In Waste after a genre defining debut, Spirits and August Light, and super group of sorts Nightrage. Arguably Nightrage lost their ‘supergroup’ […]

Tribute albums bring out the best and worst in fan opinions: the love/hate continuum wildly diverges between tunes that mimic the original band perfectly—and those that’re so far from the originals that their most endearing qualities have vanished. Ultimately, it comes down to personal preference, but this second installment of Sucking the ’70s from Detroit’s […]

In the early 1970’s the British Government was reprimanded by the European Convention on Human Rights for torturing suspected IRA members by using a Sensory Deprivation method know as “White Noise”. Well, I think the European Convention on Human Rights needs to investigate Crucial Blast and France’s Monarch! for similar offenses. What’s better than 1 […]

Older metal fans might assume that nearly every band that hails from in and around the Bay Area would be at least slightly influenced by the early thrash of Metallica, Testament, Exodus, and the like. This is true, at least, for the near-teenaged wonders of San Jose’s Heavy Heavy Low Low. Why, in this world […]

With The Exhibitions EP being my first exposure to this German black metal band, I’m not sure I’m able to gage Secrets of The Moon’s standing within the hierarchy of black metal, but based on personal taste alone, I happen to think this band is one of the finest, yet underrated black metal bands around. […]

With their fifth album, Germany’s Fear My Thoughts have now evolved in to a full on modern melodic death metal act, and a good one at that. And while Hell, Sweet, Hell was a glossy but flawed transitional album, Vulcanus sees the band deliver an improved effort that should elevate the band into elite status. […]

The first signing to Metal Blade’s short-lived Modern imprint in the early ’90s, Arizona’s Beats the Hell Out of Me were criminally underrated throughout their career. Their self-titled 1994 debut was a mixture of Helmet’s start/stop rhythms and Tool’s minor-chord fascinations. 1995’s Rolling Thunder Music added more atmosphere with ambient passages, experimental psychedelia, and the […]

Here’s another one of the springs ‘big’ releases, and I was even more intrigued to hear this, in light of how impressed I was with former Naglfar member Jens Ryden’s solo project, Profundi and to simply see how Naglfar would respond with their second post Ryden album. Well. It’s a Naglfar album. It sounds a […]

I’m no sludge expert, but in Materia, Belgium’s three piece Blutch appear to have released a solid sludge/doombeast that should appeal to fans of The Abominable Iron Sloth, Black Cobra, Negative Reaction and such. Slow yet abrasive and menacing, Materia has all the hallmarks you’d expect from such a record; gritty earthy guitars, foreboding, patient […]

So Candlelight has signed a Deathcore band? Though it initially seemed a bit ‘trendy’ to me, but to their credit in Kansas’s Diskreet, they have found a solid act that delivers the goods. Licensed from the UK’s Siege of Amida Records and having 2 bonus tracks, Infernal Rise is exactly what you would expect from […]