I never know what to expect from Vendlus Records. From the industrial black metal of V:28, the completely unclassifiable musings of Especially Likely Sloth, the folk art of The Mist and Morning Dew, the black metal excellence of Wolves In The Throne Room or even Audiopain re-issues, the label defies pigeonholing. However, with Grayceon the […]

After 6 albums, November’s Doom have been one of the most consistent acts in the US doom/death scene and along with Daylight Dies have made some international noise and comparisons. However, they have never really taken that true step forward (as Daylight Dies did with Dismantling Devotion), but now with album number 6, the rock […]

While the Pacific Northwest has become renowned for its many one man, suicidal black metal projects, the scene is quickly becoming little more than Xasthur/Leviathan cloning with little or no deviation from the template laid down by Wrest and Malefic and I’ve been waiting for a person/band to add a little something different to the […]

Here’s another off the wall noisy alt rock record from Crucial Blast, similar to Black Elk’s recent self titled effort, and like that effort, is a swing and miss despite the bands Once boasting members of Don Caballero and Zombi (and probably giving readers a rough idea of the band’s sound), Pittsburgh’s (((Microwaves))) is a […]

Magna Carta, famous for their prog-rock roster, truly pushes the envelope with their annual Drum Nation compilation. This year, however, the label foregoes the Brufords and the Portnoys of past volumes to embrace today’s top metal drummers and their creative instrumental showcases. All contributors are outstanding within the discipline, though there are a few that’ll […]

The sound-manipulated painscapes of Wold are the proof for which black metal was merely the promise. (After all, even the most vicious black metal still just sounds like some dudes in a room playing music.) This is savagery as sound, or vicey-versey. Wold de(con)structs black metal into a robodemoniac thrum, at least as much Masonna […]

Missoula, Montana’s Volumen have been compared to many, many bands, and this review is no different, in that it will attempt to discern this five-member musical collective from every other garage band with their own recording equipment. Self-described as “heavy New Wave and nerd rock,” they play far-out indie punk like Our American Cousin hopped […]

On the surface, there’s a lot to exited about this reincarnation of (the underachieving but respected in the Gothenburg scene of the early ’90s) A Canorous Quintet, who were briefly called The Plague before settling on the rather metalcore-ish moniker This Ending. However, even with a somewhat revered lineup that includes current Amon Amarth drummer […]

I have to admit, when Prosthetic signed this Indiana band I was a little confused seeing as their debut, Your Blood, My Vendetta was a pretty mediocre metalcore effort that did little to warrant further interest, yet alone a record deal with the Prosthetic, arguably one of US metal’s better labels.However, somewhere between the debut […]

Back when Black Market Activities was a new label, one of their first releases was by Found Dead Hanging, who subsequently broke up. Now, Found Dead Hanging (and Word As AVirus) return as Architect.Folks, this is a gnarly, blistering, chaotic and a downright heavy album. Sharing traits with similarly chaotic recent spurts from the likes […]

While I enjoyed Thee Maldoror Kollective quite a lot with their previous effort, A Clockwork Highway, I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting a new one this soon. But that’s quite a distracting thing to say, as it’s been already three years in the making. So either the guys are fast, I’m goddamned slow […]

first encountered Dodsferd mid 2006 when I ordered Desecrating the Spirit of Life from Blackmetal.com based upon one phrase “Nordic-influenced Black Metal is heavily inspired by USBM legend Judas Iscariot” Being a Motorhead purist (the first album I ever bought with my own money was Overkill in 79) I immediately appreciated the scratchy rasp of […]

Initially formed from the ashes of Vehemence, Abigail Williams is a symphonic black/death metal act that now only features one former Vehemence member (guitarist Bjorn Dannov), but is no less of a quality act.Though some may try to label AW as metalcore with synths, this is certainly not the case as comparing AW to the […]

Is it too late to change my best of list for 2006?Due to the holiday shuffle, the latest CD from Sweden’s Wolf has been languishing on my desk for a little more than a month. When I finally popped it in the CD player earlier this week, I knew I’d missed a record for the […]

Every year there is an album that I get too late to submit to my various journalistic outlets as one of the best albums of the year. This year, that honor falls to Minnesota’s Battlefields, who despite their blackened moniker and album title, manage to somehow mix the ambient soundscapes of Pelican, Isis and even […]

It always leaves me scratching my head when I get a record from an unsigned band that’s better than about 80 percent of the stuff I get from the labels. That’s the case with this EP from Finnish melodic metal outfit Helion. According to their Web site, Helion has been around in one form or […]

From the label that recently punished my ears with the likes of Animosity and The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza, as well as other noisy acts like Ed Gein, The Network and Architect, comes a slab of grinding Vegan chaos that’s a perfect fit next to their label mates as far as sheer, discordance tenacity, but […]

In a year full of technical death metal excellence from the likes of Decapitated, Gorod, Psycroptic and Spawn of Possession, along come a group of six kids from Encino, California and fuck everything up. I’m truly starting to believe that anything that gets labeled as “deathcore” or “metalcore” is now becoming strictly due to the […]

In general, if one is to describe a band as “retro,” the next step would be narrowing down the sound the band in question is paying tribute to, whether it be a year, a scene in the geographical sense, or a particular band deemed worthy of worship and replication. Totimoshi is undoubtedly a retro band, […]

Fully titled Twilight Ophera and the Order of the Sanguine Diadem presents: Descension, (Order of the Sanguine Diadem being a choral group who has added their talents to this release) the fourth full album from Finland’s Twilight Ophera, is a run of the mill, but competent exercise in symphonic black/death metal.While listening to the dense […]

White faces scowling out of the darkness, an indecipherable logo, songs about darkness, night, cold, winter, storms, mist, and one called Immortal can mean only one thing. True Norwegian Black Metal comes to Greece. Winterdemons is a new band formed in 2003 in Greece based upon the premise that Immortal did it right back in […]

I think most (except Johnny Hedlund himself according to a recent botched interview), would agree that Sworn Allegiance was this legendary Swedish death metal/Viking act’s real comeback album, and that Hell’s Unleashed was a sick joke. Either way, with a change in label, these Swedish stalwarts are truly, truly back with a blistering album far […]

Doom album of ’06? Asunder ain’t exactly reinventing the steel, here, but God Hell, is this some good stuff. Taking the old-school funeral approach of Thergothon and Skepticism and injecting just enough melody to make it stick – without becoming the gothic mope-crawl of Shape of Despair or Saturnus (who I likewise dig, so save […]

Plying an up-tempo, melodic mix of Darkest Hour, God Forbid and Unearth, California’s Antagonist are competent, enjoyable and skilled, but still rather unoriginal. Though arguably falling under the vast metalcore/American metal umbrella, Antagonist have a healthy does of modern tight, Euro thrash in their sound (sort of if Carnal Forge played metalcore), and deliver it […]

Though this nice 2CD/DVD combo will only appeal to the Hot Topic Crowd, (5% of the profits from this DVD go to the Hot Topic Foundation), it’s still a well put together package that feature most of the bands that today’s kids are digging.The 2 CDs (38 tracks in all) contain nothing too special, mostly […]