Farthest From the Sun is a 4 track 51 minute affair done by Sauron, of Spain. This is the debut album from Apotheosis, and the booklet offers several hundred words on how great his computer generated demos are and a dozen words about this debut, which contains two promo songs reworked. Bragging about creating two […]

“Anyone who isn’t dead or from another plane of existence, would do well to cover their ears, right about now.” This superbly appropriate sample from the move “Dogma,” opens the song “Inhuman,” on Origin’s second album, Informis, Infinitas, Inhumanitas. Never has a sample been so fitting. I’ll be the first to tell you, I wasn’t […]

Bands like Agoraphobic Nosebleed make or break with me on their willingness and ability to inject a little flava into the whir. Listening to thirty-plus minutes of hypergurgle is no more innately interesting than listening to an electric fan. (I’m weirdly fascinated by the fact that we finally have bands whose music imitates the sounds […]

I was first introduced to Charon a few years back by their second album, Tearstained. While it didn’t offer nothing new nor did it held any big surprises, the catchy songs were able to stick in one’s head even after decapitation. Despite the horrors of trying to get the melodies out of your system, Tearstained […]

All hail albums covers that have heads on spikes! Vomitory are a well-known but cult veteran death metal band from Sweden and have released this year’s equivalent to Fleshcrawl‘s Soulskinner. Pure old school unabashed death metal; no frills, no intro, no atmospherics and you know what? It kicks ass. Blood Rapture is Vomitory‘s fourth album […]

The epithet, “True Norwegian Black Metal,” may not apply to Immortal in its current incarnation, but the fact remains that the classification never truly fit the Bergen-based outfit anyway. Even at the height of their ‘cult’ career, Immortal never wholeheartedly prescribed to the conventions of their peers – Satan, church burning and murder were replaced […]

A lot more mono(metallic)chromatic than most of the MeteorCity hopheads, and a little confusing at first. The hypenotes compare Mushroom River Band to Entombed, Motorhead, and Fu Manchu, neglecting to mention that latter-day Entombed sounds a lot like Motorhead and Fu Manchu. So this basically sounds like … Entombed. Now, Entombed recorded one of the […]

Ok, fellow ‘Enemies, before you spontaneously combust at the sight of this review, please know everything (three songs, one video) is included in Century Media’s deluxe edition of Wages of Sin. However, collector geeks and those that simply must have everything by the mighty Arch Enemy will find Burning Angel rewarding. As usual, the Japanese spare […]

During the Swedish death metal explosion of the early ’90s, after the initial assault of Entombed and Carnage and Dismember, a second wave of acts erupted. Grave, Seance and Unleashed found the coattails, and promptly were taken for a ride. Each act attained some kind of recognition and status, with perhaps Unleashed being the most […]

This relatively new Australian band has been around since 1998. The Graven Sign is their second release and first full-length. The most direct way to describe their sound would be black metal Motorhead style, not really in the sense of early Bathory, but old style black, pre-Norwegian revival. Spikes and bullets are the props of […]

Damned if DeathVomit isn’t becoming quite the nifty little grind-pimp; first, Circle Of Dead Children and now Vulgar Pigeons. As an unreformed little punk rocker, I have to confess a major hard-on for this type of stuff. Eventually, some band’s going to come along and prove me wrong, but for now, death metal without some […]

For the most part, it’s difficult to swallow a traditional death metal record after spilling ink on the genre and its minions for nearly 10 years. You get to the point where little impresses and you’d rather revert to spinning Left Hand Path than plunk another derivative of a derivative into the stereo. Really, besides […]

The U.S. has seen the melodic metal/hardcore mix blossom into a small musical renaissance, so it comes as no surprise than as with most musical phenomena, Europe follows suite, which is actually a reverse in trends, as the U.S. is normally the one a few years behind. So, here come Germany’s FearMyThoughts, with their second […]

Albums like The Sham Mirrors completely justify why I still listen to metal. While my tastes have shifted and widened considerably these past few years, I still find myself defending this often-tired genre. Bands like Arcturus re-energize my lifelong passion for extreme music and demonstrate that vibrancy, experimentation and unyielding talent do still exist in […]

Wrath Of War is the third offering on cd by this well known Texas based organizer of the Sacrifice of the Nazarene Child festival. A band known more for relentless hatred and fury than for anything else, Thornspawn sticks to the formula once again. This, of course, is a compliment. I’ve heard them called cold, […]

For some reason, much like with their debut, even though it is unoriginal, derivative and simplistic, I enjoy Severed Eyes… immensely. Killjoy and Frediablo have successfully brought gore and splatter death metal to the black metal scene. There are, of course, many bands incorporating the sounds of American death metal but Killjoy delights in the […]

Yes, Grief Of Emerald’s first three (four of you count the as of yet unreleased debut) albums did sound like Dimmu Borgir. Yes, they appear to be riding to coattails of other more commercially viable bands, and, yes, they do use keyboards. However with Christian Termination, the Swedes appear to have possibility shaken loose from […]

I was as excited as anyone else when rock bands started sounding like rock bands again, but at this point, “stoner rock” is about as thrilling as pulling your pud. And I am not on very good terms with my pud right now, so that should tell you something. Very few of these bands transcend […]

WWIII does it again with yet another excellent choice for re-release. Throes Of Dawn broke up a while back so I wondered if this re-release heralded a reformation of the band. Apparently it does, though with four new members; and their fourth album will be out later this year on Wounded Love, the same label […]

Fused Together In Revolving Doors hit me like an uppercut to the balls, rendering me in pain on the ground only able to lay motionless while the heavy breathing and bristling of this band snarled in my ear. Imagine Converge as a death metal band and that’s approximately the feeling I get from The Red […]

By all accounts, this should have been an album I truly loved. Fantasy-based epic metal is my vice, and when confronted with a moniker like Battlelore, and song titles like “Swordmaster,” “Raging Goblin” and “Ride with the Dragons,” I’m pretty much a child in a candy store. That is providing the music fits in with […]

Although this five-piece from Florida is new to me – apparently they have two other releases out. Not sure if those first two matter or not, but their newest one, on Solid State Records, is definitely a double take of an album if there ever was one. And I’m not just speaking of terms of, […]

The second installment of Anathema’s Resonance retrospective albums is a strange trip when you look at who and what the band currently are. Really, when you reflect on Anathema’s career, the evolution from The Crestfallen EP to the band’s recent album, A Fine Day to Exit, is fairly obvious. For proponents of everything pre-The Silent […]

Grindcore. Punk. Humor. Elements that have all been successfully melded into one 27-minute explosion of crusty blastbeats, power chord riffs and ridiculous non-traditional grindcore lyrics. I actually first heard Sweden’s Birdflesh on Relapse’s Swedish Assault album, and as a result dug up this album, their second “real” album. I’m not sure about the age of […]

My first exposure to Virgin Steele was last years godawful The House Of Atreus Act II. I still place that record high on my “Worst CD’s I have ever heard” list. Had I heard their older material first, not only would I have been just as scathing in my review, but I would have been […]