It seems inevitable that by the end of every year, we’re all grateful to be moving on to the next one, like the last year was just this stain on your existence you can’t wait to wash out. I certainly know that by the end of 2019, I was ready to dropkick that year into […]

Give In To Despair

I’ve been on a bit of a new-ish British black metal kick of late with the likes of Wolvencrown, Drakonis, Vegard, Ante-Inferno,  Nefarious Dusk, Sleipnir,And Now the Owls Are Smiling, Shadowflag, The Dying Light and the debut from this Manchester based, symphonic black metal act . Of note to British black metal fans is that […]

Azure Emote have been around since 2003.  The debut album Chronicles of an Aging Mammal  was released in 2007 and the follow-up in 2013, The Gravity of Impermanence in 2013.  This band is the brainchild of Mike Hrubovcak and the band continues to incorporate their eclectic and highly original brand of death metal with their […]

Without a doubt one of the most anticipated death metal albums of the year for me, Kansas’s Unmerciful have been an upper echelon brutal technical death metal band.  From the band’s inceptio,n having world class drumming has been a necessary component to the band.  With Unmercifully beaten you had James King. With Ravenous Impulse you […]

I was honored to be a guest singer on the debut Afterbirth album-The Time Traveler’s Dilemma, on the song “Timeless Formless”, released in 2017.  The album just plain rules and Afterbirth return with their second album-Four Dimensional Flesh, which shows the band streamlining their approach.  Shorter songs, but no less brutal or catchy, than the previous album. “Beheading the Buddha” opens […]

Starting 2020  with the same productivity (Myth of I, Aronious, Sutrah) as they ended 2019 (Immanifest, Singularity, Flub, Equipoise, etc) The Artisan Era is quickly rivaling Unique Leader Records when it comes to tech death, even if The Artisan Era seems to have a a little more focus on symphonics. However, there may be some […]

In Mourning strike me as the type of band that know what they’re good at, and stick to that formula. Much like bands like The Black Dahlia Murder, or Cannibal Corpse, they’ve found their sound and don’t really ever deviate from it. This approach can be a double edged sword. While their newest album, 2019s […]

You know that kinda goofy friend you had in high school or college? They weren’t necessarily your BEST friend, but they were always a good time to be around, fun to have a drink with every once in a while and shoot the shit with? But time passes, lives grow apart, and one day you […]

When one who is familiar with the label sits down with a Unique Leader release, there are a few items which come to mind. Firstly, this is going to likely be technical death metal. There will be fantastic musicianship on display. Frequently, the production will also be brick walled, and it may be difficult to […]

I reviewed Baltimore’s brutal death metal band, Visceral Disgorge’s sophomore album, Slithering Evisceration, recently and stated how much I loved the album and how they are one of my favorite brutal death metal bands.  I interviewed singer Travis Werner some years back and I was and still am a tremendous fan of their 2011 debut […]

Germany’s FDA Records has stepped out of their comfort zone for a couple of their early 2020 releases. One is weird goth doom (Hraun), another, Stråle , is a Finnish melodic hard rock band , and the other this one, originates from Japan, the first release on the label from there after a pretty consistently German/European […]

Ante-Inferno is a new black metal act hailing from the moors of Yorkshire, England, and has former and current members of other UK black metal acts like Petrichor and Sathamel. But don’t go expecting a band like either of those bands or like other recent UK black metal like the symphonic Argesk or Darkthrone worshiping […]

Unless you’ve somehow stumbled upon our site looking for affordable dentistry, then you have likely heard of Death. The band, that is. As someone with a Leprosy tattoo, one could say I hold the band in high esteem. I’m sure many other metalheads agree. The reason I even mention the name is because of Morbus […]

When the UK’s  Sylosis released the single “I Sever” at the end of 2019, followed shortly by an official album announcement, I was torn. On the one hand, the song is fantastic – thrashy, epic, and heavy. On the other hand, these are all terms I’d use to describe most Sylosis songs. “I Sever” seemed to be […]

It’s funny how life is with its odd and overall meaningless coincidences. Just recently, I reviewed Unhumanized, the latest release from Cianide, and in that review I had made the reference, for the unfamiliar, of imagining Bob Bagchus (Asphyx, Soulburn, Grand Supreme Blood Court), John McEntee (Incantation, Funerus), and Paul Speckmann (Master) coming together in […]

I, like I’m sure many of you reading this, LOVE beer. I brew my own beer. I love visiting new breweries and talking with brewers about their craft. I’m all for brewers trying new techniques and experimenting with different ingredients. That being said, it’s also very easy for brewers to just go too fucking far. […]

Tapping into an intriguing mix of tech death and slam, Wormhole aim to expand upon the impressive groundwork laid on their 2016 debut, Genesis, a recent discovery of mine after initially overlooking the album. Some line-up tweaks failed to dull the impact of Wormhole’s cutting edge brand of technical sophistication meets guttural slam approach, and […]

So here is reunion album number 3 for Wombbath, one of the 90s Swedish death metal bands that reunited for another go. This time, lone original member Håkan Stuvemark and Johnny Petersson (Henry Kane, Ashcloud, Gods Forsaken, Ursinne, Just Before Dawn) has yet another set of different guys helping them out for this album by […]

It’s been 7 years since super group Hail of Bullets called it quits after a solid run of three war mongering albums of trundling death metal. But fear not, Germany’s Scalpture is here to revive the ghosts of the past with their second effort of World War One themed death metal. That should be enough […]

There wasn’t much hype I saw surrounding the new self-titled album from Kaoteon. This is their third full length, in addition to a couple of singles and demos. Songwriter and band namesake Anthony Kaoteon enlisted the likes of Linus Klausenitzer from Obscura on the bass, Adrian Erlandsson from At The Gates , and vocalist Walid […]

Germany’s metalcore/death metal veterans have always been one of those bands I kinda like. I own quite a few of their prior 12 albums, but I don’t think I have listened to them fully,  and I pick  them up used if I happen to find them rather than instantly buy them or seek them out. […]

Okay friends, lets just skip all the rigmarole and pointless backstory and just get right to it. Testament‘s newest release, their twelth full-length of all original material, Titans of Creation, is good. Really good. Actually, I’d say it’s pretty damn great. In fact, it may be the best thing the Bay Area thrashers have released […]

I remember reading a review of Horrified‘s 2018 full-length release, Allure of the Fallen, where the band was described as having a sound familiar to Horrendous, but without the prog attributes. While this isn’t my favorite description of the band’s style, it’s admittedly, not too far off either, and ends up working well since more […]

Let me start by being clear from the offset – this is one of the best albums I’ve heard. Ever. It contains everything I love about music, and I’d be surprised if this doesn’t rank highly among many peoples’ ‘best of the decade’ lists. That may sound like I’m exaggerating, but this album really does […]