Ho hum… another couple years, and another killer album from none other than the almighty Aborted.  I mean it almost seems like these Belgians have been kicking ass for so long, you almost hope the metal world doesn’t start to take them for granted.  On the 20th year of this band’s existence, they’ve dropped their […]

Floridian lunatics Gnosis impressed me quite a bit with their debut album of fetid, meat n’ taters, doom-tinged blackened death The Third-Eye Gate in 2015…as the three year mark came n’ went between records I wasn’t sure we’d be getting a new one or not.  Thank Ol’ Scratch because these scum rippers are back with […]

“Tis the times’ plague, when madmen lead the blind.” ― William Shakespeare, King Lear Boy, who knew Shakespeare was a prophet? But I digress. After one self released EP, and a killer debut album, The Spear and the Ichor that Follows in 2015 on Dark Descent Records, Minnesota’s House of Atreus signed with Iron Bonehead Productions and […]

You know when you get a band with ******* hammer as the name, there’s a solid chance you know exactly what it will be, so I’ll make this simple. As simple as the music contained on DungeönHammer’s debut album. Do you like  classic Hellhammer or Celtic Frost? Do you like Dark Throne‘s latter material? If you answered “OUGHHH”  […]

At one point or another all three fellas in Oregon’s upstart, space-out sludge trio Flood Peak were members of the heathen, experimental dirt-doom band Sól (they’re still going strong) whose LPs Black Mountain and Upheaval are still way worth your listening time.  Currently, drummer Dylan Stuntebeck is the only man in FP that moonlights in […]

Axis of Despair: so THAT is what happened to Coldworker?!?  After Nasum broke up, drummer Anders Jakobson went on to form Coldworker, which was a pretty damn tight little grind band.  After 3 solid albums (the first 2 being the best), I totally lost track of those guys.  Well lo and behold, while researching Axis […]

One could argue that within the Finnish melodic death metal scene, you have the ‘big three’ comprised of Amorphis, Insomnium and Omnium Gatherum. But nipping at their heels are a couple of bands I really like in Noumena and Wolfheart, the brain child of Tuomas Saukkonen, whose former projects Before the Dawn and Black Sun Aeon, […]

Dublin Ireland’s Malthusian have returned with their first full length release Across Deaths.  Having reviewed their last EP below the Hengiform I was familiar with these lads meticulously layered approach to black death.  The opening 5:47 track Remnant Fauna wastes no time sucking you into a vacuuming vortex of obsolete dissonant cacophony. As the track […]

I’ve been a fiend for the Fus since the 90s; pretty much a religious, “Every album rules, maaaan,” type of nut up to and including the streamlined, utter-ass kicking heard on King of the Road.  In Search Of… and The Action is Go are my personal pinnacles but as a riff-roarin’ machine they couldn’t do […]

Slam death metal fans: “Dude, the new Kill Everything album, is  sick, it’s the slammiest of the slammiest releases of 2018″ Kraanium : “Hold my Beer….” The fifth album from formerly Norway based, now international slammers Kraanium brings nothing new to the table at all and is all but indiscernible from the last two albums I reviewed,  2012s Post […]

Back in 2004, New York death metal veterans, Internal Bleeding released Onward to Mecca with then sole original member/drummer Bill Tolley and a bunch of NYDM hired guns. However, Bill was tragically killed in 2017 while performing his job as a New York firefighter. So now, in a case of history repeating itself,  original member Chris Pervelis who […]

Oklahoma City’s Dischordia are back! Back with a brand new two song, 25-minute mind fucking that is Binge/Purge. Just a year and a half after the release of their last full-length, Thanatopsis, which I threw heaps of praise at, the power trio serves up a punishing cocktail that leaves all who indulge, assed out on the […]

Man! This is release is totally out of my comfort zone so bear with me if I seem like NWOBHM is a new language to me.  Newcastle England’s Satan have returned with their fourth full length studio release Cruel Magic.   I was initially turned on to Satan by the singer of the band I am […]

I have no prior experience with progressive Netherlands symphonic, melodic death/black metal duo,  Shylmagoghnar ( a moniker the duo created), but their second album, Transience is one of the most wondrous albums of the year. Seriously, this is a really good album. It reminds me a little of  Disillusion and their progressive melodic death metal magnum opus […]

Revocation has carved out an impressive and prolific career since dropping their solid debut, Empire of the Obscene, a decade ago. The Boston purveyors of technically sparkling death-thrash have rarely put a foot wrong during a career marked by consistent high quality and dazzling musicianship, attached to energetic, aggressive and catchy songs. However, 2016’s Great […]

I dug the second album, The Undying Season, from this US based melodic death metal band, but for some reason never checked out the follow up, 2016s Neuronic Saw. Maybe  because it didn’t have the big name power of Oliver Pinnard (Neuraxis, Vengeful) or drumming royalty FLo Mournier or Dirk Verbueren like its its predecessors did, […]

France’s chosen children of hard rockin’, Maryland doom tinged grooves return with their 5th full-length album, Banlieue Triste, which is their overall umpteenth release to date in a sprawling discography full of driving melody riffs, lamenting crooned vocals, a locked on rhythm section and generally damn good songwriting.  Hangman’s Chair have managed to survive a […]

Getting to support and draw attention to new metal artists is one of the things I enjoy most about writing reviews.  When I get the chance to review bands from my home state of Minnesota it is especially special as our scene has had quite the burst of talent over the last few years.  This […]

Listen, I could try to force 1000 words into this review of the debut from Norway’s Ováte. i could try and dress it up and fill space, and get all sorts of creative with wordplay and shit but listen, all you really need to know that this is project is a duo spearheaded by guitarist /bassist  Aindiachaí […]

Ireland’s slam master, Connor Brown (Oncology, Putrefy), has finally released the debut album for his solo project-Debridement, with quite a lovely name for an album: Drowning in a Cesspool of Malform and Malady.  We get 10 songs of porno-grindish slamming death metal at right under 30 minutes. Opening with “Adrenochrome”.  I pick up on a […]

The first two albums from Belgian/UK act Pantheist (2002 O Solitude and 2005s Amartia), are in my opinion, two of the finest examples of funeral doom of the two decades. However, with 2009s Journey Through lands Unknown, founder  Kostas Panagiotou took the band’s sound away from the immense ‘church doom’ tones into more experimental and progressive […]

I wasn’t sure how this one would turn out but they’ve got an organ player.  As a big fan of The Doors, Iron Butterfly, Birth Control and the first 3 Deep Purple’s, I gave it a shot and I’m very pleasantly surprised.  On album #2, the Denmark based smooth groovers Grusom transplant Fall of the […]

Oakland California’s Barren Altar have built quite a buzz with their unique style of funeral doom tinged black metal.  Entrenched in the Faults of the Earth is their first full length effort and is quite a memorable one at that.  Opening up with “Nexus of Grief” which starts off with a solo guitar line that […]

After being one of the top, but second tier Swedish death metal bands on the 90s, Wombbath broke up, but almost 20 years later, lone original member Håkan Stuvemark and some scene vets and released Downfall Rising back in 2015, a solid reunion, fitting in with the rash of releases and rebirth of the genre. […]

Ah, Celtic Frost…Whether you love ’em, hate ’em, or are just meh about them, one thing is fact. Their influential impact on metal was, and still is, a huge and undeniable thing. Some have taken that Frost-y influence and built upon it with great success, i.e. Obituary, while others have more than just flirted with […]