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 […]

With a name like Druglord, I expected doom and I got doom.  I’ve heard their handle circling online conversations but until getting busy with their second LP, New Day Dying, I hadn’t heard too much of the music.  They are on the sludgy tip for sure as I get a few whiffs of early Electric […]

Hang on to your seats people. This one is a doozy. Malta’s Abysmal Torment have returned with the fourth full length effort The Misanthrope.  Let’s get right into this okay, the title track “The Misanthrope” hits like a ball peen hammer right away. Max Vassallo is one of the sickest drummers I have heard in […]

The post Hoffman brothers era of Deicide has been an up and down affair. From the excellent (but divisive to some), more melodic Ralph Santolla led release The Stench of Redemption, to the crap fest of ‘Til Death Do Us Part, the blistering To Hell With God, then back to crap again with In The Minds Of […]

Warning: negative nancy review ahead!!!!! (it’s been a while)….. Here’s one of those reissues that has be scratching my head. There are plenty of albums that deserved  a reissue- for example Desecrator’s Subconscious Release a few years ago, or God Macabre‘s The Winterlong, or Gorement’s The Ending Quest. Hard to find albums that were overlooked, or […]

This four-piece Ohio band is comprised of Chris Krucker on drums, Billy Paxton on guitars/vocals, David Almendinger on guitars and my man Arn Argenio on bass.  Merciless Reign released their debut, Catharsis Through Chaos in 2014and it kind of went under the radar.  Now the band is releasing their second album, Haunting the Aftermath which […]

It’s getting to the point with Everlasting Spew Records that it gets harder and harder to keep up on all of the awesome releases that they are finding.  There is no exception here with Texas’ Infuriate with their debut record Infuriate. Featuring members of Sarcolytic, Sect Of Execration, Images of Violence, ID and Whore Of […]

Norway’s Krakow is a prolific quartet that has amassed quite an imposing discography since their inception in 2005.  Somehow I have remained accidentally ignorant to their music despite seeing rave reviews of them around underground metal webzines and getting a few lauded recommendations by friends that I trust.  The 6 tunes on this release are […]

Though the band’s debut’ Imperial Doom is regarded as a Floridian death metal classic  (“Horror Infinity” still gets regular airplay for me), in the grand scheme of things, Monstrosity were never quite as revered as brethren like Deicide, Obituary, Morbid Angel, Malevolent Creation, or even similarly peripheral Brutality, being not quire as productive, unique or […]

Russian brutal slammers Aborted Fetus are back with album number 5 and it adds to a pretty good year not just for brutal slammy death metal (Organectomy, Ingested, Manhattan Lovestory), and the always reliable Comatose Music ( Kraanium, Abhorrent Deformity, Kraanium,  Kill Everything, Flesh Hoarder, Posthuman Abomination) also. I own all but the debut from these guys, […]

This Belgian band has been around since the late 80’s and The Weiliaon Wielder Quest came out in 1995.  Marquee Records, under the care of Armando Pereira, has brought this obscure album back into the light.  I never heard of this band and they have three other albums.  This is their debut and the music […]

From the double-dipped tab of wah overloaded guitars and sinew taut bass lines that die their way to slow-motion life during the intro of the title track, it’s obvious that Ohio brutes Weed Demon mean business on their first full-length altar sacrifice.  Riffs collapse with the space warping grace of dying stars, slowly ratcheting up […]

While Burial Invocation‘s Abiogenesis is getting the lion’s share of the attention in the realms of murky, Incantation-y death metal (and rightly so, it’s a killer release), the second album from Italy’s Eroded is just as good and certainly one of the best releases of the year in the now common place style. I have […]

Excommunicated have been around for 8 years and in that time, released a comp in 2011 and their debut full-length in 2011 Skeleton Key.  After quite some time Chad Kelly said F-this, I cannot continue to keep eating po-boys all the time, in Louisiana, let’s put  something out.  Putting down the huge sandwiches, Chad picked […]

Transcending Obscurity’s first foray into pure Swedish death metal is relative success with Crawl’s debut, Rituals.  Crawl’s members are relative unknowns but  veterans of the scene and there are branches from the extensive  Demonical family tree in drummer, Amir Batar and  there is Joachim Lyngfelt formerly of the underrated Decomposed. Then output is a nasty, direct crusty, […]

Bordeaux France’s Exocrine waste no time in laying down some quite nutty technical death metal with their third full length release Molten Giant. “Scorched Human Society” opens with a slight intro into some incredibly clean scalar runs. These guys do an excellent job of breaking up the technical section with groove laden bridge section that […]

Holy fuckin’ hell, this release is certainly up there in the category of “angriest music I’ve ever heard.”  The Black Sorcery is a Canadian quintet that plays a ghoulish, beyond foul hybrid of blackened death/grind with lurching sludge influences cropping up from time to time.  Even when the music does slow its unhinged ass down […]

Did you find your self craving the new Jungle Rot record this year? Do you like meat and potatoes? Do you like chunky, no frills Death metal? Did you enjoy Grave’s last 4 albums? if you answered yes to the previous questions, just go ahead and order the third album from Germany’s Supreme Carnage. Seriously- what […]

Wow! Wow! Wow! Biggest surprise of the year so far hands down.  Minnesota’s Inexorum have hit a colossal homerun with the debut album Lore of The Lakes.  Inexorum is the genius of Carl Skildum who I know from The Minnesota Death/Thrash group Anti-Verse (Also way worth checking out).  Lore of The Lakes is five tracks […]

First and foremost, I would like to give Sevared Records’ Barret Amiss II, a big thanks and shout out for hooking me up, at this year’s Maryland Deathfest, with a copy of Flesh Consumed‘s new album, Hymn for the Leeches. Being that it has been eight years since their previous album (apparently, problems with label […]

Just when I thought Just Before Dawn was the pinnacle of WW2 themed, Bolt Thrower and Hail of Bullets worshiping death metal, along comes Sweden’s Creeping Flesh  and their compilation of demos and EPs to deliver a salvo of impressive tracks that do all the the bands above justice. While not having the big names […]

If you’re looking to catch a buzz lift and you positively need a good battering of hard-liner blues guitar, blood-drooling wah pedals, deep rhythmic highs and soul howlin’ vocals, then chances are that Italy’s Black Elephant are gonna go down well with your needs.  Cosmic Blues is their third LP and I’m having a shame […]

Although I enjoyed the debut from North Carolina’s Abhorrent Deformity, Entities of Malevolence, I can say I have not revisited it since its 2015 release. It was a solid slab of brutal/tech death that hinted at something better, and here is the something better. Way better. Though certainly still lingering in the putrid Comatose wheelhouse […]

I’m always excited to see local metal bands from here in Missouri get some recognition or sign to a decent label. St Louis’s Cast the Stone were formed in 2002 and I crossed paths with bassist Derek Engemann at a few Sounds of the  Underground/Summer Slaughter/Harkonin (another great St Louis act) shows in St  Louis  at […]

From the wilded realms in between, Vile Ent returns with a second EP of institutionalized industrial, mind melted metal, swingin’ hard rock and digitally molested soundscapes that follow-up 2017’s freaky, fun and fucked up Road Rash EP with a sonic glitch-out of equally mangled organic and computerized split personalities.  Ent who has cut a swath […]