Virginia’s Lord consistently make a big bastardly liar out of me.  Ever since the band’s 2011 landmark album Chief, a tangled and complex tapestry of twisted backwoods butcher metal, Lord continues to up their game with each new album.  An ever-changing line up soldiered on through the vermin bitten EP Alive in Golgotha and it […]

So there are death metal bands and then there is Gigan… In a category all their own, from a galaxy unknown to man and from the brain of mainman Eric Hersemann. I guess if you want some kind of direction with their style, think: Ulcerate, Voivod, Artificial Brain, Gorguts, Doctor Who, Cerebral chaos, Sci-Fi, Space […]

You know home in some sports and other contests there is a USA vs the World? Well, if we did that for deathcore, despite a valiant effort from the likes of Enterprise Earth, Rings of Saturn, Shadow of Intent, Fit For and Autopsy and Oceano (and negative points from Suicide Silence) , the rest of the world […]

After completely gutting and then revamping the line up, Dani Filth seemed invigorated for the surprisingly good Hammer of the Witches back in 2015, and that renewed energy has carried over into the follow up, the darkly seductive, 12th album, Cryptoriana – The Seductiveness of Decay. A tale of Victorian debauchery, magick, death, the afterlife and Gothic, supernatural […]

Running Billie Holiday’s “Gloomy Sunday” through a grinder of screeching, white-washed noise is how Floridian filth merchants Ether get their kicks on opener “Dearest the Shadow,” a hint at the oddball, angular quirks to come.  The band’s 2nd LP There is Nothing Left for me here is a craggy, down the mountain plummet of doom-y, […]

As a metal reviewer there is no greater feeling than stumbling upon something that is mind-blowingly awesome.  I hope 2017 continues along this trend of new amazing bands popping up from all over the world because it definitely seems like each week I am finding more and more releases from around the world that are […]

On paper, I should be super pumped about Ursinne, (Swedish for ‘fury’) a project featuring Dave Ingram (Benediction, Downlord, Down Among the Dead Men, Echelon) and Jonny Pettersson (Ashcloud, Henry Kane, Gods Forsaken, Wombbath, Just Before Dawn, etc) rounded out by bassist Sonia Nusselder. Even more so when I heard Kam Lee (Massacre) makes an […]

Ever since Sinister’s killer comeback album, Afterburner in 2006, the band has literally been on fire and playing with as much purpose as when they first began slaughtering listeners in the early 90’s. Syncretism is the band’s 12th full-length. I won’t include the Dark Memorials album, as that is a covers album. Ok, let’s cut […]

UK power trio Dyscarnate got on my radar with the 2014 reissue of their 2012 sophomore album, And So it Came to Pass, an impressive display of groove and heft that many compared to Dying Fetus- and rightfully so as the band has a bit of hardcore buried in their death metal salvos. And they […]

It’s been  3 years since Anders Biazzi (ex –Amon Amarth, Gods Forsaken, Blood Mortized) released a Just Before Dawn album, the war themed Swedish death metal project with a veritable host of guest vocalists and musicians. There has been a couple of EPs and a single, and now right before the band’s next full length release, […]

I have no idea when the Old School Swedish Death retro movement really got started. With Bloodbath maybe? I do know that it has been running strong for awhile now, but honestly, I never really cared about the retro movement as long as my favorite original Swedeath stalwarts, Dismember, were still (skinned) alive and kicking. […]

Necrowretch, from France, return with their third long-player, Satanic Slavery and on a brand new label-Season of Mist.  I’ve been following the band since their debut album, Putrid Death Sorcery in 2013 and struck up some cool convos with guitarist/vocalist Vlad, after interviewing them back then.  The band has no shortage of material, either.  Releasing […]

Contrarian caused a few waves back in 2015 with their highly regarded debut, Polemic. A supergroup of sorts founded by Jim Tasikas with Brian Mason (Sulaco), Leon Macy (Mithras) on guitars with George Lollias (Nile) on drums. It was a Death homage, with  a heavier lean on the band’s latter, more progressive tones, adding some […]

One of the coolest and lesser known (at least in the US) power metal acts I have discovered recently is Germany’s Orden Ogan. A long running band with 5 albums under their belt since 2004 (with 2015s Ravenhead and 2012s To the End being the ones that got me hooked), these guys add a little oomph to power […]

I’m curious. How many metalheads, when asked the question, “What attracts you to heavy metal music?”, would answer with a simple and sound, “Fun”. Yet in reality, isn’t that the brass tax of it all? If the love we have for metal wasn’t, in the long run, “fun”,  would we indulge in it? Maybe it’s […]

Khazaddums‘ 2015, Dwarven/Tolkien themed EP, In Dwarven Halls was a solid, promising little 3 song demo/release, but I was not expecting quite this big of a leap in quality a mere 2 years later with the band’s full length debut. Driving the massive improvement to the band’s brutal, Nile-ish death metal is the addition of full […]

Long Island, New York’s long running Afterbirth had a re-birth 4 years ago.  Guitarist, Cody Drasser was like ‘OK, let’s get this shit going and finally get our debut album out’.  You see, Afterbirth began in the 90’s and while I was in Internal Bleeding we played shows with them and they were always great live and […]

The Barren Throne, the third album from Iceland’s Beneath, was a solid tech/brutal death  metal affair, befitting the label it was released on (Unique Leader), but it was hardly a memorable, game changing album. That looks to have changed with the band’s wholly improved and utterly  impressive third album, Ephemeris. The more cosmic/celestial theme of […]

So, amid my recent power/heavy metal reawakening, it dawned on me that all of the bands I have become enamored with have been European. Sure, I dabbled with the new Iced Earth, Demons and Wizards, Kamelot and a few others, but none really hit the spot. Then I received a promo from Pennsylvania’s Lör . An […]

Ok, Dark Descent Records has been hitting slam dunks all over the place, this year with their releases.  Now Unique Leader Records, is getting pretty close, with their outstanding releases and will it be DDR for the fourth time claiming label of the year, in my year’s end best or not?  While it remains to […]

  Well this is definitely an album I missed out on last year and wish I would have discovered it sooner.  In 1995 a band from Quebec called Gorelust released an album called Reign of Lunacy that came out on New World Symphony records.  Fast forward twenty two years later and we have Eyexist, a […]

Cacti blowing by in the distance at 90 mph on an open desert road, Camaro pushing the engine to the breaking point and the unholy grasp of mescaline taking control…we must be in California?  We certainly aren’t because quartet Fire Down Below and their debut Viper, Vixen, Goddess, Saint is straight from the hidden Sahara […]

Though some might argue they belonged with Dark Tranquillity and In Flames in the pantheons of Swedish metal, I’d put Desultory’s first three albums right there in the second tier of Swedish styled death metal along side the likes of Seance, Cemetery, Comecon and such. Their more melodic take on the Stockholm sound was a […]

After one of the more successful comebacks of the last few years with 2012s Vanquish in Vengeance, death metal legends Incantation had a quick turn around with 2014s Dirges of Elysium, a solid album, but a bit of a step back with a cleaner, more sterile production and a bit of a rushed sense of […]

Chances are, if you’re a “brutal death metal” fan, that you are well familiar with California’s Pathology. Hell, if you’re just a half-assed metal fan you’ve probably heard of the band at the very least. The group has released nine albums, new album included, in eleven years of solid brutal death metal. Some albums a […]