New Zealand’s Ulcerate apparently are far more influential than they know. While Gorguts gets the lions share of the credit for the churning, murky atonal style of off kilter death metal, Ulcerate were 3 albums in before Colored Sands and Gorguts‘ return. Other fine bands like Zhrine, Zealotry, Miserist, Construct of Lethe, Ara, Artificial Brain, Mitochondrion and […]

Russia’s Ossuary Anex came into existence in 2008, and 4 years later released their debut, Awakening on the now defunct SFC Records.  I really enjoyed their debut and even reviewed it on aatruk.com.  They now return with Mutilation Through Prayer and it’s a killer follow-up album.  The band wears their influences on their sleeves.  Internal […]

I’m far from an Immolation fanboy. In fact, I’m a real late bloomer when it comes to these guys. It wasn’t until I recently (2011) picked up 1999s Failures For Gods that I started to get an appreciation for the band, picked up the back catalog and looked forward to each new release. And I […]

I’m not super familiar with the German brutal/slam death metal scene. I’ve only heard one band/album and it’s Architect of Dissonance‘s Realm of the Deviant Throne, and that was a mighty fine slab of slam. So when the third album from Germany’s Arcanius showed up, a band name I heard mentioned in the same breath […]

  Well this is quite the slab of death tinged crusty grind core that will undoubtedly help 2017 get off to a smashing start. Washington’s The Drip are absolutely playing for keeps with their debut release The Haunting Fear of Inevitability.  “Blackest Evocation” get things off to a face ripping start. Brandon Caldwell’s vocals remind […]

Finland’s Rotten Sound released the best grind album of 2016, with Abuse to Suffer.  Hopefully you were one of the lucky ones who picked up the limited edition digipak which contained a couple of extra songs.  Regardless Rotten Sound continue to push the boundaries of extremity and keeps it interesting all the while.  Hell, it […]

TOTD’s very own E. Thomas, knowing my affinity for mangled metallic crust punk, tipped me off on Scottish quartet Razor Sharp Death Blizzard…and I’ll be goddamned if he didn’t have my face nailed up on a wanted poster for this one. These nuts bring crust, hardcore and Am-Rep/Touch and Go noise-rock tonalities to the table […]

Friends, thrashers, metalheads, lend me your ears! OverKill, the most consistent metal band on the entire planet, is back with their 18th (yes, I said 18th ) full-length album, The Grinding Wheel. If you are new to metal and/or are unfamiliar with OverKill, and somehow you have made your way to this review, then stop! […]

I’ve never been a fan of instrumental metal. And I’m not a huge fan of EPs either. But here is Australia’s Miserist to make me eat crow with a debut 6 song EP, of flat out nasty, atonal, crumbling instrumental death metal that really kinda blew me away. With clear reference points to the likes […]

I heard about this band and album from one of Trever Strnad’s posts over at Metal Injection about albums he is liking, it’s always a good read and full of bands I already know and some I don’t. Bullcreek was one I didn’t know, so I checked it out. Named after a haunted Dutch lake […]

It’s been 15 years since I reviewed an album from Indiana’s war mongering Invasion. It was 2002s Bezerk Artillery Barrage and it was for Digitalmetal.com. It was a solid release of death metal and one of the first, if not the first US based band I hard heard utilizing a Swedish HM boss/Sunlight guitar tone. I […]

Germany’s Kreator really needs no introduction and despite a few mishap albums in the 90’s, for me, remain the best German Thrash Metal act to this day.  I will venture to say I remember when Endless Pain was released in 1985 and 1986 brought about my favorite album by them, Pleasure to Kill.  ’92-99, is […]

By the looks I figured Brain Spasm would be peddling a sound not unlike Frightmare or maybe a particularly naughty version of Ghoul; not exactly.   While they do have one gangrenous leg planted on the campy side of the divide this is internal organ smoothie slurping goregrind.   These schlock horror loving,  Farthammer.com account sharing, trailer […]

Featuring Michael Gilpatrick on bass and Chadd Beverlin on drums (both of Ohio solar sludge titans Mockingbird), Enhailer’s debut LP Grisaille is a bad trip through the bad lands full of psychedelic tonalities, dry heaving riffs and shattering rhythmic shifts that break Tectonic plates like teeth.  To keep my own personal record straight, Mockingbird didn’t […]

Like Rogga Johansson needed to form a new band??  I feel his best are, hands down: Revolting and Putrevore.  Well go ahead and add Minotaur Head to the mix too, at the top! I named this release as the best doom/death release for 2016, in my best of list, on this site.  So Rogga grabs […]

One of the more revered names in European brutal death metal, and the primary name in Maltese death metal, Beheaded have been around since the mid 90s and have released 4 fine albums of brutal/technical death metal, with a near classics in 1998s Perpetual Mockery and 2002s Recounts of Disembodiment.  I have not heard 2012s […]

Coming from the school of bad band names, baring the ambiguous black/death metal tag AND sharing the band name with another  fellow French act, Derealized had the cards stacked against them from the get go. But being the consummate professional I am, and considering this label gave some solid release from Stangala, Red Dawn, Sound of […]

When you are in a band you normally don’t know whether what you are doing is good, bad, great or awful. In my experience, you are just getting together with your mates and killing it as best you can. Maybe, once you have a chance to make a demo or whatever, you start to realize […]

Cleveland’s finest purveyors of the riff, Contra, busted my nose up with brass knuckles in the form of 2015’s Son of Beast EP.  A storm n’ swell of throttling blues riffs and homing missile rhythms, the instrumental trio comprising members of some of my favorite Ohio heavies were off to a greater than excellent start.  […]

Ah, my first review of 2017 and I am honored for it to be in critique of Thanatopsis, the second full length album from Oklahoma City’s Dischordia. I had intended for this review to be in before the close of the year but unfortunately, the holiday season and long overtime hours were not very conducive […]

Here is one of those releases that makes me pull my hair out. I got the promo late, after my year end list was almost complete, and it’s good enough that it was on and off my 2016 year list, but ultimately barely didn’t make it, and now whenever I listen to it, I wish […]

We are in that weird time of the metal press cycle where I am are still filtering through late 2016 releases and starting to get inundated with 2017 releases, which is a shame as 2016 still has some gems that needed to be heard and covered. One such release is the second release from Virginia’s […]

  As a big fan of Andi Macht’s lead guitar firestorms in German dirt doom kings Black Wasteland, I was all ears to find out he moonlights as bassist for ruthless punk/thrash/old school black metal bastards Hellburst. If Celtic Frost, Saviours, Hellshock, Venom, Discharge and BL’AST had a mutant six-headed baby baptized in an amniotic […]

Speaking for myself and when listening to metal, I look for the energy, speed and aggression, well most of the time, there’s also time for nuance and subtleties in the darkness but still nothing is quite like in your face aggression, speed and bombast. Spain’s Noctem have been on my radar for a bit, I […]

Gastropode is probably French for slugs and snails, or perhaps more general univalve animals, because it is almost exactly the same word as Gastropod which, as a struggling Zoology major, I know for a god damned fact includes slugs and snails. I could Google it, of course, but I just don’t think knowing for certain […]