Posts Tagged ‘Review’

I vaguely remember seeing these guys pop up on my Facebook feed a year or so ago for the video for “Possessed“.  I recall the fairly average metalcore, but loving the female vocals and keyboards of Aimy Miller. So when this promo showed up,  I have to admit along with Miller, it was morbid curiosity […]

If anything could be said about Epoch, it would have to be the fact that the band is a bit of a mystery. Being wholly unfamiliar with the group or its sole album Sacrosanct, (originally a digital only release in 2015; now seeing a physical release this year, via Lavadome Productions) I tried to do […]

Toxic, polluted scum sludge from the UK usually always meets or exceeds my expectations and this brain-rotted quintet from Portsmouth serve up just the kind of humanity hatin’ nihilism that I can always get behind. After a corrosive EP, Grim Ravine drops an LP with just as many tracks. The Light is from Below is […]

Finland’s Gorephilia return with their second full-length album, after 5 years.  Their first official release was the outstanding  Ascend to Chaos ep in 2011, which they bested a year later with their debut album, Embodiment of Death.  Severed Monolith has a very Morbid Angelish sound to it.  I am reminded of Morbid’s Blessed are the […]

Thrash in Santa Cruz?!? Who would have thought, but I jest. Those that are aware of their geography know the proximity of Santa Cruz to the bay area in Calif. Hallowed ground for many a metal group, so there is plenty of likelihood of seepage and runoff of all that is Metallica, Exodus, Testament, Death […]

From the late 60s carrying through into modern times, Germany, has been a hotbed for hard-edge experimental music. Be it the throttling Hammond organs and aggressive soul vocals of Birth Control’s Sabbath meets Doors styled subsonics, the snarling post-punk of Neu!, Spancer’s twin bassed sludge sprawl or Black Wasteland’s roaring thrash doom…let’s put it this […]

As I still wade through 2016’s releases, I try to review stuff that I liked, was worth my time or an actual CD was sent. One such release that crossed all three boxes was the debut full length album from Finland’s Illusions Dead. With an odd moniker, generic art and the dreaded black/death metal tag, […]

Alright, we are just ending February and the tech death is going to just keep coming this year and I would like to alert you of a band that has a dynamite sound, Deivos. I had to go back and listen to their 2015 release Theodicy which at the time I thought was an outstanding […]

So Maurizio Iacono and his Kataklysm crew are back with album number 3 of his Roman themed, epic, symphonic death metal project, Ex Deo. And while album number 2, Caligula was better than the debut, Romulus, and album number 3 is similarly incremental in its improvement, I’m still not enamored with a project that I really […]

In my year end list for this site, the two albums I put on my “Please Don’t Disappoint in 2017” list were Analepsy (the first glimpses of that one sound incredible), and Hour of Penance. I have been a big fan of Hour of Penance since The Vile Conception and the two LPs following that […]

I have reviewed both of Hellmouth’s prior albums here. And the Detroit band showed great development from 2009s Destroy Everything, Worship Nothing to 2011s Gravestone Skylines, so I was really hoping for another leap in quality for album number three. And while the band seemed to have matured and toned things down a bit there, […]

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 […]