Back in 2009 Long Island’s Painted In Exile released a killer 3 song EP called Revitalized. Riding the popularity of bands like of Between the Buried and Me, Protest the Hero, The Human Abstract, Periphery, Born of Osiris etc, the band was a experimental fusion of shredding metalcore, deathcore, mathcore, jazz, prog metal and even […]
I usually know exactly what I am getting with any Comatose albums sent to me for review. But whoa, I wasn’t expecting the sheer nastiness and brutality that Ritual Theophagy, the second album from Italy’s Blasphemer dropped on me. Despite being familiar with plenty of other brutal Italian death metal like Logic of Denial, Hour of Penance, […]
Having never heard Burial Hordes before, I wasn’t exactly sure on what to expect from this Greek four-piece and their latest EP release, Extinction. Just going off of the band’s moniker alone, I didn’t figure the guys were employing a form of power metal, stoner, ambient, or anything of an experimental nature as much as […]
Most releases I get sent for review nowadays are produced by a team of big name folks, mixed and mastered by a big name superstar and all done with pro tools and such. Not with the case of Mur, the one man atmospheric/folk black/doom project of Cam Sather. His third album, Heartworn was recorded in […]
Bloodlet/Hope and Suicide alumni Scott Angelacos and Tom Crowther have been insanely busy with music lately. As a huge fan of Bloodlet since The Seraphim Fall came out, I couldn’t be a happier 34 year old hate bastard fucker. On top of the release of the pure Floridian sludge classic Hollow Leg’s Crown, which also […]
In 1987 Death firmly put the stamp of the death metal genre on the map with the release of their debut Scream Bloody Gore album. I received it on vinyl as a birthday gift that year and it is an album all us old bastards have memorized front to back. Once again Relapse Records […]
Before Horrendous, Unwilling Flesh, Spinebreaker, Terminate, Skinfather, With Burning Contempt and others threw a US made hat into the Swede death arena and made it cool, there was Invasion and Fatalist. Fatalist were formed from members of Uphill Battle and Exhumed and released an album/demo compilation back in 2009, The Depths of Inhumanity, that was […]
Oh yeah, the force is strong in this one, the Dismember force that is. This one being Italy’s Profanal and their contribution to the altar that is swedish death. Obviously we know that the followers are many, some bring reverence and new found power to the church, where others as we know, just worship, nothing […]
Prior to this month, I had no idea who Rottweiler Records or Florida’s Death Requisite were. But In comes the ‘here’s some shit for you to review’ email, I see the ‘symphonic death metal’ keyword and I check it out, as I a sucker for symphonics in any kind of metal. So what we have […]
German doom overlords Black Wasteland blew me away with a pair audio gallows’ hangings; the Where Light Can Not Intrude LP and the Dehydration EP. Capable of twin axin’ their way through forests of Lizzy, Valkyrie and Priest, filthing a path to the toughest biker bar dirt doom show (think St. Vitus, Turambar, Earthride and […]
Talk about one of the most anticipated metal releases for 2016. The hype for Hardwired… To Self-Destruct has been through the roof. I preordered this special 3cd edition some time ago and it never reached me. My post office could not find it and it was never delivered, yet I paid for it. Score: Rini […]
Italy’s Lectern are a sort of a unique bunch, but not for the reasons you may be expecting but we will get to that a bit later in our review. Musically they are a fairly standard death metal band, they have all the bases covered, giving you a good cross section of early Decide, touches of […]
Hammerhands takes the atmosphere and vocal stylings of later Tom Waits records but replaces the music with widescreen desert rock and colliding waves of sandstorm sludge/hardcore. Largo Forte is an engrossing album and delivers with frequent surprises in song composition. Truly, I didn’t see what was coming at many points on Largo Forte and that’s […]
Due to an unfortunate and excruciating ear infection that has had me uniaural for about three months I failed to write this review in a timely fashion, for which I must apologize to the band and the band’s guests. This EP deserved a timelier addressing. Because, frankly, it smokes. It does not smoke because it […]
Holy fuck, this is some good, goddamn heavy ass shit. Warcrab is an English sextet that plays self-proclaimed death/sludge metal and they ain’t fuckin’ joking with that labelling. Rampaging grooves, a nice mesh of guttural growls and sickly screams, dirty speed-ups, mid-tempo double-bass blasts and three guitarists with two digging into the riffs while Geoff […]
When I received this promo, I questioned the need for another Dave Ingram (Benediction, Bolt Thrower, Hail of Bullets), Rogga Johansson (Paganizer, Revolting, Ribspreader, Johansson & Speckmann et al) collaboration, despite my enjoyment of both guys’ previous and current projects, even more so considering they both recently collaborated on two Down Among the Dead Men albums […]
Intelligence without pretentiousness, focus, and sledgehammer sincerity. Those three qualities defined Saint Vitus when they first adopted the name in 1980 and still does through three different singers, over ten releases, and a thirty years plus long journey along the margins of mainstream music. Their influence, however, is far from marginal and extensively documented. Their […]
London’s soul cooking, noise-ridden psychedelic doom titans Sonic Mass were a complete and total happy accident for me on Bandcamp. I couldn’t even recall to you at this point in time what exactly I was trying to find instead but one start to finish listening of You People Never Learn made a believer out of […]
BRIDE OF INSECT In 1990 Richard C, owner of Wild Rags Records, in California took a chance on Nuclear Death. A primitive grindcore outfit, out of Arizona, fronted by a female vocalist, who played guitar and bass. Extreme female vocalists doing grindcore, was not something that was going on during the 80’s/90’s. Not released on […]
You know how they say your taste buds change every few years? Well I think the same is happening to my musical tastes. The debut from these Fins, Unending Degradation, made my 2013 year end list, but this year, this hulking, cavernous form of Dark Descent death metal just isn’t doing it for me. And by […]
Two months ago the Zurich, Switzerland duo Bölzer achieved somewhat of a Herculean task when they premiered the first advance track from their debut full-length “Hero”’. For a few weeks prior the storied halls of heavy metal social media had been in a tizzy over the first material to surface from Metallica’s imminent new album and […]
It’s all too easy to be sceptical about a one man progressive metal band with the audacity to release a fully fledged concept album, stretching across an exhausting 70 plus minute duration. However, being the open-minded individual that I generally am, the challenge of absorbing this monster opus thankfully oozes rewards for the painstaking […]
First review back after a three week long hand injury, so excuse me while I pull my tricycle from underneath a wreckage of doctor bills, a limper than a wet noodle wrist and a fuckin’ sling. Hand and foot injuries are a bitch but that’s nothin’ a good riff can’t cure and New Hampshire’s druggy, […]
Well hell, this one came out of nowhere. From the ever-popular djent style, to melodic death metal, to nu-metal, this one is all over the damn board. And you know what, it’s also one of the most unique, and fun, albums I have listened to in a while. The first three tracks feature a djenty, […]
I did not discover Poland’s Furia until 2015 when i got around to hearing Nocel after seeing it littered on a a few 2014 year end lists. So I really can’t talk about the bands past releases and development etc, past that album and this new one, an album that appears to be even more […]