Remember Seattle’s Black Breath? They released 3 solid albums from 2010 to 2015 on Southern Lord. They were one of the earlier, really good US bands playing a Swedish death metal/hardcore hybrid that was a bit of a precursor to the Gatecreeper’s et al of this world. Well, while Black Breath is indefinitely ‘on hold’, […]

I have no problem feeling depressed or sad. Just ask my therapist! I don’t need a band or music to make me feel miserable, yet I seek it. Why? I don’t know, maybe ask Ethereal Tomb and their brand of sludgy doom. According to a quick search, this is the Canadian duo’s second full length […]

Mortem Obscuram initially got on my radar with their debut Eradication of the Human Endeavor back in 2021, a solid if unspectacular release of blackened/symphonic technical deathcore/death metal. It was OK, but I really didn’t give it that much attention, post-release. But boy, with The Wretched Divinity, they certainly have not gotten on my radar- […]

As the days and months and years keep piling up, it’s become more clear to me than ever that the idea of growing “mature with age” can mean two very different things: There’s the literal, more widely recognized notion where time and experience allows you to take stock of the things that actually matter in […]

If you’re not into modern metal, or what some painting with the broadest of brushes calls “metalcore,” you’re not going to like this. However, I am going to make like the gallon of milk I left in my car, spoil it, and let you know I do. Why do I like it, though? I’m so […]

It’s been 6 years since India’s Gutslit punched me in the face repeatedly for their second effort, Amputheatre, and let the world know they were clearly one of the top, if not the top brutal death metal bands from the county, if not the region. The line up that unleashed Amputheatre is largely intact, except […]

Anyone who’s paid any attention to the world of metal music in the last two years probably needs no introduction to Blackbraid at this point which, in and of itself, is pretty astounding. In fact, we’re not even a full two years removed from Sgah’gahsowáh (AKA Jon Krieger) unleashing the one-man project’s first two blistering […]

Chalk up 2023 to Frank reviewing many long albums and with Ohio’s Blackened Tech Death/Thrash metal band Terranoct we get their self-released debut album Icon of Ruin clocking in at over an hour’s length, intertwined into 11 songs.  What drew me to this band was the eye-catching album cover and pretty cool logo.  Remember bands, […]

OK, there is a lot to get to here; Pronostic is a Canadian progressive/melodic technical death metal project that hasn’t released anything since 2015s , An Atomic Decision, and before that their 2012 debut Deviated Inner Spectrum. The project is the brainchild of both guitarists/vocalists Alexandre Lauzon and Charles Pilotte, both relative unknowns in the […]

From 2004 to 2017 Wintersun, the bloated,much-maligned, crowd-funded (begged) project of Jari Mäenpää has produced 3 albums and has released nothing since  2017s The Forest Seasons, other than a few compilations and single. (despite seemingly asking for money eery few months) Since 2017, Canada’s Atavistia has released 3 quality albums including 2020s excellent The Winter […]

Do you ever listen to music from another country and after a bit, you try to sing along? Like, it’s obvious that you don’t know let’s say Finnish; but you hear this song from a Finnish band, and you love the shit out of it and suddenly you think you know Finnish and are fluent […]

When tech metallers The Eating Cave named their second album The Miscalculation, it makes me think they are talking about something specific. Of course they must be talking about the botched rhythm method that led to my unfortunate spawning. Just ask my parents. Anyway, this band has so much potential. As a big fan of […]

If you were familiar with Lamp of Murmuur’s previous output, it fell squarely into that lo-fi black metal category we’ve all come to know and love. I’ve listened to a lot of it over the years. Some bands do it to mask that they can’t write good songs. Other bands have the aesthetic and do […]

Who knew there were not one but TWO excellent symphonic/blackened deathcore bands right here in my backyard in, Missouri? One is Kansas City’s Vile Revelation, who released their killer debut EP Ov Vultures and Flesh back in 2022 (though I only discovered it earlier this year, hence no review) and Abaddonia, hailing from the darkest […]

Many bands choose the self-released route nowadays, and I’m opting to believe Shores of Null is one of them. They’re far too consistently superb to not have attracted some attention from the larger metal labels, such as Century Media, Season of Mist, or Nuclear Blast. Their 4th full-length, The Loss of Beauty reinforces this. Their […]

Video game and D & D-obsessed,  Canadian husband and wife duo, Crown of Madness is back to follow up their enjoyable 2022 EP, The Void, and lay the final piece of groundwork for their upcoming full-length album. Continuing the Ulcerate-styled artful dissonance they created on The Void, Elemental Binding shows a duo in lockstep with […]

I cannot even begin to tell you how many false starts I’ve had with this review due to my ongoing writer’s block. However, when there’s something released that I believe in and know would have an impact if the right ears took a listen, I must push through it. If you didn’t know by now, […]

I get to stare at possibly my best tattoo every day, which is for Skeletonwitch, which sometimes give me the skeleton itch. Meaning I want to hear new music from the boys. They’re from my hometown and mean a great deal to me, all of them lead different lives now, and getting music from them […]

Turbid North delivering a new album takes me back to when Eyes Alive was released 7 years ago. So young, naïve, and infinitely more fuckable. Unless you’re a cougar. Not the animal, though. I’ve found no parallels. Much like the awful tenure of my life from then to now, it hit me hard when I […]

International (Canada/ US/ Australia) act Dragoncorpse, has garnered quite a bit of on line hype with their take on deathcore meets power metal and anime (self-described power core), with three rip-roaring singles,  as well as a rather amusing online presence full of memes and self-deprecating humor. Well, now it’s time to see if the hype […]

As someone who was really cutting his teeth in the more extreme metal scene during Metalcore’s heyday, it’s safe to say that it will always have a special place in my heart. Even when the genre fell out of fashion and became more a butt of every gatekeeper’s jokes, it remained a regular part of […]

According to the promotional emails, Godiva is one of Portugal’s longest-running melodic death metal bands and has a large symphonic element, so I had to check them out. They were formed in 1999, but haven’t been super productive with a few demos and EPs in their early years, but nothing other than a single since […]

Okay, first and foremost, hats off to Mr. Teeth of the Divine himself, Erik Thomas, for sending me Shroud of Despondency‘s latest album, Air of Abrasion for review. Having no experience with the band I wasn’t sure what to expect. I damn sure wasn’t expecting from Air of Abrasion to turn out to be one […]

A late 2022 release that I got my hands on even later in 2022, Lunar Mercia is a post/atmospheric black metal band from Birmingham in the UK, and resides in the same dark, dreamy, melodic, jangly space as Ghost Bath, Wolves in the Throne Room, Woods of Desolation, Harakari for the Sky, Alcest and such. […]

With a name like Lightlorn ( ‘having no light’ or ‘bereft of light’) you’d think the debut EP from these Gothenburg atmospheric/post black metallers would be a truly grim, depressive affair. However, the 4 lengthy songs that comprise this EP are actually some of the most delightfully uplifting, melodic black metal I’ve heard in a […]