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 […]

I reviewed Bile’s last release, in 2021, the ep: Sharks And Covid, Vol.1.  Pot Farmer vol​.​2 is their seventh full-length album and any fan of bands like of Ministry, early Fear Factory, Skinny Puppy, Godflesh, NIN, Front 242 should find something to sink their teeth into, with the new Bile, although this is much more […]

I usually don’t review digital-only releases, but when you stumble across a symphonic tech-death supergroup based on one of the greatest video games series’ of all time, I’ll make an exception. Video gamers will recognize the moniker as one of the weapons from the Gears of War series, and indeed Hammer of Dawn is a […]

Sometimes it’s nice to take a break from the oversexed, fast car, jumbo jet, yacht party lifestyle of a playboy heavy metal reviewer and get back to basics. You know, get back to the reason why you have an aircraft carrier full of Ferraris in the first place, check out some underground promos, and find […]

While I have an affinity for every single metal sub-genre in some way, it’s safe to say some are less “my thing.” Grindcore is one of those, but I do enjoy some once in a while. Some bands just do it right. Some bands are also from my local scene, or more specifically the scene […]

In my ongoing quest to discover symphonic death metal of any sort here in 2022, I’ve stumbled across some awesome, obscure stuff this summer alone,  like Japan’s Imperial Circus Dead Decadence ( whose 殯――死へ耽る想いは戮辱すら喰らい、彼方の生を愛する為に命を讃える―― might be my album of the year- which was just going to be too much of a challenge to review/type), The […]

I can’t even describe how excited I was to hear the new Imonolith full length. I am a big fan of their debut, owning a signed copy, which was from a pre-order. However, considering this album has 10 songs, including 3 demos of previous songs, a cover, and a re-recording of another, to call this […]

Here’s a short little EP from an emerging artist, Witnesses, who dabbles in doom as well as the ambient genres. While I am not a fan of the ambient genre in general, I am a massive fan of the doom part of the sound Greg Schwan has conjured. So when he asked if he could […]

So a handful of excellent blackened/symphonic deathcore (or whatever you want to call it) releases have come out in 2022 to basically keep fans satiated until Lorna Shore drop Pain Remains later this year; Shadow of Intent, Hurakan, Downfall of Mankind, Worm Shepherd (who will somehow be releasing a second album later this year…) to […]