Lord of the Rings nerds will recognize the name of this Wisconsin death metal band as the vast underground Dwarven Kingdom also known as Moria and the site of the bridge where Gandalf uttered his famous “YOU SHALL NOT PASS!” challenge to the Bal-rog. So now my inner nerd got that out of the way, you […]
So Rhine is a project from Gabriel Tachell and some local Pacific Northwest musicians, and is the continuation of his UK act Perfect Harmony, but the name has changed and the the location is now Seattle, Washington. got it? But what matters is how damn good this is. Even with some questionable clean vocals this Opeth ian […]
I’ve heard some damn good doom-y, riff-y stuff from Austria; nightmare vomit sludgers Cyruss, killer psyched-out heavy rockers Savanah, etc. I know I’m forgetting more than a couple in this quick brainstorm session but the point is that there’s a damn good scene over in Austria that gets overlooked when viewing the international arena at […]
Chicago trio Snow Burial presents their first full-length Victory in Ruin after a pair of EPs. The band’s history is something I can jive with as the fellas formed the band after attending a Shiner reunion show. I’m a huge Shiner fan and Snow Burial has that same kind of effervescent, ever-changing sound that never […]
There is nothing wrong with the debut album from France’s TankrusT, nothing at all. There’s also nothing particularly striking about it either. They hail from France and seem to come from the ashes of some underground bands called SIC, One Shot, and Filet o’fish fuckin (yup), and they play a form of modern, tight, chunky, and almost Danish sounding […]
“Never judge a book by its cover”. You’d think I would have learned my lesson by now. When I got Nine Plagues in the mail, with a logo that looks like something I would have drawn on my 9th grade English folder, I set my expectation pretty low. However, as it turns out that the […]
I can’t say I’m overly familiar with the Lithuanian blackened doom/sludge scene, but the debut, Dugne (seabed? bottom of the sea?) from Deprivacija certainly holds some promise if the rest of the scene is as competent. 6 songs, 55 minutes, a gritty, feedback laden, gravelly guitar tone and delivery despondent slower, crawling riffs and pained raspy screams will give […]
An interesting thing has happened in extreme metal over the last twenty or so years. As a genre, death metal once looked like it was limitless- not necessarily in terms of speed, technicality or the abstract idea of “brutality” but regarding where the style could go creatively. The aforementioned traits no doubt were going to […]
Suppressive Fire is a new, slightly blackened 3 piece death/thrash metal band from North Carolina, and while I’ve never been a huge fan of black/thrash, Suppressive Fire lean a little more to the thrash side and their war laden themes and imagery had me more intrigued than I usually would be with something this style. With […]
Recalling the glory years of Scandinavian 90s melodic death metal, Finland’s Suotana and their debut album hearken back to an era of early Children of Bodom, Norther, Lothlorien, Ensiferum, Kalmah and such. Big, epic, keyboard drenched, catchy, bouncy slightly blackened melodic death metal is the order of the day, and while there is nary a […]
Whoa! Reykjavik Iceland’s Cult of Lilith has made quite the debut with their nearly twenty minute Arkanum EP. I honestly did not know what to expect from this group as I was expecting something completely different when I saw the cover artwork. I was thinking that this was going to be more of a symphonic […]
If Volume I era Sleep was signed to Am-Rep in the 90s and recorded Sleep’s Holy Mountain under Haze’s supervision, you’d probably have something like Connecticut’s Bedroom Rehab Corporation. Simply a duo comprised of Adam Wujtewicz on bass and drummer Meghan Killimade, the band’s second studio slab Fortunate Some is full of hypnotic groove meditations […]
Spellbook, the 2012 debut from this Canadian/Balkan one man project was a pretty solid slab of thrash/death/black metal. Not much has changed in 3 years. The sound is a tight, almost robotic (due to programmed drums), death/thrash release with gruff almost Chris Barnes is growls. There’s no wasted sound, no intros, no interludes, and while […]
Canada’s a good place to make black metal. Some of my bandmates are from Canada, and I know the cold up there is dogging and leads some folks to produce music that reckons of the endlessly lashing frost that befalls every inch of the country. Murderous death/black quintet Vile Insignia are a good representation of […]
Necrocrosm is a curious one for me. When I saw the promo sheet and read the bio and saw the artwork, both got me interested in them and I decided to give them a listen. I was impressed on the onset with the sound, in which you can hear all members and even the bass […]
Hailing from Ohio, this is TON’S, Jeff Shepler’s other band, Fully Consumed. The band is labeled as technical death metal. I found the band to be more straightforward brutal death metal. Think Gorgasm/Lividity/(early)Deeds of Flesh type of stuff. I really love TON and their new album, but I’m not the biggest fan of Fully Consumed’s […]
Seeking to take the classic sludge sound into busier, high traffic avenues, Arizonians Gale spare no expense and leave no boulder uncrushed in their mission to plow eardrums under six feet of sediment in the name of their mission. They’re atmospherically heavy like before Neurosis went all soft on us, heavy and ugly like an […]
Like fellow North Carolina instrumental sages Husky (now known as Watch Husky Burn), three-piece Boar weave gracefully manic, deviously diverse jams across their debut Self-Titled EP. Their tricky, psychedelic work casts a magician’s mind control spell on the listener as it traverses the briny depths of psychedelic rock, ascends the mountainous plateau of heavy metal […]
It’s pretty much a given that I’m going to be all about anything that either Erik Burke or Dan Lilker put their hands to; they being two of my all-time favorite grindcore musicians. This is even moreso in light of the disbanding of Brutal Truth at the end of last year, which left a huge […]
The problem with the modern thrash scene is too many bands are relying on the nostalgia of the genre’s ‘80s heyday instead of forging their own path forward. Naturally there are exceptions, but most decent modern thrash bands tend to hybridize with other styles to create something unique and noteworthy. I might sound a […]
This is Behold! the Monolith’s first release since Vocalist/Bassist Kevin Dade was tragically killed in a car accident a couple years back; not too long after releasing their sophomore album, Defender, Redeemist. That album was a pretty solid slab of whatever you call their punky/doomy/sludgy/thrashy/modern/traditional heavy metal; and an album that showed a lot of […]
Man, this is THE shit. This is like a long lost high school reunion for my ears. Chris Chiera swingin’ axe (he the man behind Sofa King Killer’s purely classic guitar sound), Aaron Brittain kickin’ the cans (his hard hits have been missed since the Fistula days) and bassist Adam Horwatt (So Long Albatross) keeps […]
In continuing with my presenting different horizons to you, our loyal readers, I present to you Salem’s Lott. At first glance if you see the pictures of the band you may be….”WTF?!?….but if you went just off the music alone without seeing them you may say…okay…not too bad. So with that being said, remember these […]
The hallucinatory, Kyuss-ian chords that entrance “Destroyer Television,” the EP opener of Phoenix, Arizona doom lords Horse Head and their debut release The Missionary may be one of the all-time great red herrings. Aw, what a gracious melody…so inviting, relaxing and warm that it’s like good sex meets a fifth of whiskey…and then planes […]
I find many unjust situations bordering on criminal acts. Here are some examples. The fact that I have been playing the Mega Millions for close to 2 decades and I have only won, maybe 40 bucks over this course. Another one that comes to mind is my damn Dallas Cowboys have only won 2 […]