If you are sending Teeth of the Divine (that’s us) self-released demos and/or other releases, a couple of things will get you noticed and probably reviewed. First, it helps if you are good. A recent example of this being the six track demo from Poland’s Hyperial. Or, number two, you have some sort of intriguing […]

Sick Human Essence, a four-song EP from Italy’s Blessed Dead, is the perfect introductory sample of what the band is about. Mixing elements of Symphonies of Sickness-era Carcass, Symbolic-era Death, some riffs found on Cradle of Filth’s Dusk and Her Embrace, modern day Cannibal Corpse, and various other influences isn’t exactly an easy accomplishment. Blessed […]

Considering the amount of stuff we get sent to review, you’d better be pretty good to be an independent Polish industrial/cyber death metal band and your 6 song demo EP gets my attention enough to warrant a review. It’s also lucky that I haven’t heard any really good rushing cyber death metal in a long […]

With a name like The Fat Dukes of Fuck, I figured on name alone this would be awful.  But after spinning it a few times, I have to say this is album grows on you like whatever it is you picked up from that girl you banged the other night when you couldn’t see straight. […]

Getting their start over the past decade with a demo and EP, The Netherlands’ Malicious Dream has been picking up the pace more recently. After meeting some positive reception for their live performances, their debut has apparently been awaited with some anticipation by those with the fortune to have heard the band before this. Complete […]

Shoot ‘em Up, the self-released album from Canadian death-thrashers Mortör is one of those efforts that you hear every once in a while that makes you think it could have easily been released on a metal label of some repute. It’s catchy, it’s grooving, and it’s just plain tough. With nary an ounce of fat […]

Recommended to me by a fellow teethofthedivine forum member, Mare Cognitum‘s second release, was released back in June as a mere ‘pay what you want’ bandcamp digital download. But now, An Extraconscious Lucidity is now available as a limited CD from the band’s sole member and brain child Jacob Buczarski. But whatever format you decide […]

After a demo and a few EPs, New York City-based grim black metallers Imperial Triumphant have finally released their debut full-length album. Sporting a rather primitive, crude sound to coincide with their blend of (mostly) American and (some) Scandinavian black metal, Abominamentvm is a raging slab of manic, war-torn blasphemy. In essence, Abominamentvmis a relenting […]

Aussie Doomsters Myraeth were formerly known as Mona’s Lament but have released one EP and this, their debut under their new moniker and its very good stuff.  Although adding to their country’s fine doom stock with the likes of Mournful Congregation, Futility, Paramecium, Inverloch, Clagg  and such, Myraeth is far more rooted on the Scandinavian, […]

If you’re a progressive metal nerd like myself, chances are you’ve heard of Scott Mosher. On top of having a great character and sense of humour, he has four solo albums under his name. If you have heard him before, you’ll probably agree that he’s one of the best guitarists in the world of melodic […]

Let’s go back a few decades, back to a time when rock ruled the FM waves. Not the ‘hang out at the mall and try on cardigans’ sort of rock either; this was the sort of rock that dove into everything dirty and grimy, bodily fluids notwithstanding. Regardless what your opinions on the 1980’s hard […]

“Mountain,” the first cut from On the Steps of the Temple, bursts forth like a natural disaster. It’s cinematic and epic, the score to a looming apocalypse or a terrible revelation. It’s the sound of the earth shaking and crumbling loose to unleash something monstrously unnatural – some great and slumbering beast that cranes its […]

I owe Wisconsin’s Shroud of Despondency a huge apology. They sent me 2011s Dark Meditations In Monastic Seclusion last year for review, and I just never got around to reviewing in. In part because of my review backlog and in part because their take on folky, woodsy, progressive black metal wasn’t sitting well with me […]

What do the verbs “drink”, “fight” and “fuck” have in common? XII Boar (Say it with me: “Twelve Boar”). Judging from sound of their new EP, that’s probably all they do. I’m talking rocking, galloping, swaggering metal that tumbles along like a coked out Dukes of Nothing crashing headlong into Beaten Back to Pure. This […]

It’s often an odd and amusing circumstance when one receives an album from a band and when it’s popped into the stereo (or iTunes), it sounds nothing like you’d expect. The band has completely altered its sound, approach and logo like it’s an entirely new band. Then it hits you: this is a different band […]

Bow is a project spawned from the mind of Chris van der Linden, a guy likely better known for his work under the title Fourteen Twentysix. Although Fourteen Twentysix has been called ‘progressive rock’, it may have been more fitting to call it a mix between ambient music and alternative rock; a combination that worked […]

Hailing from my old college stomping grounds in Kansas City, Missouri, Solace and Stable are a group of young tech metallers cut from the same cloth as bands like Between the Buried and Me, Woe of Tyrants, The Demonstration, Conducting from the Grave, With Passion and such; they play a form of shred filled, melodic […]

Hailing from Texas and featuring The Faceless drummer Lyle Cooper, Absvrdist play a form of vicious modern grind/crust that would sit well on Southern Lord. It will appeal to fans of  Enabler and any other of Southern Lord’s crust/hardcore bands, and it’s got just a dash of black metal (though that might just be the […]

Arguably since Alcest made it big, the fusion of black metal and shoegaze music has become pretty popular, particularly among one and two-man bands. First capturing my heart with the likes of Lantlos and Heretoir, this appropriately titled ‘blackgaze’ sound offered a much softer approach to the black metal aesthetic, a perfect alternative for sleepy […]

Death metal will always be my passion, and there has been some really good stuff dropping as of late (Amon, Tombthroat, Miseration, Relics of Humanity). But there does come a time where one can get death-metalled out so to say, and a break can sometimes be in order. That prompted me to grab the second […]

So those of you currently enjoying the glut of old school metal bands fronted by smoky, female crooners (The Devils Blood, Christian Mistress, Witch Mountain, Jess and the Ancient Ones, Jex Thoth, Blood Ceremony, etc) here’s a short little EP that should appeal to you by way of the debut EP from Nevada’s Demon Lung […]

I had a hard time coming up with a description of Burnsred and their impressive debut album. So, I thought I’d simply lift the band’s own description of themselves as it sums the sound up perfectly: “Loosely fitting into the doom/sludge/post-metal genre, Burnsred play music which ebbs and flows through harmonic progressions, tempo changes, and […]

Hail Satan! That’s certainly what the folks of Nexhymn have been doing in the mountains of Colorado. Black Horizon is the self-released EP, and it’s essentially a relentless assault of brutal, hateful death metal. Think Suffocation meets Origin…but with a killer female vocalist. Angela Gossow would shatter under the sheer intensity of Holly Wedel’s voice […]

Battlescarred is an apt title on a couple of levels for Abominant, Kentucky’s Death Metal mainstays, an act with no less than eight full-length albums under its collective bullet belt. Sticking to their bullshit-free USDM approach no matter the trend or the financial risk, Abominant wear those USDM scars proudly, while their brand of scalding […]

Decent, if derivative, Dead Southern Bishop’s new self-released EP doesn’t make much of an impression. Their sound is firmly rooted in the southern sludge scene of the late 90’s and early 00’s and is similar to period bands Mugwart and Leechmilk. Being unoriginal isn’t necessarily an issue (i.e. Witchcraft, Orchid or, per this genre, Moloch), […]