If you are the kind of a person that thought the 2011 releases by the likes of Ana Kefr or Unexpect were just too much, too chaotic and too avant garde, just go ahead and leave now. Go on! You’ll be doing yourself a favor. On the other hand, if you thrive on those sort of […]

Listen, a s much as I’d like to, I rarely review 3 track demos- I simply don’t have the time considering all the other stuff we get here to review. However, I will make a few exceptions; 1) if you are really fucking good, 2) if you are really fucking good and local and 3) […]

There’s a very peculiar sound to Finnish bands that mingle between death and thrash metal. One can’t just throw in a few clear comparisons and call it a day (read: review.) Ravage Machinery, on their latest four song EP The Dystopian Tide, follow that path as they too have a sound that’s ‘universal’ but at […]

I absolutely hate it when a band releases a top notch debut album and soon after they break up. It’s a total mind fuck I tell you! But at least the bands that break up present us with something worth remembering before they vanish into oblivion. Bring Me Solace–a progressive metalcore band from Portland, Oregon–did […]

I’ve followed the UK’s The Belonging for a while now, from their slightly forgetful 2005 debut, Setting the Scene, to 2009’s Ashes of a Fallen Throne, where the band took an improved step into impressive blackened war metal. And now, in 2011, with their third follow up, we’ve got yet another quality self-released album. Continuing their […]

Despite all the attention that post-rock influenced black metal or East Coast and Pacific Northwest black metal gets, there’s a few nice little unsigned, independent, more obscure USBM bands lurking in the sunny depths of California. Notably Lake of Blood and this mysterious new act, Leucosis. With only six myspace-friends and three of them notably […]

I’m not entirely sure how to describe the second, self-released album from Italy’s Laetitia In Holocaust. I mean, if the moniker and the cover art–a group of giant insects gang banging the planet earth–doesn’t clue you in the level of weirdness contained on Rotten Light, I’m not sure I can help. Falling ever so generally […]

War and death metal have been ingrained within each other since the genre first started. And it seems a certain style of death metal has been associated with war. Sure there’s a few black metal acts and so called ‘war metal’ acts that that do the whole war thing, but I think most would agree […]

Trials are a modern metal band from Chicago. They’re not bad but their style of music is somewhat predictable; clean vocals, Pantera riffs, weird gothic talking and radio friendly everything else. Modern metal bands are a mixed bag, on one hand they can deliver extremely catchy music (All That Remains), but on the other, well […]

What is in the water in Canada? Between Gorguts, Kataklysm, Cryptopsy, Beneath the Massacre and numerous other, the hockey-loving country to the north has turned out a veritable who’s-who in the death metal world. And does anybody remember an unsigned band named Vengeful that dropped one of the best death metal albums of the year […]

This is a tricky one. Stillife‘s Requiem leaves a bit to be desired initially, but upon further listening, its appeal starts to break through. The Michigan group known as Stillife has its own unique approach to heavy metal, one that won’t willingly be confined to genres. They sample progressive, traditional, doom, modern and then some […]

And I thought Journal‘s Unlorja was ambitious! Imagine if Kayo Dot, The Pax Cecilia, Orphaned Land, Unexpect , Between the Buried and Me and Opeth all got together and contributed their DNA to a new breed of experimental, musical  genetics — the resultant zygote would be Ana Kefr. Meaning ‘I am Infidel’ in Arabic, California’s […]

I generally don’t go for gimmicks or over the top outfits in metal. Especially if such bands play second rate music, simply relying on their shtick to carry them. I also happen to think the likes of GWAR and Lordi are horrendously overrated. But if you are into that kind of a thing, A Band […]

Fans of Protest the Hero, With Passion (RIP), The Human Abstract and Between the Buried and Me, take note. Detractors of all four, go click elsewhere. Plying a borderline pretentious, yet brilliant amalgamation of chaotic, spazzy tech metal, death metal, power metal and thrash, Californian six piece Journal have delivered an epic self-released masterpiece that […]

I really wanted to like Margin of Error’s second self-released effort a little more, as it mixes deathcore with a sort of electronica/industrial sort of The Berzerker sheen, but in the end, the fusing of the two elements isn’t quite as impressive as it could have been. With a thick heavy production that has a […]

Other than Metallica, I wasn’t really that much into the Bay Area thrash of the late ’80s, preferring the European likes of Sabbat, Xentrix and Kreator and the more extreme sounds of Slayer. As the genre has made a denim clad comeback, albeit now somewhat over saturated, I’m slightly surprised that Arizona’s Hemoptysis hasn’t garnered […]

Progressive metal has taken on many new side streets over the last several years. No longer does the tag necessarily mean a band trying to recreate/reinterpret Rush‘s or Dream Theater‘s music. These days, bands like Opeth, Bigelf, and even Katatonia and Enslaved get included even within the outer fringes of the genre. Opeth in particular […]

So in a year that saw some truly excellent self-released efforts grace my year end list (Iron Thrones, Norse, Contaigeon, Shadow of the Colossus), and a last minute entry (Deathspell Omega’s Paracletus) along comes Italy’s Amia Venera Landscape and pulls a utterly unfathomable hail mary to nudge its way right onto my [yet unpublished, -ed.note] […]

I’ve been get a lot of CDs sent to me by truly independent bands – small but talented bands just wanting some press. Luckily it’s  my and Teeth of the Divine’s pleasure to give some exposure to quality acts like At Dusk, Iron Thrones, Johan Wolfgang Pozoj, The Sequence of Prime, Karnak Seti, Ironwood and […]

Listen, I get sent a lot of things in the mail from bands, labels and PR companies; stickers, CDs, shirts, candy and all that, but the main man behind Santa Cruz’s one man black metal act At Dusk, Korihor, has done a first. The cover art of his split CD-R with fellow Santa Cruz act […]

It’s been two year since I last heard from Micawber. Their last album Bloodrunner contained some amazing music. Though it was plagued by a demo quality the album was insanely heavy. They return with a follow up album entitled Hell On Earth; this is easily one of my favorite deathcore releases all year. The band […]

The debut from this Sydney Australia progressive folk-metal act was ambitious, but didn’t quite reach its potential. Fire:Water:Ash was a bit too wandering and unfocused for its own good. The maritime themed follow-up however, is an improved effort that sees the act fulfill the promise of the debut. Though hailing from Australia, the influences of […]

As the year 2011 draws near, there isn’t anything new about post-rock being combined with metal aesthetics (or vice versa) yet Denmark’s AEDRA showcase themselves in a positive—if not solely unique—light by blending the emotionality of post-rock with slower and much meatier doom elements. But isn’t that what various post-metal/sludge bands have been doing throughout […]

As I’ve lamented a few times this year, it really sucked that Burst broke up. They released two of my favorite releases of the 2000s, post-metal or otherwise, and I was really looking forward to a follow-up to Lazarus Bird. Ah well, they say the best way to get over a break-up is to go […]

You want to know how to get you self-released demo EP reviewed quickly? Send out a professional promotional package/folder that includes a retail CD, band contact information/bio, a poster, some glossy photos, a lyric sheet and some stickers. Even if your band is terrible, I’ll review your latest shite quicker than a few mp3s dumped […]