Though not quite the tech-death onslaught that 2021 was, 2022 has still had some stellar releases from the likes of Aethereus, Inanimate Existence and GreyLotus. And while GreyLotus’ Dawnfall might be my top contender right now, Exocrine’s fifth album is certainly right up there as well. France’s Exocrine got on my radar with 2020s Maelstrom, […]

California’s Inanimate Existence has been releasing quality albums for a few years now, but never seems to quite break into the discussion of absolute top-tier tech death with say, First Fragment, Gorod, Obscura, and such. Even when they had Riley McShane (Continuum, Alleageaon) in their ranks back in 2014, they were juuuuuust on that cusp. […]

Kansas’s technical death metal powerhouse Origin return with their eighth full length record Chaosmos. Paul Ryan, Mikey Torres, Jason Keyser, and John Longstreth waste zero time pummeling the listener with the opening track “Ecophagy.”  The track starts off with a strong hook and then proceeded to get progressively more technical as the track goes on. […]

It seems like forever ago when Sweden’s Soreption was a contender for my 2014 album of the year with Engineering the Void. The perfect blend of stuttering Meshuggah syncopation and tech death wizardry as well as sudden bursts of orchestral elements just hit m perfectly. However, the 2018 follow up, Monument of the End, didn’t […]

Jeremy Turner from Unmerciful turned me on to this unique project of Origin lead guitarist Paul Ryan. Ryan called Maentra.  Based out of San Francisco Maentra play a really unique mix of death metal, grindcore, and tinges of industrial. Kundalini Rising kicks off with “Muladhara”.  I was surprised to hear that Ryan does not play […]

I last heard this Seattle band back in 2016 when I reviewed their second self-released EP, Enduring Creation. However, I wasn’t sure what label they would fit on and what the audience was for their very heavily keyboard-drenched form of technical black-ish metal. Well, 6 years later we have our answer with a match made […]

Man… now that is an album cover. In the annals of heavy metal/extreme music, the writings of JRR Tolkien have long resided in largely black metal  (Summoning), power metal (Blind Guardian), ‘garb-core’ (Battlelore) and even death metal (Khazaddum). But what the world was clearly lacking was some Tolkien-based, technical, blackened deathcore. Well, here comes Washington […]

So after an absolutely ridiculously good year for tech-death in 2021 with the likes of First Fragment, Obsidian I, Obscura, Hannes Grossman, Inferi, Stortregn, Alustrium and others, it took exactly one month for 2022 to see its first stellar tech-death record. Leiden (suffer or endure?) is the second album from this Tacoma, Washington act who […]

Krakow Poland’s Redemptor return with their fourth full length album Agonia.  I had previously reviewed the groups 2017 release Arthaneum which was one of my favorite albums of that year. Agonia is an excellent follow up album that has a slow build to it which is worth the wait.  Opening with “Tectonic Plates” Daniel Kesler’s […]

Listen, if you guys want me to stop reviewing material from Transcending Obscurity Records, you’re going to have to tell them to calm it down with the excellent new releases… Don’t, though. That brings us to the new, excellent album from a band with an intriguing name, The Last of Lucy. I didn’t like it […]

“Good Things Come to Those Who Wait” – Lady Mary Montgomerie Currie. I’m not sure there is a more apt proverb than the above one when it comes to Dessiderium, (loosely meaning ‘an ardent desire or longing for something lost’), the solo project from Alex Haddad, also the guitarist/vocalist for tech-death metallers Arkaik. Both for […]

For 3 albums now, Canada’s young tech-death masters have shredded their way into the upper echelon of the genre. From 2011’s barely registering debut, All Shall Align, to 2014swatershed album,  The Lucid Collective, which put them on the map, to 2017s Relentless Mutation, which signaled they were now masters of their craft they have improved […]

I have reviewed 2 of the 3 last Obscura albums, including the magnificent 2016 magnum opus, Akroasis. But for some reason, we/I never covered 2018s Diluvium album, despite it being yet another standout in the band’s consistently brilliant releases, thought it saw them take a more melodic turn. So I thought I would return to […]

So here is one of my more obscure forays into 2021’s bumper crop of deathcore and it’s from Ukranian act, Lieweaver who split the middle ground between burly mid-paced downtempo deathcore and more technical death metal stylings and also throw in a few atmospheric keyboards here and there. It’s not doing anything particularly original or […]

Vulvodynia from South Africa are one of the heavy hitters in the brutal death metal/deathcore scene and in their short 7 year existence, have garnered quite a nice following, as well as releasing 3 prior full lengths and ep’s.  Just like Korpse, Vulvodynia, were another free agent Unique Leader picked up and this year has […]

Stop me if you’ve heard this before – the best technical death metal album of the year is Ominous Ruin, no wait! it’s Hannes Grossman, oh no, shit it’s Ophidian I.  That’s it! PHEW.  I hope nothing else comes out that will change that…. Obscura , Archspire, and First Fragment “Oh, Hai!” Shit. Listen, there’s a […]

I’ve been covering Inferi since 2009s End of an Era, and since then they have become The Artisan Era’s flagship band and one of the mainstays of the melodic/shredding technical death metal genre in the US scene. They have not been super prolific, with 2 more albums, an EP and a redo of End of […]

You are starting to hear and feel the impact of covid and the chaotic final year of Trump’s administration on some albums being put out now. Albums that were written in seclusion, online, in depressive states, in rage. I think we are seeing a real creative burst in the metal scene, that might be one […]

Fuck. So back in February, I swore that Ominous Ruin‘s Amid Voices That Echo in Stone would be the tech death album of the year. Then shortly after that, Stortgren’s Impermanence,  was definitely going to take that mantle. But then Hannes Grossman dropped To Where the Light Retreats, earlier this summer, and THAT album was […]

Austin Texas’s Cathexis return with their second full length effort Untethered Abyss.  I have been spinning this album for the last few months and my first impressions of them were a black death band with influences like Immolation and Ulcerate.  They are a bit more varied in terms of groove and riff variety.  The Title […]

I was fortunate to review the first 4 Pestilence albums when they were reissued through Hammerheart Records, as well as the last Pestilence album – Hadeon, which was also released on Hammerheart Records.  I went into this review as objective as I could possibly get.  I say this because I love all the Pestilence albums […]

Hannes Grossman is a busy dude. The talented drummer extraordinaire has had his fingers in many pies over the years, earning great respect and admiration with his work in bands including, Necrophagist, Obscura, Alkaloid, Blotted Science and Gomorrah amongst many others. Along the way Grossman has also established a solid solo career, showcasing his songwriting […]

I have to admit I’m a little bored of brutal death metal. Especially the stuff Comatose puts out on the regular basis; gurgle, squeal, rape, cunt, gore, blast etc. I  mean I don’t dislike it, there is a time and a place for it, but the last album they released that remotely stuck with me […]

Remember the movie rule of 2? (i.e Armageddon vs Deep Impact) that so often applies in music? So I recently discovered two US symphonically laced, shreddy, tech death/deathcore/metalcore/melodic death metal /The Artisan Era core bands and the same time. First is Tempe, Arizona’s Dead World Reclamation, and their second album, Aura of Iniquity, and second, […]

If you’re into metal, you probably don’t expect to hear anything groundbreaking very often. Sometimes, bands try new things and fall flat. Sometimes it sounds like they just input strange instruments or passages just because they want, not because it serves the song. This happens often in the attempt to be “different.” On the other […]