So if a member of Decrepit Birth (Chase Frasier) decided to go off and have some fun with a side project, take a guess what it would sound like?  And what if he recruited the guitarist from Arkaik (Ivan Mungia)?  If you guessed it would be a head-churning, riff-filled, 200 mph tech-death punch to the throat, […]

“Aliencore” eh? That’s what the band has jokingly called their deathcore/death metal style, and after listening a few times it actually does seem to fit (and of course everyone knows we needed another sub-genre in the metal world). If you took Beneath the Massacre and Obscura and mixed them together with every Atari game ever […]

10 years after Onwards to Mecca, one of the elder statesmen of New Yawk death metal, like Pyrexia last year, has reformed and are giving it another go on Unique Leader records. And like Pyrexia’s Feast of Iniquity, Imperium is a relatively successful reunion, if still in the shadow of Suffocation and Dying Fetus all these […]

Adding some deathcore to Unique Leader’s well documented tech death onslaught, comes the UKs self described ‘politicore’ activists Acrania (a fetal birth defect) bringing the absolute heavy to the fray. Listen, if you don’ t like pig squeals, ‘reeeee’ styled inhaled growls, tons of bass drop laden breakdowns and some rudimentary if effective blasting, I’m […]

In nature, the hunter always at some point becomes the hunted or to use another analogy the student becomes the master. Pick your terrible analogy, but it applies to metal all the time. Some younger hungrier, more talented acts eventually surpasses their peers after looking up at the pedestal. it is the natural order, an […]

Fallujah is a little bit the victim of the deathcore backlash as well as saturation of techy modern ‘death metal’ bands like The Faceless, Within the Ruins, River of Nihil, Kamikabe Born of Osiris, The Contortionist and such. Their debut, The Harvest Wombs was a solid effort I enjoyed, despite the samey, sweep, solo blast,’ look what good guitarists we are’ […]

The second album from the reformed Pillory, (who released one album, No Lifeguard at the Gene Pool back in 2005 then broke up in 2008) isn’t quite what you’d expect from Unique Leader.  And while it continues the label’s excellent run of simply killer 2014 releases, it does it from a slightly different angle. Rather […]

Hailing from Iceland, Beneath is a tech death metal band who share two ex members with the only other death metal band from Iceland I have ever heard,the pretty damn solid  Ophidian I, who released their debut back in 2012 on Soulflesh Collector Records. The Barren Throne is the band’s second album, and it’s no surprise […]

Unique Leader Records is on a definite upswing. Dating back to last year’s Rings of Saturn,  Pyrexia, Deeds of Flesh and Deprecated releases and opening up 2014 with Soreption’s killer  Engineering the Void (one of my contenders for album of the year), Alterbeast, and Iceland’s Beneath (review coming soon)  and this, the third album (though the first I have heard) from […]

Formerly known as Gary Busey Amber Alert, California Alterbeast has released an album that adds to Unique Leaders killer 2014 so far which has included the outstanding Soreption release,The Kennedy Veil, as well as the upcoming Near Death Experience and Beneath albums. However, this isn’t quite as much of a brutal death metal affair as […]

  Italian death metal troupe, BLOODTRUTH, is pleased to join Unique Leader Records’ expanding realm of extreme. Initially forged in 2009 as the side project of Fleshgod Apocalypse members Francesco Paoli and Paolo Rossi, and now featuring the updated lineup of vocalist Luigi Valenti, guitarist Stefano Rossi Ciucci, bassist Riccardo Rogari and drummer Giacomo Torti, BLOODTRUTH heave forth […]

Swedish band Soreption plays technical death metal with the syncopated, razor-sharp riffs of Decapitated with the machine-like djent-chugging of Aeon. Their first release on Unique Leader, Engineering the Void is their follow-up to their 2010 release Deterioration of Minds, which I only became aware of last year. Although heavily technical, Soreption fuses their convoluted riffs […]

Last year around this time, a Unique Leader release by the band Katalepsy set the brutal death world on edge with their album Autopsychosis; it also ended up as one of my top 5 albums of the year. Now early in 2014, label mates The Kennedy Veil have tried to once again recreate what Katalepsy […]

Dysmorphic is a technical death metal band from France and A Notion of Causality is their full length debut album.  They have a self financed ep from a few years back that I have yet to hear.  Some of the ep tracks appear on this full length and one would assume they have been revamped.  […]

Dang it. I wanted to like this sooooo much more. Oblivion sees former All Shall Perish founder and guitarist Ben Orum reunite with buddies Nick Vasallo (vocals) and Luis Martinez (drums) from his pre ASP band, Antagony, a vastly under rated progressive deathcore act from a decade ago (seriously, go listen to the bands second […]

It’s been 6 long years since Pyrexia’s last album, Age of the Wicked, was released and what we have here folks is Feast of Iniquity, the fourth album in this legendary NYDM band’s repertoire and it’s a bulldozer of an album. WOW-Zeus mixed and mastered this bad boy at his Planet Z Studio and one […]

Deprecated were a band who featured bassist Derek Boyer  (Deeds of Flesh, Disgorge, Decrepit Birth) before he joined Suffocation, and now reunited, the band now features Terrance Hobbs (Suffocation), Matt Sotelo (Decrepit Birth) for this, the rerecording and rereleasing  of the band’s sole release, the 1998 EP, Deridng His Creation. And a scorcher it is. […]

Here’s a unique and challenging album from the usually predictable Unique Leader Records. Hailing from Australia but residing in Los Angeles, Devolved have 3 previous full length albums under their belts, none of which I’ve heard, so I had nothing to compare this blind purchase to. My last blind purchase was also a Unique Leader […]

You kind of know what you are getting just by looking at the cover of the debut from Pittsburgh’s Kamikabe; the logo, the artwork, the label, etc; yup- techy, brutal death metal/deathcore that culls from the likes of label mates like Fallujah and Halo of Gunfire, early The Faceless and Born of Osiris (minus the […]

I wrote this at the same time as Ingested for 2 reasons, the first being that its slamming death metal also but also for balance because whilst it is of that ilk it is a decidedly different beast. VTS is for all the people who don’t like Ingested or for that fact, all the deathcore […]

One usually knows what to expect from a Unique Leader release, which is not a bad thing. It just means that the soup of the day is technically proficient death metal brutality. Most, however, would not expect the soup de jour to be made in Ankara, Turkey. But that only means that some folks on these shores have not been paying attention to what has been for some time now a fertile extreme metal scene. Enter Carnophage, one of the shining stars of the Turkish death metal movement. Deformed Future / Genetic Nightmare consists of eight smartly written compositions that are savagely delivered and technically competent, yet also surprisingly varied, often groovy, and individualistic. In other words, you can in fact tell when one track ends and another begins. Guitarist Berkan Basoglu checks in with The Teeth

Despite the switch from Deepsend to Unique Leader, little has changed in the Lecherous Nocturne camp. They still feature Mike Poggione (Monstrosity, Carpharnaum) on bass, they still unleash blistering blackened death metal, still under 30 minutes in length, and its still pretty good stuff. Coming it at 28 minutes, compared to Adoration of the Blade’s […]

Change is often a hit and miss prospect for metal bands; just ask Metallica, Entombed, Immortal, Carcass, Gorefest and many others. In the case of California’s Decrepit Birth, who after a nasty and publicized arrest of their guitarist Mike Turner on Child Molestation charges, change has been a good thing. The change also includes Odious Mortem drummer […]

There’s something to be said for no frills, competently brutal, US death metal and Vile, along with Divine Empire’s Method of Execution have delivered it in droves.Compared to other Unique Leader bands like Decrepit Birth, Agiel, Gorgasm, Internal Suffering and such, Vile’s third album is actually rather tame; there’s some control, some blackened melody, solos […]