With bands like Krisiun, Blood Red Throne, Decapitated and other top-level death metal bands putting out new releases this year, I had high hopes for Vile’s new one – Metamorphosis. With six years between full lengths you would expect somewhat of a style change, and their flashy new artwork definitely hinted at these guys going […]

Two years after their dizzying third album Process of a New Decline, French tech-death sorcerers Gorod return with this 5-track EP of inspired remakes and re-imaginings, plus one epic of a closer. First off is “Earth Pus,” a new recording of a track from their 2005 release Neurotripsicks. It’s a blustery, groovy beast, all spidery […]

I covered Gigan’s debut, The Order of the False Eye, back in 2008, and I remember it being a difficult write-up. Describing music is hard enough, but when it’s complex, undulating tech-death, it really does become a you-have-to-hear-this-to-understand-it kind of deal. The Obscura review I wrote up a few weeks ago was a challenge as […]

New Zealand’s Ulcerate set the bar pretty high for themselves with 2009’s Everything is Fire, a monstrous slab of churning, atonal death metal that ended up on many 2009 year end lists, mine included. How would they respond? The album title says it all. Even though the formula is the same as on Everything is […]

Looking for some straight forward, old school death metal with grooves and traditional song structures? If so, then stay as far away as possible from any of Ulcerate’s three full-length releases. The New Zealand trio is the quintessential forward-thinking Willowtip act, even more so than most other groups on the roster, not to mention modern death metal in general. Angular, shape-shifting rhythms, guitar work that is more about the painting of sonic pictures than popular notions of riffing, and a vibe in both lyrics and music that is suffocating in its bleakness. As such, The Destroyers of All is in fact all that and a bag of chips. Drummer/composer Jamie St. Merat, uh, opens that bag to reveal its contents…something like that anyway.

That Maruta is a quintessential Willowtip band may be more of a tribute to label than artist. Always leaning slightly more to the grind side of the death-grind divide while releasing material that is often technical, but rarely polished; the now decade old label has certainly established a trademark sound at this point. That there […]

Willowtip is very pleased to announce the signing of Dallas’ BARING TEETH. Their debut album, Atrophy, will be released in early-Summer 2011. The band comments, “We are thrilled to be working with Willowtip. We have been fans of the label for years and are excited to be part of such a great lineup of bands.” […]

Macabre and Willowtip? Now that’s a pairing that took me by surprise. The Impaled signing and subsequent release of The Last Gasp seemed a tad askew too, though not in any kind of a shocking way. None of that should be taken to mean they weren’t smart signings though; only that Macabre in particular is […]

Portland, Oregon’s BLOOD FREAK has officially signed to Willowtip.  The label will release the band’s upcoming album, Mindscraper, on April 5, 2011.  The album was recorded at Midnight Mania Studios by Blood Freak’s own Maniac Neil, with Scott Hull handling the mastering duties. 12 tracks were recorded for Mindscraper.  They include: 1. Psychoplasmics (Intro) 2. […]

Miami, FL’s MARUTA have finished up work on their new album, and second for Willowtip, entitled Forward Into Regression.  A release set has been set for February 22, 2011.  Germany’s Power It Up Records will be releasing a gatefold LP version.  A release date for the vinyl is TBD.  Vocalist Mitchell Luna comments, “So we […]

After seven years off (not counting 2005’s Zero Comfort Margin EP), one of Willowtip’s first bands returns to the fray with an absolutely sick release that shows that brutal death metal/grindcore can be way more than power chords, pig squeals and comical cover art rife with porn and zombies. The aptly named Psalm of the […]

Willowtip is extremely pleased to announce the signing of the psychedelic extreme metal band GIGAN. GIGAN is set to enter the studio this fall to record their second full-length album entitled Quasi-Hallucinogenic Sonic Landscapes. The recording will once again take place in Chicago, IL at Semaphore studios with engineer Sanford Parker (Nachtmystium, Minsk, Buried at […]

So Willowtip has graced us with a killer trio of records this summer, taking a break from grindcore and delivering Fleshgod Apocalypse’s EP, Mafia, Circle of Dead Children’s disturbing Psalm of the Grand Destroyer, and the third album from Germany’s veteran masters of broodle death metal, Defeated Sanity. Following the template set by 2007’s watershed […]

Mixing brutal, technical death metal with classical elements, Italy’s Fleshgod Apocalypse exploded onto the scene last year with their debut full length player, Oracles (if you have yet to hear it, do yourself a favor and buy it now). Thankfully, the band isn’t letting us forget about them in 2010, unleashing arguably the best EP […]

Spring is officially here. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, flowers are blooming and I’m drowning in grindcore: Wormrot, Jante Alu, Unholy Grave, Sayyadina, Unholy Grave, Psycho and two releases from the always reliable Willowtip; Defeatist’s Sixth Extinction and the second album from Sweden’s Infanticide. If you enjoy Scandinavian grindcore in the vein […]

So after 2009s compilation Sharp Blade Sinks Deep Into Dull Minds collected all of Defeatist’s many split and EP, here is a new album of noisy, feral grindcore chaos from the chaps responsible for Anodyne and Kalibas . While not as structured and power chord as their European label mates and counterparts like Infanticide and […]

Massachusetts’ The Year of Our Lord was a victim of bad timing. Their debut and only full length self titled album was released in 2002, a time when melodic death metal was becoming stale and saturated and US bands simple weren’t supposed to be playing this style of metal. So like other US acts plying […]

2009 was a pretty strong year for grindcore (and Willowtip) with the likes of Blood I Bleed, Napalm Death, Defeatist, Insect Warfare, Afgrund, Mumakil, Magrudergrind and such delivering the grinding goods, and Willowtip put the cherry on top of 2009 with the 5th album from Polish stalwarts Squash Bowels. If you are familiar with European […]

Squash Bowels has officially signed to Willowtip. The band’s new album, Grindvirus, will be released October 20. The album was recorded at Hertz Studio (Decapitated, Vader, Dead Infection) and artwork was handled by Lukasz Jaszak (Emperor, Blood Red Throne).  In other Willowtip new, another anticipated Willowtip release is the complete discography of New England based melodic […]

If you could travel back in time and play some of our current tech-death for the death metal bands just starting out in the early years of the genre, would they be amazed that their efforts would one day spawn something so intricate and complex? Or would they just take off their instruments and give […]

Washington D.C. has always been known more as a punk hub than for metal. True, Wino got his start in nearby Wheaton, Md., Clutch hails from Montgomery County and Pig Destroyer resides in Northern Virginia. But when most fans of underground or extreme music think of D.C. they think of Minor Threat, Henry Rollins, The […]

Comprised of former members of unsung underground metal stalwarts Kalibas & Anodyne, Defeatist has been relentlessly pursuing the kind of revered status in the American grindcore scene that European and Japanese bands have achieved by virtue of their comprably more prolific and superior output to their stateside counterparts. Hailing back to the glory days of […]

My only previous exposure to this grinding Swedish trio was their 2007 split with Relevant Few, and I immediately thought the likes of Gadget and Rotten Sound finally had some competition to be Nasum’s heir apparent. Now I have not heard the full length debut Svarta Dagar, so I can’t compare Vid Helvetets Grindar, but […]

After the clinical tech death assault that was Of Fracture and Failure, New Zealand’s Ulcerate has made a few changes to their sound and thankfully replaced vocalist Ben Reed (bassist Paul Keland now performs vocals) and the end result is yet another simply killer Willowtip release and one of the most striking death metal albums […]

Germany’s Defeated Sanity have officially signed with Willowtip Records. The band is set to head into the studio this summer to record their third full-length album, “Chapters Of Repugnance” for a late 2009/early 2010 release. Recording will take place at Soundforge Studios in Berlin. The bands previous full length “Psalms of the Moribund” (2007, Grindthetic) […]