The strangeness that is Torche has returned to my speakers once again and I could not be happier. This album is in and out like the wind with thirteen songs in thirty-six minutes. They have often been described as a stoner-metal equivalent to The Foo Fighters and I don’t think that’s an off base comparison [...]

This was probably my most anticipated album of 2008. After all, not many albums have managed to move me as much as 2003’s Choirs of The Eye. Though a challenging listen, the melodies and structures soon became identifiable and revealed a complexity of emotion rarely explored. 2006’s Dowsing Anenome With Copper Tongue seemed to be [...]

I knew nothing about this prior to putting it in, but the short track lengths clued me in that it would either be something experimental and ambient, or maybe grindcore.
It’s grindcore alright, but executed with the speed and ferocity of black metal - like Anaal Nathrakh covering Slayer at double-time. Now, grind sometimes devolves into [...]

Harsh, fast, repetitive, slow, haunting, grim, raw, distorted, minimalist, rhythmic, this is the definitive remastered director’s cut of prolific Malefic’s 2001 demo A Gate Through Bloodstained Mirrors and 2001 promo A Darkened Winter. Unfortunately the promo copy that I am reviewing only includes disc one of the two-disc set so I still have not acquired [...]

Three things come to mind as I listen to this latest offering by prolific Malefic. The instruments stand out from the murk and get noticed, the songs have definite forward propulsion, though be it very slow, and the drums are real. The next thing that really makes a dramatic impact, which is difficult to do [...]

From the opening chords and snare march of “Voice Electric,” fans will realize that Cave In frontman Stephen Brodsky has hit total paydirt with this side project while his main band is on indefinite hiatus. The band’s debut album—and probably their last, since Brodsky has since moved on to front Pet Genius—is the best effort [...]

So after their recent Xasthur release, drone label Hyrda Head takes another leap into the black metal elite with the second album from Sweden’s one man, avant-garde black metal act Bergraven.
I still think, to this day that Fleurety’s Mid Tid Skall Komme is one of the more under-rated black metal albums that surfaced during the [...]

Imagine owning two paintings, Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son and Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase. The first would be hung in the living room for all the guests to admire; the second would be hung in the study for special guests to admire. This new disc by Xasthur, if it was a painting, would [...]