I’d heard of this band years ago, when they started gaining recognition during the tail-end of the ill-fated nu-metal movement. Never bothered to check them out, but seeing as If, their fourth album, is being released by The End Records (that bastion of iconoclasts and experimental goodness), and that it also debuted at #27 on [...]

Prolific is a word that’s often used to describe the Toronto-based experi-metal duo Nadja, as they’ve released over a dozen recordings in the past two years. How many of them are worth a listen is another story, but Aidan Baker (guitars, vocals, woodwinds, drum machines) and Leah Buckareff (bass, vocals) dip into their past on [...]

Perhaps best known thus far as being Toma Araya’s little brother Johnny’s band, Thine Eyes Bleed are billed as being technical thrash, and for the most part it’s an accurate descriptor. Not overly technical nor as Slayer influenced as one might expect, they do what they do well enough I suppose, but all in all, [...]

Sculptured is the side project from Don Anderson of Agalloch fame. Back in 1998, The Spear of the Lily is Aureoled was a solid effort that showed promise in the Opeth, Katatonia, and Agalloch territory. This was enough to gain my interest and in 2000 the band came out with Apollo Ends, a more progressive/jazz [...]

Enemy of the Sun is the latest musical endeavor from Grip Inc mastermind Waldemar Sorychta. The material on debut offering Shadows is undeniably metal, but there’s much more at play here than just that. The heavier thrashier parts are most comparable to Strapping Young Lad’s wall-of-sound cyber thrashing, but then there’s the not so intense, [...]

Here is the winner for best release thus far in 2008. Virgin Black has created one hell of a masterpiece in Requiem-Fortissimo and probably the best album to come out of Australia in years.
Fortissimo means loud or played very loudly. Considering this is the second chapter in a trilogy by the band (Pianissimo being released [...]

Dødheimsgard to DHG is kind of like Covenant to Kovenant. They are not fooling anyone, and the name change is meaningless anyway, absolutely everyone knows who they are, even with the loss of their logo and the loss of the band members that mattered. Are they a parody of themselves or something worse? Gone are [...]

I wish I could take a record for what it is the first spin through. I literally wrote off this disc before I captured the brilliance within it. That happens a lot though. I find myself returning to albums sometimes years after it initially didn’t take. With that said, once you feel you are in [...]

I’m sure there’s someone reading this review that will absolutely love this record, but it’s really just not my thing. The new project of Voivod drummer Michel “Away” Langevin, Kosmos is a throwback to the progressive jam bands of the 1970s. The 12 tracks on this record feature lots of spacey keyboards, organs and some [...]

I’m pretty sure I’m one of the few metal journalists that think Angelcorpse were a tad over-rated. Sure, albums like Exterminate and The Inexorable were good black/death metal albums, but I think most folks were caught up in the fact that a US band were going toe to toe with their Scandinavian counterparts in the [...]

There are albums, that no matter how many times you listen to them, you just can’t get your head around them. Ironically, a lot of them have come out on The End Records, and in the case of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum’s In Glorious Times, no amount of mind altering substances will ease the process of [...]

For the past decade, if you wanted to form a mosh pit at a Sigh show you had to bring your own music. Hangman’s Hymn changes everything. Calling it a return to form would be unfair but a nod to both their early days and the early days of black and thrash metal is definitely [...]

And it had started as such a good day …
Yesterday I had a day off during mortuary college finals and it was raining like a pure bitch, so I spent the AM sipping gin & lemonade, blasting my old Weakling and Antiseen cassettes, and watching Webe Web videos. (By the by, to Allison, Sherri, Marie [...]

Being from Europe myself, I actually grew up watching the Eurovision Song contest, and I still remember England’s Bucks Fizz winning with the inanely catchy “Making Your Mind Up” and becoming huge pop stars-one of the few commercial successes to arise from the contest. Watching the annual submission from Turkey was always a wonderful sonic [...]

I’m not sure if there is a more perfect marriage of label and band than The End Records re-recording and releasing Giant Squid’s 4 year old debut record. Though certainly falling under the doom/sludge/ambient umbrella of the likes of Isis, Neurosis, Pelican and Mogwai, as you’d expect from a band on The End, Giant Squid [...]

Q: If Necrophagist left Germany, travelling at 70 kph and Arcturus left Norway moving at half that speed at what time would they collide in front of the Cirque du Soileil and magically transform into the most aggressively weird Canadian metal band since Voivod?A: Just about now, I’d say.
Standing at the forefront of the tech-gypsy [...]

The End is a perfect fit for these unclassifiable Canadian oddities, as unless you frequent the Cirque D’Soleil while tripping balls and listening to Emperor and Mr Bungle on your head phones, I’ll almost guarantee you’ve never heard anything like this.I will try my best to sum this 7 piece entourage up for you as [...]

The End has been relatively quiet in 2006 thus far, but with August and beyond unveiling amazing releases like Agalloch, Unexpect, Giant Squid, Virgin Black and Stolen Babies albums, The End looks to again to back on track and dominate year end lists with their brand of superbly unclassifiable music. Starting with Agalloch’s third masterpiece, [...]

A taster EP from this progressive, post black, avant-garde, Winds meets Arcturus meets Solefald collaboration. A collaboration, that to me, comes across like a slightly more diverse and edgy version of Winds and has the benefit of Solefald’s Lazare (Lars Nedlund) on vocals rather than Winds’ rather underwhelming Lars Eric Si (who play bass in [...]

At first glance, Age of Silence seems like yet another post-black metal band with all the usual suspects (cough, Hellhammer) in place, and upon first listening, as Lazare’s powerful and unique voice guides the opening neoclassical narrative, the comparisons to Solefald seem totally unavoidable.
While many of the elements of the individual member’s other bands do [...]

While the concept of “Aussie Doom” alone seems oxymoronic yet appealing, I admit it’s taken many listens for this release to grow on me. Still, while I won’t add more grandiloquent depression to the fire by banishing it to the graveyard, I can’t exactly put my complete support behind it either. Instead, my opinion is [...]

As Carl Jung paved his existential path through the mass of behavioral psychology, so have Scholomance have carved their own path through the generic fields of satanic black metal and gore-ridden American death metal. They have forged a path of individuality that breaks the mold and challenges the American extreme metal scene. With a deeply intellectual approach and a musical ability that sometimes dazzles and confuses, Scholomance look to take a place among American metal as a leader, not a follower. The three piece consisting of Scott Crinklaw (guitars, percussion, and keyboards), Jimmy Pitts (vocals and keyboards) and bassist Jerry Twyford seem poised at the edge of abyss of greatness, just waiting for a push over the edge. The latest album The Immortality Murder, might be the album to do just that. Residing on The End records, Scholomance seem to fit the progressive nature of the label, I visited with guitarist and keyboardist Scott Crinklaw about The End records, lyrical influences and the promising future for Scholomance.

Antimatter is the new project of Duncan Patterson, ex of doom gods Anathema, along with some peers/pals/presumed studio whores. As you should know, Anathema’s mid-nineties output on Peaceville pretty much defined doom metal, bowing only to the once almighty My Dying Bride in terms of crossing melancholia with pure sludge riffuck.
Well, ol’ Dunc’s motto seems [...]

Let me tell you something - The End Records has become a monster label in U.S. metal. Not content with Epoch of Unlight and Scholomance reigning American black metal, Green Carnation taking the doom scene by storm and Virgin Black bringing goth and darkwave to their collective knees, The End now gives you Winds, a surefire [...]

Albums like The Sham Mirrors completely justify why I still listen to metal. While my tastes have shifted and widened considerably these past few years, I still find myself defending this often-tired genre.
Bands like Arcturus re-energize my lifelong passion for extreme music and demonstrate that vibrancy, experimentation and unyielding talent do still exist in the [...]