There comes a time when one has to dig through old stuff. While trying to preserve history by adding old Digital Metal reviews to our current archives, we stumbled upon a long since forgotten Top of the Year list, compiled by our staff, and it’s all the way from the year 2000 and 6. Oh my, oh my! Now, today, with hindsight by your side: what are your favorites from 2006?

The debut full length of New York City’s omnisexual Death/Grind titans, Copremesis, entitled Muay Thai Ladyboys, is set to be released on Paragon Records mid-May 2008. Expect nothing short of the most uncompromising brutality.The Track Listing for Muay Thai Ladyboys is is as follows: Muay Thai Ladyboys Bestial Castration Push Zombies In Silence…Revel In Madness […]

With Siege of Amida losing its crown jewel (Whitechapel) to that all encompassing mega metropolis (Metalblade for those not in the know), it made sense to ensure that their next deathcore monolith was firmly propelled into the consciousness of the metal spheres, and disregard what reception was received, which so far has been positive in […]

The good thing about Battlelore is that I know exactly what I am getting. With album number four, their second with their revamped line-up, (notably vocalist Tomi Mykkänen), who brings a more aggressive style to the table, the band continue their predictably enjoyable mix of bombastic Tolkien inspired Goth/death metal. Still though, the band is […]

While the Pacific Northwest has become renowned for its many one man, suicidal black metal projects, the scene is quickly becoming little more than Xasthur/Leviathan cloning with little or no deviation from the template laid down by Wrest and Malefic and I’ve been waiting for a person/band to add a little something different to the […]

Magna Carta, famous for their prog-rock roster, truly pushes the envelope with their annual Drum Nation compilation. This year, however, the label foregoes the Brufords and the Portnoys of past volumes to embrace today’s top metal drummers and their creative instrumental showcases. All contributors are outstanding within the discipline, though there are a few that’ll […]

On the surface, there’s a lot to exited about this reincarnation of (the underachieving but respected in the Gothenburg scene of the early ’90s) A Canorous Quintet, who were briefly called The Plague before settling on the rather metalcore-ish moniker This Ending. However, even with a somewhat revered lineup that includes current Amon Amarth drummer […]

While I enjoyed Thee Maldoror Kollective quite a lot with their previous effort, A Clockwork Highway, I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting a new one this soon. But that’s quite a distracting thing to say, as it’s been already three years in the making. So either the guys are fast, I’m goddamned slow […]

Is it too late to change my best of list for 2006?Due to the holiday shuffle, the latest CD from Sweden’s Wolf has been languishing on my desk for a little more than a month. When I finally popped it in the CD player earlier this week, I knew I’d missed a record for the […]

It always leaves me scratching my head when I get a record from an unsigned band that’s better than about 80 percent of the stuff I get from the labels. That’s the case with this EP from Finnish melodic metal outfit Helion. According to their Web site, Helion has been around in one form or […]

In a year full of technical death metal excellence from the likes of Decapitated, Gorod, Psycroptic and Spawn of Possession, along come a group of six kids from Encino, California and fuck everything up. I’m truly starting to believe that anything that gets labeled as “deathcore” or “metalcore” is now becoming strictly due to the […]

In general, if one is to describe a band as “retro,” the next step would be narrowing down the sound the band in question is paying tribute to, whether it be a year, a scene in the geographical sense, or a particular band deemed worthy of worship and replication. Totimoshi is undoubtedly a retro band, […]

Fully titled Twilight Ophera and the Order of the Sanguine Diadem presents: Descension, (Order of the Sanguine Diadem being a choral group who has added their talents to this release) the fourth full album from Finland’s Twilight Ophera, is a run of the mill, but competent exercise in symphonic black/death metal.While listening to the dense […]

White faces scowling out of the darkness, an indecipherable logo, songs about darkness, night, cold, winter, storms, mist, and one called Immortal can mean only one thing. True Norwegian Black Metal comes to Greece. Winterdemons is a new band formed in 2003 in Greece based upon the premise that Immortal did it right back in […]

I think most (except Johnny Hedlund himself according to a recent botched interview), would agree that Sworn Allegiance was this legendary Swedish death metal/Viking act’s real comeback album, and that Hell’s Unleashed was a sick joke. Either way, with a change in label, these Swedish stalwarts are truly, truly back with a blistering album far […]

Doom album of ’06? Asunder ain’t exactly reinventing the steel, here, but God Hell, is this some good stuff. Taking the old-school funeral approach of Thergothon and Skepticism and injecting just enough melody to make it stick – without becoming the gothic mope-crawl of Shape of Despair or Saturnus (who I likewise dig, so save […]

Plying an up-tempo, melodic mix of Darkest Hour, God Forbid and Unearth, California’s Antagonist are competent, enjoyable and skilled, but still rather unoriginal. Though arguably falling under the vast metalcore/American metal umbrella, Antagonist have a healthy does of modern tight, Euro thrash in their sound (sort of if Carnal Forge played metalcore), and deliver it […]

Though this nice 2CD/DVD combo will only appeal to the Hot Topic Crowd, (5% of the profits from this DVD go to the Hot Topic Foundation), it’s still a well put together package that feature most of the bands that today’s kids are digging.The 2 CDs (38 tracks in all) contain nothing too special, mostly […]

While generally, most US black metal seems to be either one man grimness, rather superficial attempts at 1990’s Scandinavian with little or no creativity or identity, or even have some sort of metalcore tinge, California’s The Funeral Pyre have delivered one of the most surprising melodic black/death metal releases to come from a very young […]

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 […]

Here’s my first exposure two this dual drummer owning band and their hefty form of crumbly, dissonant sludge and Im sort of torn on it. On one hand when absorbing this release on a 300 watt stereo at full volume, the Mastodon-ish vibes that careen from the speakers with muscular and angular tones and shuddering, […]

Amon Amarth has been a favorite of mine for ten years so when the opportunity presented itself to conduct an interview I jumped at it. In the middle of a North American tour, Johan graciously offered some of his time to sit down and answer some questions.

I assume if you actually clicked on this review, you are either a Killswitch Engage/metalcore fan, so will forgo the usual metalcore is saturated and KSE is the darlings of MTV 2 spiel and get too it.Despite plying basically the same sound as the previous record and an overall sense of metalcore cliche overload, As […]

I’ll make no bones about it. I liked this band. A lot. In fact, I prefer them to the like minded Darkest Hour and The Black Dahlia Murder as far as their modern take on slightly melodic, uber tight thrash metal is concerned. That’s right, I said I liked them better than Darkest Hour, and […]

Supreme Death/Black Metal Art part six. Is it black metal? Is it death metal? Does it really matter anymore? Belphegor has been blurring the line for better than a decade. Call them a black metal band that has gone over to the death side or argue they were always a death band with black influences, […]