Citing influences such as Beherit, Von and Nifelheim, Satanic Funeral is an multinational US/Netherlands based project featuring members of Vrolok, Mord, Misanthropy and Lugubre-and if you are at all familiar with those ultra underground acts, you should enjoy Satanic Funeral and their utterly hideous and nasty raw form of old school black metal. This is […]

Here is the second album from this Mexican supergroup of sorts featuring members of Impiety and Ravager, and despite some slightly more primal production values than Veganza, Katun is a vitriolic, slightly ethnic tinged slice of blistering Angelcorpse worship, that outdoes the source material’s latest effort. With a slightly muffled rums and more raw guitars, […]

2005’s debut offering from Hurtlocker, Fear In a Handful of Dust was among my top ten favorite releases of the year – an excellent entry in the field of death/thrash, they showed a great deal of influence ranging from classic Bay Area and German thrash, to early Swedish death metal, topped off with a hint […]

So here is the second (not including their 3 way split) release from metal and magazine entrepreneur Marty Rytkonen (Wormgear) and fellow Metal Maniacs scribe S Craig Zahler, and I’ll admit their first EP The Dark Archives, from the cover art to the music was pretty awful. However, with the creepy artwork gracing The Igneous […]

With members of Exmortem in its ranks, you’d expect the debut full length from Denmark’s Spectral Mortuary to be lifeless blast fest, but in truth it looks like Mighty Music may have unearthed one of Europe’s hidden death metal gems. This is just damn fine death metal from top to bottom. Much like the recent […]

OK, so I have had this record sitting on my desk and in my ipod for ages now, but for some reason I simply couldn’t bring my self to review it because I honestly couldn’t come up with a simple description of the style. That is until I read a review of The Wind Up […]

When it comes to Ted Nugent, there’s not a lot of middle ground. People generally love him or hate him, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s why he brags about graduating “magna cum loudmouth” in “Funk U.” On his last record Craveman, Nugent really got back to what he does best. He […]

While Metal Blade takes a lot of heat for some of their (recent) metalcore heavy releases, I I think a lot of people forget how good Metal Blade’s stable of veteran death metal acts truly is; Cannibal Corpse, Bolt Thrower, God Dethroned, Vader, Vomitory, Fleshcrawl, Hate Eternal, Goatwhore, etc. And now after their debut on […]

Many metalheads, including myself, think that metal is approaching a second “golden age” here in the new millennium, with many new, young talented bands popping up virtually everywhere, and some even invading the mainstream. Thrash in particular, especially this year, is experiencing a rebirth of sorts, with several bands surfacing playing that classic 80’s inspired […]

Age certainly, no, definitely hasn’t mellowed Madball, this, their sixth full length hits as hard as any of their back catalogue and sounds just as vibrant and hungry as they did when Set It Off, dropped in 94. Now Madball being Madball, there are zero surprises to be found here, no whinging clean vocals, no […]

In what seems to be a blink of an eye, The Warriors have already returned with their third album, not much more than a year after Beyond the Noise. Once again a new record equates to a development in sound and style and whilst Genuine Sense Of Outrage, is a much more aggressive record then […]

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 […]

An increasing number of bands are dropping the ‘core’ from their sound and focusing on the metal. Bands like August Burns Red, Beneath the Massacre, Fear My Thoughts, Job For A Cowboy, Misericordiam; all new far leaner and direct, less trendy incarnations of their former selves, and one such act who seems to have made […]

No you’re are not imagining things. Regain has Re-Re issued Naglfar’s two best albums and though 1995’s Vittra was already re-issued in 2001 (also on Regain) and 1998’s superb Diabolical was re-issued and re-mastered in 2002, here are those exact reissues, again. I’m not complaining thought as I get to review and gush about Diabolical, […]

The short review: Bleed Someone Dry sounds like a band of hardcore kids who worship at the alter of Pantera and Slayer. I really wish I could leave it at that, but something tells me that wont pass for a review. The World Is Falling In Tragedy is the Italian bands first full recording under […]

This is a bit of a tough review to write for me, as I dig the tunes laid out here by Italy’s Neurasthenia while playing, but as soon as it’s over I don’t remember much about it, even after 10 plus listens. This gives me mixed feelings about it leaves me wondering what to write. […]

Things have been relatively quiet in the Willowtip camp in 2007. Though we’ve had the likes of Odious Mortem and Electro Quarterstaff, the label hasn’t quite reached their usual level of brilliance so far this year, and while the recent Malignancy release and the upcoming licensed Neurotic releases look to up the ante, Italy’s Illogicist […]

So here is the cherry on Disconcert’s recent three layer old school death metal cake-the re-issue of Apocalyptic Dawning-the self released debut album recorded by the tragedy struck Quebec death metal band Agony. Like so many other bands, the 1995 release of Agony’s self released debut album was simply was bad timing and was passed […]

Though the semi legendary underground New York act has been around since 1993, this is only the second full length album from this long running band that now has ties to Mortician, and it couldn’t be released on a more fitting label. Sloppy (in tone and vocals) yet complex, gurgling, pinch harmonic filled classic goregrind/death […]

The last release from this Colorado black metal duo, War Metal, was a fairly standard, and for Profound Lore average release of blackened, well….war metal. However with the follow up, Eater of Birds, Cobalt have made a Nachtmystium like transition from generic grim black metal to expansive, challenging, ambient and elite black metal and once […]

Oh wow…where to begin. Litmus play a sort of Cosmic Stoner Rock. I hear traces of Floyd, Tull & (of course) Sabbath all throughout the Planetfall album…even hints of Steppenwolf’s more trippy moments. The vocals are clean & harmonized, the guitars are wide & heavy, the synths are lush & sweeping. This album is all […]

After being impressed by this Canadian black metal act’s live offering, Imperial Collapse, I was curious to hear their studio output by way of their second album (even though the band has been around for over a decade) of symphonic melodic black metal/death metal, and while hardly bringing anything new to the genre, there is […]

Please god, make him stop. Not content with releasing 36 albums in 123 days from Italy’s one man mope fest Fear Of Eternity (aka Andrea Tilenni of Sinoath), now we get a re-issue of the 2001 demo that somehow got the man a 345 album deal with Moribund Cult. Ye gods. How a quality label […]

grew up in Lillian Axe’s Louisiana stomping grounds, checking them out regularly at local clubs once I was old enough to get in (and, truth be told, a few times before). So, even though it’s been a lot of years since they’ve released a new record, and even more since they’ve really been relevant, I […]

Critics rave about them, in-the-know fans on message boards sing their praises, but for some reason it seems that no one in the wider music world has heard of Slough Feg, and that’s a shame. This is some of the best pure, unadulterated old school metal going. With one foot in the 1970s, the other […]