I’ve found my next Halloween album. You know, the music you put on your stereo, speakers pointing out an open window and blaring into the street for all the trick-or-treaters and their bemused parents? The past few years I’ve used a playlist of Cradle of Filth‘s overwrought instrumentals – way more elegant than the cheapo […]

Chicago’s ever-evolving NACHTMYSTIUM will join their similarly sonically expansive brethren in Boris and Torche for a week-long run through parts of Canada and the U.S. The tour will see the band play from Montreal to Milwaukee in mid-July, when they can then pull from both the Worldfall EP and their June 8th full-length Century Media […]

Much like Animosity when they released Shut it Down in 2003, or Decapitated’s Winds of Creation debut in 2000, California’s Fate is a group of very talented young teens plying thier chosen genre, in this case crumbly, growling death core laced with Between the Buried and Me-like arpeggios. Despite members barely out of high school […]

Repetition is the name of the game for Buffalo, NY’s Wrath of the Weak and their second album of bleak, dystopian and clinical one band basement black metal that’s as interesting as its cover art.  Sole member ‘J’, while certainly having a grasp of the requisite atonality, atmospheres and tenets of the genre, simply does […]

With the first martial drumbeats and solemn horns of the opening title track, it seems as if Italian melodic black metal act Stormlord have taken this, their fourth album, back to the epic battle-hymns of their early work. And indeed they have, as the song crests into a seagoing epic worthy of Moonsorrow. Rousing melodies […]

Coming from Newcastle, UK (the home of my favorite beer I might add) is this painfully boring, tough guy attitude oriented and blatantly unoriginal metallic hardcore quartet by the name of Boltdown, and their debut LP Omnicide. What makes them so “painfully boring” you might ask? Well for starters, they seem to model themselves after […]

Songs to leave you hanging. If you do it right you can listen to the whole album while dangling before you suffocate, but there is not really much point because there is nothing new to discover on later songs, so go ahead and kick the chair out and snap your neck. Another one man Burzum […]

Tiamat have returned for the first time since 2003’s Prey, and not a moment to soon for me. The long hiatus has brought some change to the band, this is for sure. While they are nowhere near their Astral Sleep days Amanethes is their most aggressive album in ages. There is plenty of the goth […]

When last I heard Helion, on their 2006 EP Mercury Rising, they were a damned solid, but pretty straightforward power/prog outfit. It was one of the better records that I heard that year in the style. Two years and a lineup change later, I could almost be listening to a different band. The good news […]

IMPALED releases new music video. Preceding their upcoming descent upon the shores of Europe, Impaled unleashes a new video onslaught. Culling from their latest album for Willowtip Records / Candlelight UK, The Last Gasp, the band has self-produced a cinematic abortion for the song “G.O.R.E.” “Heading to the Old World this summer for our second […]

Talk about a case of bad timing. In a year without a new release from Opeth, perhaps Farmakon’s Robin would serve as a mildly entertaining diversion for fans longing for that sound. If I’d heard it when it was originally released by Four Seasons last year, it might have gone over better. Re-released by Candlelight […]

As a child, one of the movies that left an indelible imprint on my psyche was 1978’s Watership Down. As a five year old I was too young to grasp the political, religious, social and possibly misogynistic undercurrent of the movie based on Richard Adam’s deeply engrossing literary works-I was too busy being horrified by […]

‘Bring me my wine’, Ihsahn screams at the start of angL, like a tyrant celebrating dominion over all he sees. It’s a fitting sentiment for a man who’s remained part of black metal’s elite even long after vacating the throne he once conquered with Emperor. And in a reminder of his still-potent might, he launches […]

Mikael Akerfeldt has returned to Bloodbath, and there was much rejoicing. However Dan Swano is gone now and that has had an effect on this EP moreso than Akerfeldt’s return. While the vocals are an improvement over Pete Tagtgren on Nightmares Made Flesh, the songs themselves are missing something. As opposed to the early Morbid Angel/Entombed […]

Coldworker have provided us with their second album and what a revelation. I confess I didn’t really listen to the first one that much so I can’t say that much for their progress since then but Rotting Paradise has blown my mind. Coldworker remind me of an amalgam of The Forsaken and Hate Plow, due […]

Drudgery, Featuring Ex-Members of Exhumed, Fuck The Facts and Dear Black Diary Signs With Year of the Sun Records. Guelph, Ontario based grind/hardcore act DRUDGERY has signed with Year of the Sun Records for the release of their upcoming debut EP, “RUST”. DRUDGERY is the new project spearheaded by drummer Matt Connell (EX-FUCK THE FACTS, […]

When you play in a group of extremely talented musicians who are all trying to grab their piece of the spotlight, it’s no surprise that, at some point, you’d want to do your own record and put yourself in the spotlight. Already considered one of the best vocalists in metal, Warrel Dane now indulges his […]

Continually overlooked in the doom scene yet consistently brilliant and evolving, Ireland’s Mourning Beloveth, have yet again improved from album to album. This time, the band has improved on the brilliant A Murderous Circus by adding even more classic doom flair to their already draining funeral doom lope. As with A Murderous Circus, Mourning Beloveth […]

The last album I heard from these Finnish doomsters was 2006’s The Return to Nothing and it was a solid if unspectacular slab of rending, Finnish death/doom, and Descend does not change the formula though it annoyingly flirts with brilliance amid its paint by numbers growling mope. The recipe is pretty simple for those that […]

Finland’s Rapture has been described as a mix of Katatonia and Opeth. Fair enough. Scratch the surface, however, and there’s far more Finnish in Rapture than a knee-jerk comparison to Swedes a sea and culture away. In fact, across three albums (Silent Stage came out in 2005), the members of Rapture sought not to emulate […]

Florida based metal band INFERNAEON have announced the addition of several new members including Jeramie Kling formerly of The Absence. The bands front man Brian Werner had this to say, “After that last Pyrexia tour we had a cancer within the band that needed to be removed forcefully which threatened everything that this band is […]

Cannibalised, the third full length from Biomechanical, is my introduction to the band. I caught wind of the band earlier this year through another site and promptly checked out their Myspace. The one song I heard from this album there left me reeling my jaw from the floor – it was like hearing the chaos […]

I’ve been struggling with this review for a while now, first because it’s my first exposure to Virginia’s Arghoslent, and second, because of the obvious controversial themes and lyrics the band brings to the table. To skirt the band’s apparent racist and Anti Semitic views would feel like a cheap way out, and to focus […]

So I’m laying in bed in my pre-sleep haze with my Ipod on random. And after a few tracks of the expected deathcore, death metal and black metal, my Bose head phones are filled with some just stunning, sumptuous, ultra layered and shimmering post rock acoustics and delicate vocals. I check my Ipod discover the […]

Dethklok is back and ready to deal with groupies, fame and yes, politics in all-new episodes of Metalocalypse. The hit Adult Swim series chronicles Dethklok’s crusades into darkness and follows the exploits of the world’s most popular metal band and most significant cultural force. Created by Brendon Small and Tommy Blacha, the second season of […]