Not quite at Steve Harris level when it comes to notable European bass players, but just as valuable, Helloween’s Markus Grosskopf has been the band’s perennial bedrock since their 1984 formation. Thrust into what was seemingly a never-ending tug-and-war between huge egos (see: Kai Hansen, Michael Weikath, Michael Kiske, and later, Roland Grapow and Uli Kusch), Grosskopf emerged as the band’s de-facto mediator, the sole level head in a band that always teetered on self-destruction. Even after the near-crippling departure of Hansen in 1989, the acrimonious split with Kiske in 1993, and ugly divorce with Grapow and Kusch in 2002, Helloween is still standing, thanks in large part to Grosskopf, and singer Andi Deris, who is far and away the longest-tenured vocalist in the band’s history.

I have a bit of an emotional attachment to Corpus Mortale, their 2001 EP Succumb to the Superior was one of my very early reviews for digitalmetal.com, and exposed me to the Danish style of death metal I had not experienced yet, prompting me to seek out Iniquity and others.  But I lost touch with […]

Hatebreed:  You make this one tough on me.  You see we’ve had a good relationship going on now for almost 10 years.  You’re one of the first bands I started listening to when I got into metal (Joe Hardcore Hater: What?!? Dude hardcore SUCKS!), and your thick guitars and gruff vocals really opened my eyes […]

Blast Head Records is proud to announce their signing of Ancient Roman death metal band ADE for the spring release of their sophomore album entitled ‘Spartacus’, which features extreme metal drummer George Kollias and will be the band’s follow up to their 2009 debut ‘Prooemivm Sangvine’. True masters of music, ADE, formed in 2007, with the purpose of blending death metal with the traditional instruments of ancient […]

  FINNTROLL has now finished recording their 6th album, Blodsvept, which will be released via Century Media Records on March 25th in Europe and March 26th in North America! Recorded at Sonic Pump Studios in Helsinki, Blodsvept features cover artwork by the band’s own guitarist Skrymer (who also did the artwork for the band’s previous […]

Raze the neon towers and huddled tenements of futuristic cityscapes – from Blade Runner to The Dark Knight Rises – and you’ll find Metropolis as their foundation. Released as a silent film in 1927, it’s echoed through our collective sci-fi imagination ever since. C3PO, the Macintosh 1984 commercial, the laboratory of Dr. Frankenstein, the artificial hands of various […]

Chicago’s OCEANO have started work on a brand new studio album, which the band have revealed will be titled INCISIONS. The five-piece are currently hard at work writing the long-awaited follow-up to 2010’s CONTAGION, with plans to release the new album later this year on Earache Records. OCEANO have released an official lyric video for […]

Considering winter has decided to rear its ugly head for most of the Midwest and Northeast (lucky you, those not afflicted), the need for bands of similar dreariness is predicated. Aside from the usual suspects whom shall not be named, there is a growing tide of bands emerging from the likeliest of all places: Finland. As we’ve come to learn through our Finnish friends, their winters make our winters look like a walk through a daisy-filled park. Darkness of the never-ending variety is the norm, while temperatures make little effort to get out of the sub-zero department. Definitely the right environment to make metal that is dark and dreary, don’t you think?

The first band out of the gate for 2013 is Hanging Garden, who have toiled in relative obscurity since their 2004 formation. This should change thanks to their brand-spanking new At Every Door (Lifeforce), an album that channels song-oriented death/doom, with the chilling and cold spirit of countrymen Swallow the Sun and better yet, Sentenced. There’s plenty of onus on melody on cuts like “Ten Thousand Cranes” and “The Cure,” while numbers such as “Wormwood” and “To End All Ages” smolder with an unforgiving atmosphere; a perfect offset to the bounty of melody on display.

We snagged guitarist Jussi Hämäläinen and vocalist Toni Toivonen for a round of queries regarding the new album, their slow-build, and most obvious of all: how they cope with Finnish winters…

With their third album on as many labels, Sweden’s Zonaria are if anything, anything persistent and consistent. Their previous albums released on Pivotal Recordings (2007s Infamy and the Breed) and then Nuclear Blast  (2009s The Cancer Empire) respectively were a melding  of mildly futuristic  melodic death metal glossed over with Dimmu Borgir symphonics and that […]

Candlelight Records today confirms April 23 as the North American release date for Withdrawal, the third album from black metallers WOE. Produced by vocalist/guitarist Chris Grigg and mastered by Colin Marston, the album features seven new songs with a running time of 43 minutes. It is the first new material by the band since 2010’s […]

Warning: this review breaks the record for Opeth references. Initially, the first few minutes of this unannounced release hinted at some sorted of pretentious, Proggy, SPV/Sensory type release, with wafting clean vocals and sharp, stuttering progressive riffage. However, about three minutes into opener “Glimpse of What May Be”  guitarist Daniel Cordoba unleashed a Akerfeldt-ian bellow, […]

You can spot Bjorn Gooßes’s voice from a mile away, a visceral, pointed roar that exudes instant charm…in a pure death metal way, of course. After spending the better part of 2011 and 2012 promoting his now former band Night in Gales’ most awesome Five Scars album, the German-based singer has turned his focus to The Very End, his long-running side band which is obviously, a side band no more. Positioned in the same thrash/death hybrid as the likes of Hatesphere and Dew-Scented, The Very End has alongside Gooßes’s vocals, a song-oriented, melody-driven sound that should keep them out of the dreaded retro thrash discussion for the time being. Their latest (greatest) is Turn off the World, an album that with the help of SPV, will provide a broader stage for the band’s fresh and vibrant Euro thrash sound. Plus, to reiterate what we noted above: few can peel paint like Gooßes. Batten down the hatches and read on…

Colorado’s Execration aren’t doing anything particularity innovative or new within death metal on their sophomore album, but they do death metal pretty well and add a little  resin driven intellectual brutality to their standard US death metal throes. With a sound I can only term as “Colorado-ish” there’s some Cephalic Carnage complexity (especially vocally) and […]

First off, I am most honored to be writing for Teeth of the Divine. Instead of routinely misspelling the URL (long domain names are a problem spot for me), I can now have it saved to my favorites and see my work alongside some rather top-notch writers. Prior to this, I was editor for Blistering.com, […]

After five years of toiling around in obscurity in their native Canada, brutal death metal newcomers Paroxsihzem,  with the help of  Dark Descent Records, have re-unleashed onto the world, their 2010 self-titled debut full-length album. Sporting a raw, crude production, the album is a whirlwind of vicious riffs, raucous noise and sheer nastiness. In short, […]

Sorry this review is so late, but ya know Rome wasn’t built in a day… I wasn’t ever really that enamored with Romulus, the first release of Ex Deo, the epic, Roman themed side project headed by Kataklysm frontman Maurizio Iacono and most of his Kataklysm buddies. It seemed little more than unused Kataklysm riffs […]

Italy’s Caronte sound something like Electric Wizard fronted by a super baked Glenn Danzig. They channel the Wizard’s occult atmosphere from Witchcult Today, and the more straightforward stoner doom of Sloth’s Voice of God for their debut full-length Ascension. Thick, burly guitars, Oborn-esque leads, and big swinging riffs that transform into cultic atmospheres congeal for […]

Belgian progressive death metallers IN-QUEST have set “8 – The Odyssey Of Eternity” as the title of its much-anticipated new album, scheduled for a late spring release. The follow-up to 2009’s “Made Out of Negative Matter” was recorded at Split Second Sound studio with producer Jochem Jacobs (ex-TEXTURES). Commented IN-QUEST guitarist Douglas Verhoeven: “As the […]

I’ve had a hard time getting into any of Zeitgeister Music’s recent releases (Woburn House, Skarab, Klabautamann), but after seeing so much praise heaped upon Valborg and their previous  albums and most current release Nekrodepression, by many of my respected peers and close friends in the metal journalism world,  I felt I should give another […]

The guardians of the Gothenburg sound, DARK TRANQUILLITY, released their first album 20 years ago and are still one of the most exciting bands in melodic death metal. New and old fans will be happy to hear that they are ready to announce their 10th album. The band comments: “Greetings, Darklings! After having played over […]

As is the norm around this time of year, myself and others in the field are still filtering through the slew of late 2012 releases and as is often the case, unearthing late year gems that simply could not get reviewed in time for the end of 2012. And such is the case with the […]

Porcupine Tree’s affiliation with the larger metal community largely dates back to Steven Wilson’s acclaimed production credits on several of Opeth’s albums; most notably Blackwater Park.  Of course many metalheads would have already had the highly rated British prog-rockers on their radar but it was evidently the buzz from Wilson’s outstanding production and guest spots […]