Suicidal Causticity is an Italian brutal death metal band and The Spiritual Decline is their debut album. Italy is not only known for their delicious pasta and pizza, but is also becoming known, in the underground death metal scene, as one of the hotbeds for brutal and extreme music. Fans of Hour of Penance, Vulvectomy […]

Full disclosure: My history with the now decade-old, German, one-man, black/doom project known as The Ruins of Beverast extends back a whopping 5 months. Why I didn’t investigate something that’s right up my musical alley much earlier is another one of life’s many mysteries, but once the brilliant new track, “Malefica,” hit YouTube on April […]

Much like my compadre Nick E’s review of this year’s other mega high profile, reunion release in Gorguts‘s Colored Sands, one has to wonder if there is really a need for a review of a release of this magnitude? Arguably the inventors of melodic death metal and a legendary band with 4 certifiably classic, game […]

Lesbian has been on my radar since their 2008 split with the amazing doom band Ocean. From there I snagged 2007’s awesome Power Hor, and anxiously awaited 2010’s killer Stratospheria Cubensis. So when I heard 2013 would bring a 45 minute, single track full-length titled Forestelevision, I was stoked. Lesbian are an odd group. They […]

I have to admit to being fairly late to the Gorguts party. My first actual Gorguts purchase was 1998s Obscura, and like most, back then it simply was too forward thinking and mind blowing for my tiny brain. However, as I got involved in this journalism stuff, was exposed to more realms of musical creativity, I came to appreciate Obscura for the genius it was and even went back and picked up the rest of Gorguts’ early catalog, which I had merely dismissed as Death clones when they first came out as well as the band’s then swansong From Wisdom to Hate.

Not only is Finland home to some of the best death metal bands on earth, but also savage Grind Kings, Afgrund. In their short existence, they have unleashed some of the most brutal grindcore, this side of their fellow countrymen, Rotten Sound, as well as the stripped down brutality of Pig Destroyer. So this mini […]

Destructive Intent is the debut release from Berlin’s Dehuman Reign, and don’t let the cover art fool, this isn’t some crusty lo-fi noise but rather a pretty solid take on Floridian death metal, notably the likes of Malevolent Creation and Monstrosity sprinkled with a dose of thrash, and it’s pretty good stuff. Consisting of an […]

Back in 2011, UK/New Zealand collaboration Monsterworks, featuring The Living Fields vocalist Jon Higgs released the killer, The God Album– and it was an awesome slab of progressive, experimental and undefinable modern metal. So here is the follow up, dealing with Man rather than God and is full of the same deep philosophical themes and […]

Considering how popular the entire folk metal subgenre has become over the past several years, it’s a wonder how a band like Fejd can continually fly under the radar. Having been an official band for over a decade and released three full-lengths and an EP, one would think that the Swedish quintet would be more […]

The new album of Scottish death/ grind powerhouse MAN MUST DIE will be entitled “Peace Was Never An Option“! “Peace Was Never An Option” will be released on October 28th in Europe and a day later in North America and contains a guest appearance by Max Cavalera! Read what the band has to say about […]

Victory Records has become such an anomaly for me. After being one of the true stalwart metalcore/hardcore labels responsible for releasing albums by Integrity, Martyr AD, Damnation AD, Hatebreed, Earth Crisis and Thursday and even being the home to Between the Buried and Me for 3 absolutely classic albums, the label is just hard to […]

It should come as no surprise that Deserted Fear hail from Germany, where killer metal is coming out, literally on a daily basis. Also on the killer FDA Rekotz German label, the band’s My Empire debut last September should be picked up by fans of not only the Swedish/Asphyx sound, but also the 90’s Floridian dm sound. One of the things that was eye catching when I first saw the album cover is the killer artwork, surrounding a cemetery-it’s good to see bands still putting time into creating killer artwork and this reeks of old school through and through. Mr. Dan Swano helping to create a massive sledgehammer sound and really Deserted Fear are amazing.

After really thinking about what I wanted to say about this record, I began to question whether reviewing a release this high-profile truly mattered. Please let me know if you’ve never heard of Gorguts, and are just reading this review because you are interested in who they are and what they do. Contact me too […]

I’ve been a longtime Dream Theater fan – 21 years, in fact, since the release of one of the finest progressive metal albums ever released, Images and Words. And yet, in all of that time, I’ve never checked out any of vocalist James LaBrie’s solo material (4 albums’ worth). A friend slapped me around a […]

So Mike “Gunface” McKenzie, the guitarist for Deathcore titans The Red Chord and Beyond the Sixth Seal has a Doom project. How should someone like myself who pretty much despises anything with the Deathcore tag (full disclosure: I can still rock Fused Together In Revolving Doors hard, and even dug Clients), but is a long […]

Sometimes a name just grabs you, and Maryland’s Sloth Herder is one such name. And on their Second self-released EP, the music is often as interesting as the band name. With a name like Sloth Herder, you would expect a massive crawling, doom/sludge outfit, but that could not be further from the truth. At only […]

Murder Made God are a brutal death metal band from Greece, around for about 2-3 years. This marks their debut album and if you like your music fast and furious with hints of technicality to it, then buy this. If you’re looking for something original, that has not been done to death time and time […]

Florida death metal veterans DEICIDE will release their new album, “In The Minds Of Evil”, this fall via Century Media Records. The CD is being recorded at AudioHammer Studios in Sanford, Florida with producer Jason Suecof (TRIVIUM, AUGUST BURNS RED, THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER, ALL THAT REMAINS, WHITECHAPEL, DEVILDRIVER). “In The Minds Of Evil” track […]

Nervecide is the brainchild of Italian do-it-yourselfer Giorgio Benedetti. He handles everything on this album, from the vocals all the way down to the drum programming. It’s a solid album, made more impressive by the fact it’s all done by one person. Following the intro, you get a blast-beat-backed stop-start riff, and this album brings […]

Southern Lord has been making some serious inroads to seedy underbelly of dark, crusty hardcore in the last couple of years. Their roster was originally accented with the likes of Nails, The Secret and Masakari, but has most recently seen the addition of bands like Wolfbrigade and Martyrdod. Now continuing on in that vein, and […]

Helsinki, Finland was a busy place on the last weekend of June 2013. Not only were there three, four or five festivals going in and around the city, but the streets were full of gay pride as well. For whatever reason, Tuska Open Air Metal Festival’s visitor count has been on the decline since the relocation from the Kaisaniemi park to the industrial zone — not that the other events around the town helped, quite possibly snatching a few casual listeners with acts like Green Day and Rammstein. However, Teeth of the Divine never abandons those in need, and thus we summoned ourselves to the 16th Tuska Festival where acts like King Diamond, Bolt Thrower and Testament graced the main stage.

Fleshgod Apocalypse‘s second full-length album, Agony was my favorite album of 2011, so I’ll warn you, you can throw objectivity and unbiased opinions out of the window right now. I love these guys. However, Agony was surprisingly divisive as the band integrated full-on orchestration to their vortex of Italian technical brutality, with the end result […]

The Swedish death metal revival keeps on rolling and FDA Rekotz has found another fine German act to go alongside Revel In Flesh to add to their roster of solid old-school death metal. Whereas for most of this wave of retro bands, the primary influence is Entombed and/or Grave, Wound have a slightly different approach, […]

This is a remastered/reissue of the first 2 classic albums from Hypocrisy, the 1992 debut, Penetralia and the 1993 sophomore release Osculum Obscenum. I’m not here to give a history lesson on this legendary Swedish act, but suffice it to say, these 2 albums have become huge influences in the death metal genre, even over […]

Do band names get any more generic than Hell? Metal Archives lists 8 other bands with the name Hell, which unfortunately doesn’t include the spoof black metal band I started with a friend of mine in 9th grade. This project from Oregon popped up on my radar via last year’s stellar split with Thou, Resurrection […]