I learned a long time ago that taking labels like “occult heavy metal” seriously missed the point. Except for the hood and robe crowd putting the music second to their image and dogma, countless bands have enjoyed great success embracing the supernatural imagery so often associated with metal without ever taking themselves too seriously. A […]

I kinda dug, Disgust, the 2012 debut from Indiana’s Yellowtooth, founded and fronted by Peter Clemens who has served in more death metal bands like Invasion (an underrated US band playing Stockholm styled death metal before it was vogue) and Nocturnal Torment.  It was a groovy, crusty slab of southern drenched death/doom/stoner metal, and the follow […]

Auric is a band from my home state of Arkansas; which has always had a tiny, but vibrant heavy music scene. Arkansas has contributed a couple pretty notable bands to the whole southern/sludge/doom lexicon, as well as a lot of really good punk and hardcore. And now we have Auric, who could be the fourth […]

Hailing from Indiana, Psychomancer are a death metal band who toiled on the scene in from 1997 to 2011, then broke up after two albums in the mid oos. Well they are reformed and have released a new EP on the home state label owned by Yellowtooth’s Peter Clemens. I wasn’t familiar with the band […]

Progressive, now there’s a word that gets a lot of use in the metal vernacular, maybe just under “brutal” and “cult”, or “kvlt”, depending how true (troo?) you are. I’m not going to lie to you, I’m not a progressive type of guy. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about progression in songwriting […]

I love NY and Brooklyn. I’ve been there twice in the past 6 months and its great and I’m itching to go back, so im a little bummed that I may have missed or will miss a opportunity to check out one of Brooklyn’s finest, Throaat. A band that goes for the their namesake in […]

This is an album full of cheeps, chirps, skronks, bleeps, bloops, beeps, boops, and blarps. Noisy noise rock, with a lot of analog instruments making digital noises, and digital instruments simulating sounds in nature. If nature was made out of machines. Osso make very tactile music. Imagine solid state transistors being alternately over-amped, then under-watt’d […]

Several years ago, Ohio’s TON reformed and now we are finally seeing the fruits of their labor.  Bow Down To Extinction is their second album, their ’99 debut, Plague, is outstanding.  I was a huge fan of TON’s demos, in the 90’s Internal Bleeding and TON shared many good times together onstage.  They are also […]

I don’t claim to be any sort of Slam aficionado or expert, but a few releases have slammed the shit out of me recently; Bloodscribe’s Prologue to the Apocalypse, Abominable Putritidy‘s The Anomalies of Artificial Origin reissue, Dysentry’s Fragments, Whoretopsy’s, Never Tear Us Apart,  Cumbeast’s eclectic Groovy Massacre, and this, the fourth album from Norwegian stalwarts, Kraanium. Much like […]

Falsifier and Born Hanged, the first two EPs from this UK downtempo/deathcore act have become the Sermon of Mockery among deathcore fans, being the holy grail of deathcore collectors  and reaching stupid prices. So Black Tongue have parlayed that and their prior Infant Annihilator infamy (whose releases also go for high prices) into a deal with […]

“Heirless” is the perfect intro for this album. Equal parts foreboding, dissonant, and soothsaying; it encapsulates what is about to occur during the play through of Monarchy; Rivers of Nihil’s second album. On this sophmore release, this Reading, PA band have expanded upon the ability to tell a story, craft a memorably technical song, and […]

  If you enjoy ultra-brutal death metal, played with extra hot sauce from good ‘ole Houston, Texas, well than look no further than Desecrate the Faith.  I see the band being labeled in the deathcore territory.  That’s B.S.  I mean I do enjoy deathcore, but this is slam death metal and yes, there are differences. […]

There is something to be said about family members working together cohesively in heavy metal history that in starting this review of Oakland’s Dimesland is important to point out.  You have The Cavaleras, The Van Halens, The Hoffmans, Vitek and Vogg, Dimebag and Vinnie Paul and I am probably forgetting a lot of others but […]

I had zero expectations for this album. Considering the label’s recent out put, that cover, the moniker and album title that reads as ‘mediocrity’ at a glance. However, with this sophomore effort, these Swiss vets (who have toiled in DarkRise since 2003) have actually , along with Epsilon’s Zu Richten and Tomb of Finland‘s Below the Green, are bringing a […]

You’d never guess by taking a glance at the beautiful, landscape beset by sunset album cover that the UK’s William English is a shit rollin’, mud wallowing sludge hybrid band of the highest caliber.  Formed by three ex-members of the criminally overlooked A Horse Called War, this crush n’ kill quintet get on your back […]

Contra ain’t nothing to fool around with, you hear me?  This is the very definition of a POWER trio.  There’s no soft stuff or any singer getting in the way, just three men bashing their way through riff after riff of runaway heavy groove with a rhythm section tighter than a noose primed for a good sunrise hangin’.  These fellas aren’t strangers to the heavy.  Chris honed his guitar chops in the much missed Sofa King Killer, Aaron’s pummeling battery was an integral part of Fistula and several other infamous Ohio sludgers and Adam’s background is a bit of a mystery to me (though I’ll find out!)

It is hard to believe that it has been eighteen years since the Hate Eternal/Alas demo was released. Hate Eternal being a blistering technical death metal band and Alas being more of a melodic doom project. Both of these projects showing the song writing versatility of Erik Rutan who had been in Morbid Angel and […]

Ok, this one threw me for a loop. I have a pretty limited exposure to Supuration; my only real point of reference was their 1993 oddball of an album, The Cube; and then bits and pieces of the various Supuration/S.U.P. permutations. I was aware of their trajectory following that path that so many innovative bands […]

So South Korea’s Fallen Angel’s productions has been around since 2010, and based on my recent package from them, they have a pretty distinct niche for international, simple, middle ground, lo fi black metal (Pest, Elffor, Dark Plague, Kvalvaag, Skoll, Krigerewolf, Catacumba) and even some home grown nihilism (Taekaury), but one of the bands more recent releases, […]

Primitive Man’s latest ep is an oppressive, aggressive slab o’ sludge…and a bit of grind…fine, slip in some crust parts too.  It’s an anthropomorphic equivalent to the imposing brutalist style housing project high rise that populate the part of town ,as whispered of by parents, “you don’t want your car to breakdown in”.  Zooming in […]

I remember there was once a time when I used to walk to record stores and take a chance on a band solely based on the album artwork. In starting this review I must say I was very much drawn into the cover art of New Jersey grinders Organ Dealer prior to checking them out much […]

You have to hand it to Blast Head Records, they certainly haven’t locked into a singular style for their releases and bands. They got pretty well most genres covered from brutal death metal (Hate Division, Nebulous), epic black metal (Valdrin, Eternium), grindcore (Nervous Impulse) and even Swedish death metal (Morbid Vomit). They also like to […]

Creative center, guitarist and vocalist of veteran US stoner/doom act Starchild, Richard Bennett, scores a rousing success with his latest project, Stars That Move. Their self-titled debut from Stone Groove Records finds Bennett relinquishing the lead vocal duties to his wife Elisa Maria and adopting a trio format with her and Frank Sikes. It’s an […]

I usually dismiss the press sheet that comes with a promo out of hand; I don’t need no PR dweeb filling my brain with their hyperbole, before I create my own hyperbole to fill all of yours with. But for once, the press sheet describing Black Queen as “Witch Metal” is pretty apropos. Even the […]

Technical death metal is almost a term that strikes immediate disappointment in my heart these days. Given the complete saturation of this sub-genre, along with the contemporary tendency to employ an over-produced sound, replete with Pro-Tools nuances, and favouring mechanical instrumental bravado over craftsmanship of a well-written piece of music, it is something I now […]