Ok, ok, Dark Descent Records…stop it, really.  Mr. Matt Calvert, truly over the last 2 years, especially, is making other labels squirm in their chairs.  While obviously having a penchant for the awesome Finnish scene, he signs bands from a variety of extreme genres and goddammit he gets it right every effin time!!!  With the […]

Anymore, I do my damndest to either keep to a minimum or wholly eliminate the “I” persona from reviews when I can.  This works out most of the time, but whenever you are reviewing a band that you have maintained a long-time listening relationship with…well, it gets pretty fuckin’ tough.  Winnipeg’s KEN Mode is always […]

Fuck the Facts is, right off the bat, just the best band name ever. The end. Musically, the band dwells in a grindcore geography, but is not of a grindcore geography. They are more akin to Today is the Day than Pig Destroyer or Napalm Death, and the point of each song is not to […]

OK Mighty Music, THIS is more like it!!!!!!!!!! After a slew of awful rock, Mighty Music has released something that I more expect from the label. Some chunky, beefy European death metal by way of Austria’s Epsilon (formerly known as Side Y)and their second full length album. These guys are new to me, but I like what […]

Wisconsin’s Jungle Rot have been toiling in the US death metal scene for over 20 years now. But the last few years, since the band signed to Victory Records in 2011, has seen a second coming of the long running act. The three albums for the label (2011’s Kill on Command, 2013’s Terror Regime and this year’s Order Shall Prevail), sees the band at the very top of their game, aging like a fine wine.

A “Lychgate” is a gateway covered with a roof found at the entrance to a traditional English or English-style churchyard and also a very entertaining ritualistic styled avant-garde black doom metal group from The UK.  Lychgate takes a much different approach to song composition and each track on “An Antidote for a Glass Pill” is […]

It’s always exciting when a curiously undiscovered gem proceeds to pound your ears in all the right ways and assert itself as a genuine force you should have been listening too much earlier. Jamming out over the past decade in relative obscurity, Virginian bruisers King Giant are one such untapped gem returning to smack some […]

I’ve been rather enjoying this current run of lighter, melodic, sometimes folky, sometimes ‘Cascadian’, sometimes ‘post’, artsy black metal influenced arguably started by and influenced by the likes of Wolves in the Throne Room, Altar of Plagues, Deafheaven, Alcest and Agalloch a few years back. Recently, the likes of Vattnet Viskar, Ghost Bath, Downfall of Nur,  Alda, Soar, Wiegedood, […]

The second album from English groove doom heavies Prophets of Saturn practically screams, “Listen to me while high as possible, please!”  The four tracks that comprise the weedy, peer pressuring Retronauts are overloaded with groove, drippy psyche-wah solos, sleepy monotone vocals and a rhythm section that is fresh out of high school.  In terms of […]

Any band with 20+ years to its name is bound to evolve, but Fear Factory has never gone through massive upgrades to their OS (band members though, different story). Soul of a New Machine was industrial death metal in its molten form, and Demanufacture refined it into cold blue steel. Remanufacture sent it through the crusher and the chop-shop. […]

Euro-Asia (Orwell fans will get the wordplay) piles on the tonal goodness with their latest EP release A View of the Earth.  These Floridian netherworld dwellers gravitate between the Empire State Building tall riffage and trance-y space-outs of heavy/pretty greats such as Hum, Shiner, Floor, Swervedriver and Cave In.  Not quite crushing enough to be […]

Steve Von Till, a key member of seminal sludge and “post-metal” legends Neurosis, has pursued a fruitful solo career in recent years and released a handful of stark blues and country influenced albums. Blues and country influence, in this context, certainly doesn’t refer to wang dang doodle or how he stopped loving her today. The […]

While trying to find a video/sample to put into my reviews of Alda’s Passage, and Crom Dubh‘s Heimweh, I keep seeing YouTube suggestions for songs from a band called Vallendusk. Well, eventually I clicked on one of the songs from the band’s Pest Records 2013 album, Black Clouds Gathering, and I was hooked. And not just […]

Chicago’s Immortal Bird made ripples in the underground when they burst onto the scene with their impressive Akrasia EP in 2013. Led by the ultra talented Rae Amitay and featuring in their ranks guitarist Evan Berry from impressive folk metal titans Wilderun, Immortal Bird return with their eagerly anticipated debut full-length, Empress/Abscess. Aside from featuring […]

If judged on the merit of riffs alone, Texan tarnation masters Funeral Horse would be a holy grail of hard-rock.  The constant shifts from road-rage solos to dusty blues riffs to pavement cracking noise-rock/hardcore to vintage 70s hard rock backed by a walloping rhythm section will keep you guessing and ducking for cover as to […]

Wombbath is  a Swedish death metal band who were kicking it around in the early 90’s but broke up in 1995.  Their lone album, 1993s Internal Caustic Torments was a classic for me and grossly overlooked back in the day.  Had no idea it was remastered a mere 2 years ago and I snagged it recently from […]

Prejudices, they’re a bitch. Whether it is literature, music, food, or people, prejudices never amount to anything good. We all have them though, in some way, shape, or form we all prejudge something. Even as we understand and try our best to avoid them, we eventually fail…and fail is what I did when I first […]

So Vomitory broke up in 2013 after one of the most consistent yet unheralded death metal discographies to ever come out of Sweden. But 3/4 of the band ( drummer Tobias “Tobben” Gustafsson, guitarist Anders Bertilsson, and vocalist/bassist Erik Rundqvist) are back under a rather uncreative new moniker, Cut Up. I’m not sure what you are expecting from a band that’s […]

Grindcore has always been on the fringe of everything current in the metal scene. The first time I heard Napalm Death’s Scum I have to admit I was completely put off. Here were these blasts of noise that were nowhere near long enough to be actual songs, nor could I tell whether the record should […]

I was a mere reviewing infant when Massachusetts’ Warhorse dropped their lone full length album back in 2001. And while digitalmetal.com covered the release, I never got around to hearing it, and many of you might not have also.  Luckily, Southern Lord Recordings is here to assist you and reintroduce you to one of the more revered US […]

I am one for concept albums especially when they revolve around late 1970’s Horror Films and that is exactly what Demon Lung’s A Dracula is. Produced by Billy Anderson (Neurosis, High on Fire) A Dracula has a fantastically heavy and sludgy production.  I was not too familiar with Demon Lung when I choose to do […]

One could argue that after four classic albums (Among the Catacombs of Nephren-Ka, Black Seeds of Vengeance, In Their Darkened Shrines, Annihilation of the Wicked), South Carolina’s Nile could be construed to be running in place for their following 3 albums, culminating in 2012’s At the Gates of Sethu. While unmistakably still a Nile album, production issues plagued […]

While the likes of Fleshgod Apocalypse, Hour of Penance, Logic of Denial and such get the lions share of the attention when it comes to Italian death metal, a couple of lesser known Italian bands have come to my attention of late- namely Inverted and Necrosy. Inverted with their impressive The Age of Harvest and Necrosy […]

Russell Allen’s vocals have always been one of the elements I’ve loved best about Symphony X: he’s powerful and stunning in big choruses, rousing in the verses, and never so goopy or overcooked that my enthusiasm turns to embarrassment (as is the case with a lot of power metal bands, hence my very picky attitude towards […]

For those of you not family with Ambassador Gun started off as a group called A Second from The Surface.  If you get to check out their older material it is worth checking out. Ambassador Gun definitely no rookies to The United States metal community having done a record with Prosthetic Records and also appearing […]