Eschewing the standard tropes of the “bigger, louder, faster, heavier, etc” second album adjectives that most metal bands embrace, Secrets of the Sky have written an album that peaks and wanes with life, character, mood, melody, and dissonance. Pathways is an album through and through with segues that give the listener the feeling of arriving […]

The cover art of In Cauda Venenum features an oil painted skull, or some decrepit face.  You aren’t exactly sure but the artist painted a clearly defined creature to start.  Stark, and ugly, but fine in composition and clear to any viewer.  An important lesson for any artist is to challenge themselves, letting go of […]

So largely, this album , along with Morbid Vomit‘s Return to the Crypts and Cult of Endtime‘s In Charnel Lights,  and Abscession’s, Grave Offerings are responsible for my relative lack of enthusiasm for Entrails‘ Obliteration. And to be fair, Obliteration is still pretty good, but its safe sound along with these other albums really tempered […]

Cattle Decapitation is a group that has definitely earned a reputation for themselves with a career spanning nineteen years and with six full length releases on their belts they have truly knocked the ball out of the park with their 2015 release The Anthropocene Extinction. Conceptually focusing on The Anthropocene Era, Cattle Decapitation has created a forty six minute […]

Back in 1998 Nile, a death metal band from South Carolina, released Amongst the Catacombs of Nephren-Ka on Relapse Records. One could argue, and i would be one of them that the release reinvigorated American metal (as well as Relapse), a death metal scene that was saturated in Nu metal, Pavement Records, JL America and Crash Music bands that were simply soulless speedy death metal clones. However, Catacombs, changed the game.

Sigh. It’s been awhile. This is a band that I was once totally in love with; going all the way back to the release of their 1997 album, Hail Horror Hail. Sigh have always been a completely fearless musical entity; even from their formative, moribund Venom necro-worship on Scorn Defeat, they were already taking chances […]

I’m pretty sure that 2014/15 has been the strongest year for the Swedish Death metal revival movement since the genre reignited back in 2008/09.  And its just not bigger names like Bloodbath, Entrails, Feral, Just Before Dawn, Puteraeon ,Revel in Flesh, Usurpress, Brutally Deceased, Wombbath or dusted of compilations and of ‘lost classics’  like Goddefied, Sorcery and Festerday.  New, fresh, […]

I’ve said it before, I’m saying it now, and ill say it again; I don’t know what the fuck is going on at Mighty Music. Once a bastion for burly European death and black metal, the label is churning out mainstream rock, or just tripe like The Grumpynators, Fried Okra  Band, Franklin Zoo, Bullet Train Blast, See the Sky, Black Book […]

From Luxembourg hail some of the coldest sons of bitches you’ll ever meet.  The band in question is Plaguewielder; a doom paced, blackened affair with some of the most obnoxiously retched vocals I’ve ever heard.  This quartet is a pretty hypothermic affair aimed at leaving your carcass strung up in a meat-locker for future feasting.  […]

So deathcore has been fading for a few years now. Even prior heavy weights Oceano, I Declare War, Impending Doom and Whitechapel barely registered with their respective last releases or bands are simply becoming more tech death metal (Abiotic, Job For a Cowboy). But last year, New Jersey’s Lorna Shore released a solid little EP called Maleficum, […]

Back in  2013, Germany’s Sulphur Aeon made quite a splash with their debut  Swallowed By The Ocean’s Tide. And rightly so, being a crumbling, cavernous, but memorable sonic monument to Lovecraftian horrors. And yet here we are two years later, and the follow up seems to have been, well… swallowed up. I’m not sure I can […]

Hailing from Saint Paul Minnesota The Wolf Council is a relatively new group. According to their Facebook page they were formed in 2013 and after listening to their self-titled album I am surprised they haven’t been together for far longer.  Being just a three piece, The Wolf Council jam some very kick ass, stoned out, hard rock […]

I was so stoked when Morgoth reformed several years ago and even more stoked when the band announced they would write a new record.  I was a fan since their ep’s in the late 80’s.  I saw them live on their mini east coast tour, for The Eternal Fall ep and the band tore the […]

Switzerland’s Schammasch made quite stir last year with their second album, Contradiction (it made my 2014 year end list), so Prosthetic Records has reached back and dug up the band’s 2010 Black Tower Productions debut Sic Lvceat Lvx  (meaning ‘Thus, let the Light shine’), given it a nice new mix and remaster and new cover. And […]

Black metal is a sink or swim niche for me. Either your band rises above the dross, or it becomes dross to be risen above. Part of this is simply that the niche is not my favorite. My tolerance is lower than fans and fanatics. But part of it is that some bands try to […]

Belgium’s  Angakok play a depressive doom/sludge metal that is not long or drawn out like some doom bands (not a bad thing by any means) but is short and loaded with a sort of creepy atmosphere. I say creepy because within some songs and a few instrumentals there is spoken word parts as if heard […]

Bindrune with past and present bands/releases has really found a superb niche within a particular style with its folky, natural black metal acts like Panoptcion, Nechochwen, Obsequiae (though no longer on Bindrune) , Waldgefluster , Infera Bruo, Ahamkara, Falls or Rauros and such, so it seems that Washington State’s Alda and Bindrune is a match made in heaven. Clearly […]

Man this is definitely the best Unique Leader release I have heard this year so far.  France’s long running Kronos waste no time in beginning their technical death metal assault off the gates with the opener “Infernal Abyss Sovereignty”. Pummeling blast beats and churning vocals set the stage for an incredibly entertaining listen. Being that they […]

Translated as ‘loss’, France’s Verlies is a new three piece act, and Les Domaines Du Hommes was self released back in 2014, but the re-release has been picked up fittingly by Hypnotic Dirge Records. So the combination o the band name, country of origin and the label should clue you in as yo what to expect here. Yes, […]

Okay this is both cool and a  bit of a head scratcher, first the cool part. I know there are many of you out there that may miss Massacre both in the 90’s version and the recently aborted reformation of the selfsame band and if you are part of this fan base, you are in […]

Folk metal so often gets bogged down by excess layers of cheese, bombast and pretentiousness that it rarely moves me or finds a way into my listening rotation. But every now and again a style of metal that generally falls outside my comfort zone proceeds to blow me away and forces me to rethink my […]

Lately, my wanton lust for grinding, d-beat flesh is insatiable.  It could be the nice weather, a mental illness or some other factor bringing it out of me again, but shit man, I got the bug.  Scotland’s own sewerborn hellspawn Rats of Reality are really hitting me with a ball peen hammer right between the […]

Well here it is. At least based on this interview, this is Rory Heikkila’s final release doing business under the Shroud of Despondency brand. This is a huge bummer for those in the know, but I can’t be too sad about it, because Family Tomb is one hell of a consolation. I haven’t enjoyed a […]

This reissue was impossible to find in the U.S.  For imports, as usual, I had to go and get it from a European distro and paid over $20 for it. But it was worth it since Odium is my favorite Morgoth album.  In 1993 Odium was released and polarized a lot of Morgoth’s fan base […]

This was one of my most anticipated albums in some time; a supergroup comprised of Amebix’s Rob Miller, Michel Langevin (Away) from Voivod, Jon Misery from crust punk stawarts Misery, and Andy Lefton, from the devastatingly crushing War//Plague. I don’t know what I expected that to sound like, given how wonderfully eclectic Ambebix and Voivod […]