Coming from the school of bad band names, baring the ambiguous black/death metal tag AND sharing the band name with another  fellow French act, Derealized had the cards stacked against them from the get go. But being the consummate professional I am, and considering this label gave some solid release from Stangala, Red Dawn, Sound of […]

Cleveland’s finest purveyors of the riff, Contra, busted my nose up with brass knuckles in the form of 2015’s Son of Beast EP.  A storm n’ swell of throttling blues riffs and homing missile rhythms, the instrumental trio comprising members of some of my favorite Ohio heavies were off to a greater than excellent start.  […]

Here is one of those releases that makes me pull my hair out. I got the promo late, after my year end list was almost complete, and it’s good enough that it was on and off my 2016 year list, but ultimately barely didn’t make it, and now whenever I listen to it, I wish […]

Gastropode is probably French for slugs and snails, or perhaps more general univalve animals, because it is almost exactly the same word as Gastropod which, as a struggling Zoology major, I know for a god damned fact includes slugs and snails. I could Google it, of course, but I just don’t think knowing for certain […]

When Soulburn reformed in 2014, I was pleasantly surprised at their return album after 16 years, namely The Suffocating Darkness.  To this day is still one of my all time favorite blackened death/doom albums and yes I have heard all the great albums and own most from 30 years prior.  Soulburn incorporated alot more black […]

  Boy Comatose Music have had a busy year!  With releases like Neurogenic Dehumanized, Desecrate the Faith and Blasphemer (to name a few) it has already been a solid and consistent run of brutal death metal.  Adding to their catalog is the 2nd studio album from Minnesota’s Face of Oblivion.  Cataclysmic Desolation is a transitional […]

I have it on good authority from some Minnesota pals, that Hate Beast are a well respected, rising band on the Minneapolis scene. And I have no issue with that intel, but if I’m being honest Hate Beast are not doing a lot for me. First off, if you are called Hate Beast, I expect something […]

Guitarist/vocalist/mastermind Aaron Lewis has culled Connecticut doom cult When the Deadbolt Breaks into his own singular backwoods, backwater doom vision for over a decade now (he’s also been in Cable and Thunderhoof and currently has the smokin’ Buzzard Canyon goin’ full swing). I’ve had the pleasure of opening for Deadbolt twice, including a devastating show […]

Despite coverage of this long running Polish act’s last two albums right here at TOTD, I have never heard this band’s take on synth laden, progressive doom/death/black metal. While researching and reading the promo materials, I see Opeth name dropped quite a bit, and to some extent there is some Opeth in here with light […]

  In their short existence, Malaysia’s Humiliation have released a ton of material. Pretty much an album every year coupled with numerous split 7″ releases on a yearly basis.  With Honourable Discharge being the 7th full length in the Humiliation  war camp you know what they bring by now. Concentrating on heavy, meaty riffs and […]

Now definitely mark this one down as a surprise. After jamming the hell out of 2016s God’s Hate and Eternal Sleep, it has been a killer year for down-tuned, groovy, angry-ass hardcore. Well then while traipsing through the queue here at Teeth I ran across an EP from a band called The Apex, and it was […]

Well, here we are at the start of a fresh new year. And while New Years is usually a time for bright-eyed, wishful optimism and wistful reminiscence, the global political and social climates have the world at unease. Yet despite a near blastbeat-pace of bummers and deaths, 2016 gave us another year of stellar extreme music.

Teethofthedivine soldiered on in 2016 as well, with some new faces on the team (though our distaste for digital promos hasn’t changed a bit). We also experienced a growth spurt on social media, so if you’re not following us yet, why the hell not? ‘Cause while other sites seem content to feed you with celebrity blogs, lists of ‘top 10 albums from 1993 which which had llamas on the cover’ or so-called humor pieces, TOTD just did what we do best: reviews, reviews, and reviews. One review every week day for the whole year. That’s 300+ reviews, folks.

We hope to add more interviews, features, and contests in 2017, and we do it all for you guys – our loyal readers, sharers, likers, and listeners. So keep on keeping it real in 2017, as it might be the last year the earth continues to spin. We’ll do our part to make sure metal stays as relevant in 2017 as it has been in the decades before.

So with much ado, here are the hand-picked releases that the TOTD staff enjoyed in 2016. Given the thousands of releases that assaulted our collective senses last year, hopefully we’ll introduce you to a few new favorites. And as always, stay tuned for our Fillings and Cavities feature, where we’ll shovel even more death, destruction, blackened weirdness, and melodic wonders into your willing ears.

When Dan Swano says “One of the best SweDeath projects I have come across in 20 years. The perfect blend of all the highlights from the Swedish scene from 89 to 91. Truly awesome!”, I buy instantly and listen later. And having mastered this release from Sentient Horror (with  mixing assistance from Damian Herring of Horrendous), […]

My buddy Hassan Amin, vocalist for the almighty grind lords Multinational Corporations always turns me onto cool new bands.  Props brother Hassan!  Death by Fungi is a hardcore/punk/crossover unit hailing from India and their debut 4-track EP In Dearth Of scratches several of my extreme musical itches all at once, gettin’ my leg kicking in […]

Back in my early reviewing days, I was all over ‘beauty and the beast’ metal; gloomy goth/doom death metal mixing death metal vocals and angelic female vocals. The likes of Thalarion, The Gathering, Lacuna Coil, To Elysium, Tragodia, Beseech, Draconian, Seventh Moon, The Provenance, Alas and such were my jams. A couple of bands recently […]

Germany’s Revel in Flesh, have been one of my favorite death metal albums for quite some time.  Their 3rd album, Death Kult Legions was their best album and so they return a few years later to leave many other bands, in the dust, once again with Emissary of All Plagues.  With Dan Swano, at Unisound […]

Back in 2009 Long Island’s  Painted In Exile released a killer 3 song EP called Revitalized. Riding the popularity of bands like of Between the Buried and Me, Protest the Hero, The Human Abstract, Periphery, Born of Osiris etc, the band was a experimental fusion of shredding metalcore, deathcore, mathcore, jazz, prog metal and even […]

I usually know exactly what I am getting with any Comatose albums sent to me for review. But whoa, I wasn’t expecting the sheer nastiness and brutality that Ritual Theophagy, the second album from Italy’s Blasphemer dropped on me.  Despite being familiar with plenty of other brutal Italian death metal like Logic of Denial, Hour of Penance, […]

Having never heard Burial Hordes before, I wasn’t exactly sure on what to expect from this Greek four-piece and their latest EP release, Extinction. Just going off of the band’s moniker alone, I didn’t figure the guys were employing a form of power metal, stoner, ambient, or anything of an experimental nature as much as […]

Most releases I get sent for review nowadays are produced by a team of big name folks, mixed and mastered by a big name superstar and all done with pro tools and such. Not with the case of Mur, the one man atmospheric/folk black/doom project of Cam Sather. His third album, Heartworn was recorded in […]

Bloodlet/Hope and Suicide alumni Scott Angelacos and Tom Crowther have been insanely busy with music lately.  As a huge fan of Bloodlet since The Seraphim Fall came out, I couldn’t be a happier 34 year old hate bastard fucker.  On top of the release of the pure Floridian sludge classic Hollow Leg’s Crown, which also […]

In 1987 Death firmly put the stamp of the death metal genre on the map with the release of their debut Scream Bloody Gore album.  I received it on vinyl as a birthday gift that year and it is an album all us old bastards have memorized front to back.   Once again Relapse Records […]

Before Horrendous, Unwilling Flesh, Spinebreaker, Terminate, Skinfather, With Burning Contempt and others threw a US made hat into the Swede death arena and made it cool, there was Invasion and Fatalist.  Fatalist were formed from members of Uphill Battle and Exhumed and released an album/demo compilation back in 2009, The Depths of Inhumanity,  that was […]

Oh yeah, the force is strong in this one, the Dismember force that is. This one being Italy’s Profanal and their contribution to the altar that is swedish death. Obviously we know that the followers are many, some bring reverence and new found power to the church, where others as we know, just worship, nothing […]

Prior to this month, I had no idea who Rottweiler Records or Florida’s Death Requisite were. But In comes the ‘here’s some shit for you to review’ email, I see the ‘symphonic death metal’ keyword and I check it out, as I a sucker for symphonics in any kind of metal. So what we have […]