With last year’s Savage Land, Exhumed main main Matt Harvey and basically his Chuck Schuldiner cover band Gruesome, delivered arguably the apex early Death worship album. But at the end of my review, I wondered how the band would follow Savage Land up. Would they still basically cover Death’s first 3 albums or would they […]

Sometimes you hear a band and you just want to call all your friends and start gushing. Which, in my case, would be pointless because all the friends I could call could care less about extreme metal. Regardless, Necrosic is just such a band. Putrid Decimation is an EP that NO serious death metal fan […]

Despite playing Swedish death metal, my favorite genre ever, the 2015 debut EP, The Insurrection, from these veteran Swedes really didn’t grab my attention and seemed a little like Prosthetic Records desperately dipping their toe belatedly into the genre to grab some of its resurgent popularity. So here is the full length follow up, and it appears […]

Damnit, damnit, damnit Abnormality… why did you have to go this route?!?  After 2012’s PHENOMENAL Contaminating the Hive Mind (which made my year end top albums list), which one of you decided that mailing in a snooze-worthy, by the numbers brutal death metal album was a good idea?  And after being signed to Metal Blade […]

Tombstalker may be a band some of you are already familiar with, being that their debut album, Black Crusades, was released at the tail end of 2015. Personally, the album was one that flew under the radar and I missed it in the myriad of releases of last year. Luckily, Black Crusades is rearing its […]

West Virginian power trio Rhin laid my constitution to rubble with their debut album Bastard.  I was an instant convert when it came to their anger overload; splicing together the best parts of pissed off punk rock, a touch of Seattle’s dark side (Willard, early Tad, Skin Yard) rhythmically focused and feedback blasted noise-rock ala […]

Following up a classic is always difficult. Especially when that classic was 12 years in the making. Thus was the task at hand for Luc Lemay and trying to follow up 2013s Colored Sands, arguably one of the most successful death metal comebacks of all time. But Lemay has played it smart; he waited a while, and […]

Any and all bands have their influences, their reasons for he or she to pick up a guitar or to stand in front of the mic and let their voice be heard. Then it comes to another thought, as to when and how much you take these influences and take that next step and make […]

Imperial Triumphant are from the New York City area and Inceste is inspired by the works of Parisian grand kink-philosopher Marquis de Sade. Inceste is blackened metal intersecting the physical and psychological pain realms of Deathspell Omega and Naked City (John Zorn’s genre-frappe jazz group).  I suppose you could generally label it “black metal” for […]

Swiss quintet Colossus Fall have been kicking around since 2011, releasing an EP, single and 7” to date.  Hidden Into Details is the band’s first exploration into the long-player format and the band’s frantic, constantly changing sound makes for an engaging ear rape workout with numerous fluxes in style, sonics and subversive audio violence throughout.  […]

I’m a big fan of symphonic black metal, but the genre has been in a bit of a dry spell. The only decent recent release I can recall is Diabolus Arcanium or Raphuemet’s Well, but those are a little ‘different’.  I am craving something more Scandinavian, melodic and grandiose like the scene on the ’90s (Lothlorien, Embracing  […]

I enjoyed Bostonian’s Zealotry’s 2013 debut, The Charnal Expanse.  I really enjoyed Defeated Sanity’s Lille Gruber’s drum work on the album.  It was some of the best of his career, regarding the progressive moments.  The new Zealotry brings in Alex Zalatan, as the drummer, and couples some more session musicans, but leaves Pat Tougas intact, […]

From the fertile, fly-infested breeding grounds of Florida that have delivered unto the Earth the sludge majesty of Cavity, Railsplitter, Dove, Floor, House of Lightning, Consular, Shroud Eater and so many more iron-forgers of the riff hails Hollow Leg. I’m fuckin’ red with embarrassment on one cheek and am deservedly wearing egg on the other, […]

Recently I have been getting a lot of synth/keyboard heavy metal of various styles across my desk: Hope for the Dying, Rapheumets Well, Enthean, Winterhorde, Elvaron, The Devils of Loudun, Pathways, Hyperion, and this, the solid second effort from France’s Blood Ages. Blood Ages’ take on metal is death metal with a Middle Eastern flair similar to Nile. […]

Multi-instrumentalist hero Tim Schmidt from godly old school doom/classic metallurgists Seamount returns with his latest project Naked Star; a gritty, riff-spitting monstrosity with dirty demonic grooves, the Marlboro burnt vocals of Jim Grant and a generally roughhewn yet melodic pummel that would have been right at home on the supreme doom label Hellhound back in […]

Poland’s Bloodthirst have a bit of history behind them, having been in circulation since 2001 and they have a number of splits, full-length albums and EP’s under their belt, so they are definitely not the new kids on the block. So with that history and back catalogue, they give us a well oiled thrash metal […]

After shifting from a gore/pure slam band into a more rounded, complete death metal band with Autopsychosis, these Russians made my 2013 year end -list in a year full of great, brutal metal. With their new album, Gravenous Hour, the band have elevated themselves once again, with an album that is sure to be considered one […]

Though listed as “brutal death metal” at Metal Archives, Milwaukee’s Casket Robbery are actually nothing of the sort. They are death metal, and while the subject matter of evil through the ages (from Elizabeth Bathory, through Jeffrey Dahmer and beyond) is more ‘brutal’, the music itself is a more refined, tighter and chunky melodic and even […]

With short and sweet songs Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania quartet Eternal Sleep work up a lardy, greasy metallic chunk n’ chug on their debut EP, The Emptiness Of…  There’s a stocking stuffed full of various human appendages and entrails to be found here, making the band’s sound a bit harder to pin down on any one particular […]

Let’s just suppose that, in 1994 or so, Helmet wrote some songs.  Also they had a time machine. They used it to travel a few years further back and coerce the Melvins to write a couple more songs for them. Then they screamed forward to last year and forced Converge to show them how to […]

Crikey. If you thought the second album, Contradiction, from these Swiss dark metallers was ambitious at 2 CDs and 80 minutes, wait till you get a load of their third album, Triangle. 3 CDs, exactly  100 minutes, each CD clocking in at 33 minutes and change and each covering a different musical style and concept. You have CD I: The […]

After nearly a decade of inactivity, Novembre are back with one of 2016’s most anticipated returns.  Ursa marks album number seven for the Italians and it wholeheartedly embraces everything that has made the band such a stylish international gem in the extreme metal universe. If you’ve adored the output from Carmelo Orlando and company over […]

With no less than 6 other bands with the name Deathcult, it doesn’t make for a easy identification or to stand out in the crowded scene and I myself was initially thinking this was the Chicago, US version ( whose release The Test of Time, sparked my interest ) I come to find this is […]

Initially, the costumed Battlelore-ish press photos of this North Carolina sextet and their self created alternate fantasy world where all their songs and two albums take place had me a little bit leery. But these guys, (who used to go under the name Blue Man’s God), actually deliver a kick ass album of epic, fantasy themed symphonic/black death […]

Murder Made God came to my attention with their first album, Irreverence, that was a nice little diamond in the rough that I came across in 2013 and ended up on my top ten list that year.  It was a killer brutal slam/tech death album that got many spins in the ‘ol CD player.  So […]