Man… now that is an album cover. In the annals of heavy metal/extreme music, the writings of JRR Tolkien have long resided in largely black metal  (Summoning), power metal (Blind Guardian), ‘garb-core’ (Battlelore) and even death metal (Khazaddum). But what the world was clearly lacking was some Tolkien-based, technical, blackened deathcore. Well, here comes Washington […]

Over the last few years, metalhead jack-of-all-trades Ben Murray (Light This City, Heartsounds, Darkness Everywhere, No Chemistry) has built Creator-Destructor Records into quite the diverse little powerhouse of a label. Representing everyone from legendary punk rockers A Wilhelm Scream, to Beatdown bruisers like Sunami and Kruelty, to filthy Death Metal acts like Dismemberment and Spinebreaker. […]

2022, comin’ in HAWT. You know it’s true because of the way I spelled it. I already have 3-5 albums which are sure year end contenders and I’m writing this sentence on the last day of January. I’m not one to complain about an embarrassingly high amount of excellent metal, but it’s already been difficult […]

Holy crappers- Acts of God is Immolation’s eleventh album.  Man, I feel like time has flown right by me.  It seems like only yesterday I was at Spark’s on Long Island, NY watching them headline once Dawn of Possession was released.  I remember speaking with the entire band, buying merch.  I would bring said DOP […]

I do not need music to help me achieve a depressed state, Hangman’s Chair, okay? I do very well with that as my default, thank you very much. However, if you’re unlike me (for your own sake, let’s hope), maybe you just need that nudge or like to feel miserable sometimes. If so, A Loner, […]

Germany’s Vorga burst into the scene about 6 years ago and released an EP, but Striving Toward Oblivion is their debut full length album and showcases a trailblazing style of black metal. Opening this 8 song 45 minute album is “Starless Sky” and what an opening ripper of a lead off song. Massive blasting equipped with […]

I try and keep myself open to covering things that normally don’t float my boat, hence me taking a break from deathcore and technical death metal to take stab at the third album from the UK’S black/crust act Wolfbastard. But they had a couple of things going for them; ‘Wolf’ and ‘Bastard’ are two of […]

A well-respected colleague of mine once advised me that it was a bad idea to stay with a job or company for more than 10 years – and even that long was pushing it. The idea being, after a certain amount of time in the same setting, you begin to lose your passion for the […]

Listen, if you guys want me to stop reviewing material from Transcending Obscurity Records, you’re going to have to tell them to calm it down with the excellent new releases… Don’t, though. That brings us to the new, excellent album from a band with an intriguing name, The Last of Lucy. I didn’t like it […]

If you have the balls to say “chilling-yet-breathtaking ruminations harken to the golden days of melodic, nature-inspired black metal, back during the mid ’90s. Names invoked include old Borknagar, Kvist, Arckanum, Old Man’s Child, Norway’s Gehenna, and even earliest Dimmu Borgir” in your promotional materials, you had better fucking back it up, and luckily the […]

OK soooooooooooo listen – I’m not exactly what anyone would call an expert in the world of electronic music, or even more metal-leaning industrial music, for that matter. No hate or disrespect or anything like that at all, it’s just not an avenue I’ve gone down much to this point in my life. With that […]

San Francisco’s progressive metal band Hammers of Misfortune released their debut album The Bastard in 2001.  They would go on to release 5 more incredible albums, their last one the phenomenal Dead Revolution in 2016.  HOM is an eclectic band with influences ranging from Manilla Road, Fates Warning, Iron Maiden, Solstice (UK).  But they have […]

As I’ve stated many times before in these very pages, I’m very picky about my heavy/power metal. It’s not a genre I generally really enjoy or get into, but I’ve certainly come to appreciate the likes of Blind Guardian, WindRose, Dragony, Fairyland, Thy Majestie, Grail Knights, Pathfinder, Twilight Force,  and the 23 Rhapsody related bands, […]

One of my favorite albums of 2021 was the fantastic Decadence and Decay from Oregon’s Silver Talon, an album and a band that certainly have plenty going for themselves on their own merit, but the album was an immediate hit for me not because it was something I’d never heard before – but instead it […]

January of 2020, specifically January 14th, was quite the day for deathcore. You had releases from Worm Shepherd, Fit For An Autopsy, Enterprise Earth, and a new Ingested single, as well as album number four from Connecticut’s Shadow of Intent, one of symphonic deathcore’s top bands As with 2019s excellent Melancholy, which tackled mental health […]

Deathcore is having another moment. This new wave is being led by such heavyweights from last year such as Worm Shepherd, Osiah, Mental Cruelty, Signs of the Swarm, and Bound in Fear, and looks to be off to a good start with new Worm Shepherd and Shadow of Intent due out in January along with […]

I’m pretty new to Wilderun’s form of symphonic classical, folk, and progressive, heavy metal/death metal smash-up, with the reissue of 2019s Veil of Imagination being my first exposure to the band to which I then picked up their more folk-tinged prior records. I described the band as a mix of Opeth, Dream Theater and Blind […]

I grabbed this 5 song EP for review for 1 simple fact; Jon Huber. The former vocalist of I Declare War, Pathology, and I Detest ( as well as live vocals for Whitechapel back on the day), has been one of my favorite vocalists for a while now since I heard his blast furnace of […]

It’s a shame when a band, especially one so far into their career, doesn’t know who or what they want to be. With a discography in the range of good to great, unfortunately it feels like this is where we find deathcore veterans Fit For An Autopsy. I’ll explain… While the opening track, which is […]

My first 2022 release review is the self-released and self-titled album from Canada’s Maule.  This four-piece act plays straight up balls to the wall heavy metal.  9 songs just shy of the 40 minute mark.  “Evil Eye” opening up the album and Iron Maiden are a true inspiration for this band – think vintage Maiden, […]

Symphonic or blackened deathcore blew the fuck up in 2021. Though it was certainly a thing before 2020, After the success of Lorna Shore‘s Immortal in 2020, the genre simply exploded with already established and new bands like Mental Cruelty, Shadow of Intent, Sin Deliverance, Dead World Reclamation,  Darker By Design, Carnifex, Assemble the Chariots, […]

Back before the internet, we metalheads used to rely on a few different methods in hearing and procuring our aural fix. One of these was the blind purchase. Sometimes the payoff was immeasurably fantastic. Sometimes the gamble was nothing less than horrific. Most of the time though, the results tended to fall somewhere in that […]

Potentially the greatest perk of writing for a metal site (if you call what I do writing) is getting to connect with underground artists such as Crawl Below’s Charlie Sad Eyes. Not long after his previous album and personal year-end lister, 9 Mile Square was released, he mentioned to me that the next Crawl Below […]