The early to mid ’90s produced a seemingly endless supply of excellent death/doom demos and EPs from bands that quickly disappeared or mellowed out. Anyone who was turned off by Sweet X-Rated Nothings, ever ended up on a not-so-user-friendly website looking for a clip of “Frozen Feeling,” or longs for a Garden of Silence reunion […]

The post-apocalyptic din made by the French sado-machinists in Autokrator on their self-titled debut turned quite a few heads last year, including mine. It was one of the most jarring, oppressive recordings ever to assault my eardrums. I feel like my hearing was forever altered along with my standard for metal extremity. With an industrial […]

Much like death metal’s brutality arms race in the ‘90s, there now seems to be one to become the most inhuman. Spain’s Altarage is one of the latest contenders in this far-flung arena. Their MMXV demo from last March was quickly picked up and released on cassette by Sol y Nieve and 7” by Iron […]

Black metal has been getting run through the wringer lately with certain bands sanitizing it for the masses and some metal “journalists” using it as fodder for their hyperbolic clickbait writing. That’s partly the reason that I don’t review it often despite it being one of my favorite genres. There’s already too much talk about […]

Ævangelist will always hold a special place in my metal heart. The first review I ever wrote was for their 2012 debut, De Masticatione Mortuorum in Tumulis, and I’ve covered every full-length that they’ve done since. Putting their inhuman sounds into words hasn’t been easy, but I’ve enjoyed the challenge. This fourth full-length in as […]

It still amazes me just how vast our little rabbit hole in the field of human culture really is. I’ve been crawling through it for over two decades now and I’m still constantly discovering great bands that I missed along the way. Such is the case with Poland’s Disloyal. The group formed back in ‘97 […]

As bands like Funeral, Thergothon, and Skepticism took doom metal to its ultimate depressive conclusion in the mid ‘90s, the funeral doom sub-subgenre was born. Finland’s Shape of Despair formed around that time under the name Raven, but didn’t release their debut, Shades of…, until 2000. By this time, Funeral had moved on to something […]

You never know what you’re going to get from Finland’s Svart Records. I suppose you could say that their staple genre is doom, but within that it could either be the stoner/doom of bands like Domovoyd, Acid King, and Pombagira, the death/doom of Vainaja, Kuolemanlaakso, and Heavydeath, Essenz’s patented black/doom, or the more progressive/psychedelic approach […]

You may have noticed a small but notable crop of retro Swedeath bands progressing beyond their throwback stylings over the past few years. Necrovation was the first to make a significant paradigm shift with their 2012 self-titled full-length. Finland’s Vorum seemed poised to take the same leap after their 2013 debut, Poisoned Void, which felt […]

Industrial metal has had a tough time maintaining its integrity as a genre over the years. It entered the ‘90s pissed and oppressive, but left them skipping and holding hands with nu metal. Remember Pitchshifter? Their career was basically like a microcosm of the genre as a whole. A few experimental black metal acts like […]

Do you remember the first time you heard City by Strapping Young Lad? Can you also remember trying to describe it to your friends? You’re going to have the same problem with London. But, you won’t be able to say it sounds like City, because for the most part, it doesn’t. So, why am I […]

In my review of Mesmur’s self-titled debut, I lamented the lack of death/doom in 2014. However, there were a few worthy entries in the genre last year, and one of the most exciting actually happened to be Mesmur-related. You see, their vocalist, Chris G, is also the voice in the Australia/New Zealand-based project, Orphans of […]

So, this old-school/retro/classic death metal movement has been going on for over a decade now. It’s so ubiquitous that I’m not sure if we can really call it a thing anymore; It’s just what death metal is now. The principle of it makes me happy, but the practice has left me feeling a little unfulfilled […]

2014 certainly won’t be remembered as a banner year for the most deathly of doom metal. Not that the most despondent of metal’s subgenres have ever been highly adored and prolific, but they seem especially forgotten by all this year. That makes this late entry courtesy of Code666 Records all the more welcome, and surprising. […]

As painful as it is to say, death metal is probably the most stagnant, saturated subgenre of metal right now with the majority of its practitioners either content to simply regurgitate the most well-known sounds of the early ‘90s or soullessly hammer away in only the most “brootal” fashion. How many early Entombed clones does […]

Tim Call is one busy son of a bitch. In addition to owning and operating the quite excellent label/distro, Parasitic Records, he provides drums and sometimes also vocals for various bands including Aldebaran, The Howling Wind, Weregoat, Sempiternal Dusk, Terror Oath, Ealdath, and I’m willing to bet he’s T in Ardour Loom. Just this year […]

Theoretically speaking, if one end of a wormhole could be held by a vessel travelling at near light speed into the future while the other remained stationary, information could pass through it into the past. Floridian technomancers, Ævangelist, seem to have discovered the means to do this, and have captured what came through. The recording […]

Despite Ulvaja being the band’s debut EP, the story of Rippikoulu goes all the way back to 1990, when they started out playing punk. Within just a couple years’ time, they somehow morphed into one of Finland’s darkest and heaviest death metal bands of all time. If you’re familiar with Finnish death metal, you know […]

Does this review even need to exist? Unless you’re someone who’s saving your next illegal download for the new Slipknot album, you probably already have this thing pre-ordered. Never before have I seen a band gain so much popularity in such a short amount of time on so few songs. Quality over quantity is Bölzer’s […]

Lately it seems like the metal scene has fallen into a time warp twenty years deep. Carcass has been touring, At the Gates and Godflesh are both working on new albums, Swedeath is branching out, and I keep seeing Emperor everywhere I look. The lone Swede of Ormgård was ahead of the curve on that […]

Ever-increasing globalization has led to a decline of the development and endurance of regional sounds. The stylings of Bay Area thrash, Swedish death metal, and Norwegian black metal can come from anywhere now. Bucking that trend is the Québécois black metal scene, where a proud yet unpretentious style has evolved and remained unique to the […]

Apparently a few of the strange Swedes in experimental black metal act, Bergraven, felt like doing something more traditional when they teamed up with their buddy, A. Peterson of De Arma and Lönndom to form Stilla. The project’s 2013 debut, Till stilla falla, was a nice surprise of cold, Polish-sounding (Furia, Mgła) black metal. Ensamhetens […]

Ukraine’s Khors have consistently refined their songcraft with each new release since their 2005 debut, something not many bands can sustain over the course of five albums. Their latest, 2012’s Wisdom of Centuries, may have suffered from some overall flow and filler issues, but it still contained some of their strongest songs and, furthermore, some […]

I had wanted to give this album the attention it deserved last year, but circumstances conspired against it. The digital promo impressed me enough to want a physical copy for review. Unfortunately, North American distribution was nonexistent, so it quickly became lost in the stampede of amazing 2013 releases that were available in US distros. […]

Outsiders often refer to our beloved genre as “scary music” or just “noise.” This jaded, 20+ year fan of extreme metal got a sense of how they feel the first time I listened to Omen Ex Simulacra, Ævangelist’s second full-length and first on Debemur Morti Productions (the most appropriate label for this band). Last year’s […]