Italy’s Drown In Sulfur got off to a hot start in the blackened deathcore genre with various EPs including the excellent Blackwind EP, which I really enjoyed and own, and I thought the band was ready to blow up. Then the band literally blew up shortly after with drummer Domenico Tamila kicking out all of […]

Unlike my urologist when I was just a little guy, I really dropped the ball here. Don’t think about that one too hard, please. When it comes to The Convalescence, I heard of them but hadn’t listened. On a random Tuesday or Wednesday, I noticed they were playing at my friend’s venue outside of Pittsburgh […]

Unique Leader Records? Check. Caelen Stokkermans cover art? Check. Blackened Technical deathcore? Check. Cool band moniker? Check. Christian Donaldson (Cryptopsy) mix/master? Check Album title I can identify with? Check. Yeah, I’m definitely reviewing and digging this. Portugal’s The Voynich Code is named after the Voynich Manuscript, a mysterious 15th-century codex full of images and writings […]

Despite being one of the first deathcore bands to dabble with black metal keyboards, Carnifex seems to have never quite fully committed to being a full-on symphonic/blackened deathcore band. The last two albums, 2019s World War X and 2021s Graveside Confessions, flip-flopped between more Whitechapel-styled deathcore and slightly more blackened deathcore that they introduced with […]

Starting as a standard brutal death metal/slam band, Germany’s started adding some keyboards around 2019’s Inferis, but it was for 2021’s excellent A Hill to Die Upon, where they went full-on symphonic deathcore, and on the heels of Lorna Shore‘s genre igniting Immortal, comparisons to Lorna Shore were inevitable…. and warranted. However, they also had […]

Belgium’s When Plagues Collide released a damn solid debut album of symphonic/blackened deathcore back in 2019, Tutor of the Dying, before the genre really took off. And honestly, it probably should have got more attention but then Lorna Shore happened, Mental Cruelty happened, Worm Shepherd happened, and Shadow of Intent happened. And then 1,234 other […]

Who knew there were not one but TWO excellent symphonic/blackened deathcore bands right here in my backyard in, Missouri? One is Kansas City’s Vile Revelation, who released their killer debut EP Ov Vultures and Flesh back in 2022 (though I only discovered it earlier this year, hence no review) and Abaddonia, hailing from the darkest […]

There’s an old adage “You can have too much of a good thing”. And for me, that “good thing” is blackened/symphonic deathcore, and I can have as much of it as I fucking want. And Spain’s Bonecarver has delivered yet another killer addition to the genre to go with the 2022 onslaught of releases from […]

When you run the risk of being simply known as “the band that Will Ramos of Lorna Shore used to sing for”, you’d better deliver on your album that you recorded after Ramos’s departure  …. And Boy to A Wake in Providence respond and let the blackened deathcore world know they are NOT simply going […]

Have a seat, and grab a snack. This is gonna be a long one. Way back in 2015 I reviewed a pretty nondescript EP, Maleficium, from this New Jersey band called Lorna Shore. It was Ok, odd band name, and a few keyboards, but nothing really stood out. The same can be said for the […]

I grabbed the debut full-length album from Barcelona’s Mankind Grief as Lacerated Enemy has released a couple of solid blackened deathcore releases already in 2022 ( Hurakan’s Via Eterna and Downfall of Mankind‘s Vile Birth) and Monarch had a song on it called “LV-426”, so I was hoping for a full-on Alien/Aliens themed album. Alas, […]

So a handful of excellent blackened/symphonic deathcore (or whatever you want to call it) releases have come out in 2022 to basically keep fans satiated until Lorna Shore drop Pain Remains later this year; Shadow of Intent, Hurakan, Downfall of Mankind, Worm Shepherd (who will somehow be releasing a second album later this year…) to […]

You don’t want to know what I had to do to get a deathcore review from the hands of the boss man, but I’m going to tell you anyway. I won the first annual Teeth of the Divine Knife Fight Championships. Whether he was a willing or knowing participant is irrelevant. I still won and […]

France’s Hurakan (the Mayan god of wind, storm, and fire?) has apparently undergone a bit of rebirth from their first two more brutal death metal/slamming death/tech death albums, which feature songs titles like “Brutal Slamming Shit”, “Intergalactic Moo Moo Imperator”, “Xenometh” and “Transdimensional Whorehouse Spaceship”. They have changed logos, and now jumped on the more […]