20 Buck Spin hits another out-of-the-park homerun for 2023 with albums…yes, plural from California’s blackened death metal band Ulthar.  My first experience with Ulthar was seeing them on their debut album tour, Cosmovore, as they toured with Misery Index.  I became an Ulthar fan, picking up their cd and long sleeve shirt at the show. […]

Swedish death metal played in the USA is more of a needle in a haystack type of deal.  California’s now-defunct Fatalist was one of the better USA type of bands and they had a short run, with minimal output but their material still owns. Trying to find another band that, captured that buzzsaw Swedish sound, […]

“Sweden’s Wretched Fate is a new band formed by members of melodic death metal band Non Divine Sun, and their debut album, Fleshletting is the album that Bloodbath should have released last year.” That paragraph above was the opening paragraph from my review of the 2019 Wretched Fate debut, Fleshletting. And with the band’s second album, Carnal Heresy, I’m feeling […]

I get nostalgic for 90s and early 2000s Death Metal quite often. So many excellent bands and albums were spawned from those years that a list would literally wallpaper a house. So, as I listen to the debut from three quarters of Grief of Emerald, Death Reich, I go back to those special days of […]

Video game and D & D-obsessed,  Canadian husband and wife duo, Crown of Madness is back to follow up their enjoyable 2022 EP, The Void, and lay the final piece of groundwork for their upcoming full-length album. Continuing the Ulcerate-styled artful dissonance they created on The Void, Elemental Binding shows a duo in lockstep with […]

The second album from the duo of the excellently named vocalist/guitarist ‘Wolven Deadsoul’ and drummer E.H, was a completely blind grab for me. But when it threw around words like ‘Swedish death metal’, ‘Asphyx’, ‘Grave’,  ‘Benediction’, and such, I had to check it out despite the aggressively purple cover.. I was greeted with some excellent […]

If you were to ask me right here and now what my 5 favorite metal bands of all time were, without hesitation I’d mention Amon Amarth amongst that list. And while I certainly have my preferred era of the band’s sound (With Oden On Our Side through Surtur Rising are untouchable, in my mind), there really isn’t an era […]

I’ve got a pretty long history with Scotland’s death metal veterans Man Must Die. From covering the band and their 2003 demo in Metal Maniacs, reviewing their massive 2004 debut, ….Start Killing , for Digitalmetal.com, to their 2 Relapse Records releases, (The Human Condition and No Tolerance for Imperfection to Peace Was Never an Option […]

Turbid North delivering a new album takes me back to when Eyes Alive was released 7 years ago. So young, naïve, and infinitely more fuckable. Unless you’re a cougar. Not the animal, though. I’ve found no parallels. Much like the awful tenure of my life from then to now, it hit me hard when I […]

2018 saw the release of the debut album Warning Blast, by international band Siege of Power.  I mean with a band name, named after one of the best Napalm Death songs ever-you cannot go wrong.  Featuring members of Asphyx, Autopsy, Grand Supreme Blood Court, Hail of Bullets, Infidel Reich…I mean I can go on and […]

Atomwinter is a veteran German death metal band, who I have not year heard, despite having three albums under their belt since 2011. Their last effort was 2018s Catacombs, and in the 5-year gap since then, they have got themselves a new vocalist in Florian Bauer, and whoo boy is he a beast and makes […]

Two years ago,  I reviewed Sanguisugabogg’s Tortured Whole debut album and previous to that I reviewed their Pornographic Seizures EP.  With their debut album, I said  “Sanguisugabogg’s blow-up throughout the underground metal scene is really only just the beginning”.  And that is precisely what happened with the band right after the release of the debut. […]

Now on album number 5, the UK’S Memoriam should not need an introduction. But for those that don’t know, Memoriam is a project involving Bolt Thrower and Benediction members and was started as an homage to fallen Bolt Thrower comrade Martin Hearns (RIP). And if you also have not heard the band yet, I’ll give […]

Germany’s Atrocity has been kicking around their interpretation of extreme and oft-kilter brand of death metal for 30+ years.  I stopped following the band after their 1992 album Todessehnsucht, although I do enjoy their 1996 ep The Hunt, weird?  Their Hallucinations debut album, Blue Blood ep and Todessehnsucht material, imo are untouchable.  Perfect blend of […]

According to the promotional emails, Godiva is one of Portugal’s longest-running melodic death metal bands and has a large symphonic element, so I had to check them out. They were formed in 1999, but haven’t been super productive with a few demos and EPs in their early years, but nothing other than a single since […]

I’m going to lay this out on the table (like I did your mom, son) and just let you know I am a Worm fan. I’m a fan of the Worm. I like Worm, see? This all may have come out wrong, but if I do my job right, you’ll all be ready to take […]

New year, new me! HAHA AMIRIGHT?! Nah I’m kidding no one. You know you’re getting the same general bullshit and unrelated rantings that make me so… let’s say charming? I’M A FRIGGIN’ DELIGHT. But listen, if I do have any actual resolutions for 2023, I’d like to at least make more of an effort to […]

What do you get when two powerhouse Death Metal legends come together? A fucking blistering Death Metal album that would make the nineties blush. Marc Grewe (ex- Morgoth, Insidious Disease) and Rogga Johansson (Paganizer, Revolting, Ribspreader) have joined together to create Leper Colony, a healthy slab of chest-bursting brutality that has… melody and manages to […]

Florida’s Obituary needs no introduction, being one of the legitimately legendary American Death metal bands, if not the godfathers of the genre. From genre-defining classics like Slowly We Rot and Cause of Death to their post-hiatus offerings like Inked in Blood,  Xecutioner’s Return, and Darkest Day you know what you are getting. That said, 2017s, […]

When it comes to this modern world of cavernous, old school death metal – I have to admit, I’m a little bit picky. I think there’s a handful of bands that do it super well (Witch Vomit, Spectral Voice, Dead Congregation, to name a few), and I think there’s A LOT of bands that, even […]

Once upon a time, back in the early days of extreme metal, geographical location seemed to play quite a significant role when it came to describing and/or making a statement about one’s band. Not that it still doesn’t, but nowadays, influence is globally well traversed and those stylistic tropes just don’t ring as true or […]

After Swedish death metal, I’d put New Yawk/East Coast, slammy, groovy death metal as one of my next favorite styles in the genre. So when I get a promo that lists ‘For fans of Dying Fetus, Suffocation, Pyrexia and Skinless’, I damn well check out that promo. Fleshgore is a Ukrainian band that has been […]

We last heard from French Dismember worshipers, Iron Flesh back in 202o/21 for Summoning the Putrid, a damn fine release of Swedish death metal with a nice balance of melodic slicing riffs and more doomy passages. Well, for the follow-up, Iron Flesh continues the same sound going full-on Dismember homage with 48 minutes and 10 songs […]

Portugal’s death/grind band Grog have been slinging their brutal form of music for over 3 decades?  I cannot believe it’s been that long. The band took some time between their full length’s and have released a total of four albums during this time span. I will venture to say I have heard the band in […]

For this one, I want to take a trip back to heavy metal city where the mustachioed man wearing the trench coat from my last Veilburner review resides. Turning the corner once again past the mainstream shops, I see the man and two masked men standing over his lifeless corpse. Oh shit, the Veilburner duo […]