Holy hell. 2008 saw tech death metal explode with the likes of Origin, Decrepit Birth, Brain Drill, Trigger the Bloodshed, Severed Savior, Psycroptic and such; a year hard to top right? Well, 2009 already has seen brilliant releases from Obscura and Ulcerate as well as solid releases from Inevitable End, Gory Blister, Trigger the Bloodshed […]

Here’s yet another excellently put together, self – released effort, this time from Phoenix, Arizona’s Loren Battle, however, the music isn’t quite as promising as the cover art and self described mix of “beauty and brutality”. What we have here is a very predictable style of metalcore that’s on the heavier end of the spectrum […]

As a deathcore fan, 2009 has been off to a pretty solid start with the likes of Rose Funeral, Impending Doom, Glasgow Grin, Within the Ruins, Earth From Above, etc. However two recent releases in particular have savaged my genitals with the tenacity of an African Honey Badger and I was wearing beehive underpants; the […]

First off, I’m generally not a writer who spends half the review on an albums packaging or artwork, but Defeater’s Travel’s and its multi panel, digipack gatefold packaging emblazoned with no frills, grainy and real, black and white photos is simply superb and a welcome change to the usual over the top colors of the urban […]

The fact the third full length album from one of Funeral dooms best bands and one of my favorite personal bands came out late last year and I’m just now getting to it should give you a red flag as to what is about to follow. After two absolutely stunning funeral doom albums in O […]

My CD collection is full of albums I ‘like’. Not albums I’m going to revisit and listen to over and over again, but certainly not an album I’m going to trade in, sell or use for Skeet shooting once I’m done reviewing it The second album, Dawn of Reprisal from the UK’s Malefice is one such […]

Maybe it’s the five year wait, maybe it’s the fact I’ve listened to soooo much similar styled noisy, lurching, techy mathcore in the last 4 years, maybe I’ve just turned into a miserable, jaded old fuck. I’m not sure what it is, but after being blown away by 2005s The Design, the follow up, The Campaign, […]

Harpoon is a drum machine based ‘grindcore’ duo featuring vocalist Toney Vast-Binder of 7000 Dying Rats fame and guitarist/drum programmer Dean Costello (the band has also added Lair of The Minotaur bassist DJ Barraca). The term grindcore is relative here-this isn’t pure Napalm Death, nor is it the modern pseudo grindcore (Pig Destroyer, etc) that […]

Normally, for me to attend a decent metal show I have to either drive 2 ½ hours East to St Louis or 2 ½ hours West to Kansas City. However, once in a while Columbia, Missouri, a mere 30 minutes from my house, will have a decent show at one of their smaller venues (Origin, All That Remain, Mastodon, Between the Buried and Me). So once I saw that North Dakota/Minnesota noise merchants Battlefields were going to hit up one of the venues along with former label mates Sleeping In Gethsemane (who by the way are a very cool instrumental metal act) , I had to attend. I also thought I would squeeze in an interview with a band which has released two very impressive albums (2007s Stained by the Blood of an Empire and 2009s Thresholds of Imbalance) that take the typical post rock genre, add some doom, some progressive elements and a sprinkle of hardcore. So on a chilly evening outside the venue I shared some beers and visited with the very amicable trio of vocalist Rusty Steele, drummer Rob Schmidt and guitarist Matt Ricigliano….

After the teasing 2 track vinyl EP, Malevolent Grain, which unveiled a new logo and a second guitarist, (Will Lindsay), the darlings of the American black metal scene return for their highly anticipated third full length album (their second for Southern Lord), and its well worth the wait. WITTR have been called a lot of […]

The reason I decided to review the debut from this North Carolina act and Italy’s The Modern Age Slavery so close together was so readers could get two examples of how to beat a dead horse – on one hand The Modern Age Slavery making deathcore sound even more redundant and tired, and on the […]

I’m usually all for labels signed bands and releasing stuff outside of their usual fare, but Italian deathcore on Napalm Records? Fail. It’s not even very good deathcore at that, making Damned to Blindness an even bigger failure. Sounding like every teenage middle tier American myspace death metal band that’s listened to The Black Dahlia […]

I remember seeing a couple of full page ads for this release in Metal Maniacs, and thinking there’s no way this can be any good- Viking metal from Ohio? But boy was I wrong. Sharing a lot of elements with Oakhelm, Hammer Horde are not only a Viking metal band from the least Viking place […]

2007s Eater of Birds was a watershed release for this Colorado duo, firmly putting them in the very forefront of USBM along the likes of Nachtmystium, Wolves in the Throne Room, and Krallice and the long awaited follow up, Gin will further cement the duo as one of the very best forward thinking, envelope shredding […]

Post rock is off to a busy start in 2009 with the likes of Nanda Devi, Tombs, Buried Inside, and the new Isis (which is killer BTW) – already before the start of spring. However the album I was most anticipating in the genre this year, the sophomore effort from North Dakota’s Battlefields as I […]

Let’s get this out of the way first, and put it out there. Inchoate is the instrumental metal brainchild of one man – Brandon Duncan. Brandon Duncan recently designed the new teeth of the divine.com logo and is doing the shirt designs that will be available shortly. First, Mr. Duncan sent me the CD some […]

Wow. I did not see this coming. Whereas the debut from Canada’s female fronted metalcore outfit Once Only Imagined, was a complete knock off of In this Moments Beautiful Tragedy, the sophomore effort utterly destroys In This Moment’s second, tamer effort, The Dream with a fierce and impressive evolution in the band’s sound. Though still […]

The last time I heard from Crimes Against Humanity Records was actually the last Desolatevoid album, Self Medicated Psycho Therapy and little has changed on the Desolatevoid camp; bassist Nick Carroll still runs Crimes Against Humanity Records, vocalist Aaron Howard still sounds batshit insane and the band still plys a form of gritty, crusty, in […]

I had exceptionally high hopes for the second full length album from Christian metalcore act, A Plea For Purging, as I really enjoyed 2007s A Critique of Mind and Thought as it delivered some Woe of Tyrants and The Showdown – like levels of shred and melodic death metal mixed with intelligent Christian themes. However, […]

There’s a handful of ‘popular’ and highly acclaimed bands that I simply don’t get or don’t enjoy. At the top of that list is Mastodon and pretty close to the top is Baroness and fellow Georgia act, Kylesa, its and no surprise considering they have (had) a somewhat similar approach to metal. While Mastodon have continued to […]

So not only is Earache experiencing a bit of a comeback, the UK Death metal scene appears to be getting very healthy in a hurry: Man Must Die, Detrimentium, Sarpanitum, Trigger the Bloodshed and now Bath’s own oddly named Ignominious Incarceration and their rather impressive debut. I’ll get this right out of the way now. […]

Fully titled Veritas Diaboli Manet in Aeternum : Chaining the Katechon , this Single/EP is one track 22 minutes of typically deviant and caustic yet artfully malignant black metal from one of black metal’s very elite acts. It’s hard to review one 22 minute song, but luckily Chaining the Katechon has various segments and sections […]

On 2007’s The Final Dawn, Ontario’s Arise and Ruin delivered a solid if forgetful slab of thrash based metalcore and now with the follow up, even though the thrash element has been upped and the metalcore sound is virtually gone, Arise and Ruin prove a cool cover and album title does not a great metal […]

Finally getting a US/Worldwide release after coming out 2 years ago on Japan’s Toy Factory Records, the third album from super group Dimension Zero holds up not only after two years but as an album that would have sounded fresh and energetic whatever years it was released in. For me, the 2002 debut, Silent Night […]

To these ears, Houston’s Scale the Summit, ply an instrumental version of soaring, layered metalcore that’s basically like a slightly more progressive, post rock version of Misery Signals, Life In Your way without vocals. Then why aren’t I enjoying this more? Maybe of course it because I’m generally not a huge instrumental metal fan as […]