Fall Of Stasis: “Pssst you, metal review person, wanna review some symphonic, blackened folk metal?” Me: “Nah , I’m a bit burned out of bouncy folky metal, even the last Ensiferum really didn’t enthrall past the first few listens, *sigh* Fall of Stasis: “What if they had a more slicing, viscous edge like The Black […]

You see that symbol there on the left, emblazoned on the album cover of Crowbar’s new album, Zero and Below? That’s called a fleur d’lis ( Flower of Light), and is regarded as the symbol of the state of Louisiana, the city of New Orleans, and more importantly the logo for that city’s NFL team, […]

It’s amazing what adding a new band member or two can do for a band. After a self-released EP, The Prophet of Disgust, in 2018, Colorado’s Crown Magnetar added vocalist Dan Tucker and guitarist Nick Scott From And Hell Followed With, a decent deathcore band who were actually on Earache Records at one point (and […]

Holy Shit!, Here is a wonderful, unexpected surprise. Back in the mid 00s I was enamored with a band called The Pax Cecilia, who released 2 self-released and free releases with 2004s Ep, Nouveau and 2007s Blessed Are the Bonds, (which I covered back in the day at one of my other review sites Metalreview.com/ […]

Here is one of those rare, blind promo grabs that works out, works out really well, as a matter of fact, as Chicago newcomers Burned In Effigy has delivered an exceptionally competent and enjoyable debut album of neoclassically inspired melodic death metal. Starting as an instrumental duo citing The Black Dahlia Murder, Between the Buried […]

This review is brought to you by Google Translate.  Par le sang versé, the 2019 sophomore album from these epic/medieval French black metallers, snuck into the back end of my 2019 year-end list, but I if were redoing that year’s list, it would have been a top ten, maybe a top 5 release, as I […]

Being a huge New Orleans Saints and LSU fan, I’m generally up for anything from Louisiana, especially musically where the likes of Crowbar, Soilent Green, and Goatwhore are concerned. There’s just something about that swampy, sweaty, moist riffage that appeals to me, so checking out the debut album from Lafayette’s Golgothan ( a literal ‘shit […]

“Then a new sound droned into our ears, the sound, deep, all-encompassing, with no notes in it, just a gigantic faraway surge of doom-like sound. It was the heavies, coming on with a terrible slowness in flights of twelve, three flights to a group, stretched out across the sky. I thought it would never end……and […]

I last heard this Seattle band back in 2016 when I reviewed their second self-released EP, Enduring Creation. However, I wasn’t sure what label they would fit on and what the audience was for their very heavily keyboard-drenched form of technical black-ish metal. Well, 6 years later we have our answer with a match made […]

Every so often a band comes around that makes me just childishly giddy. In the past its been Between the Buried and Me, Blind Guardian, Wilderun, and more recently in the symphonic/blackened deathcore explosion, bands like Sin Deliverance, Until We Die, and Lie to the Silence have added to bands I already enjoyed ( Lorna […]

I had to check and see if this second album from Spain’s customed troupe, Crusade of Bards wasn’t on Napalm Records a few times, just to be sure.  They have ‘that ‘ sort of sound with symphonic, female-fronted operatic bombastic, gothic-tinged metal, and a few heavier elements (gruffs death metal vocals etc) sprinkled in here […]

I had no idea that Nuclear Blast Records founder Markus Staiger had a split with his label last year and had formed a new label, the not so subtly named Atomic Fire Records, with some of his former Nuclear Blast folks. Not only that, they have pulled over some serious heavyweights over with them like […]

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 […]

So after an absolutely ridiculously good year for tech-death in 2021 with the likes of First Fragment, Obsidian I, Obscura, Hannes Grossman, Inferi, Stortregn, Alustrium and others, it took exactly one month for 2022 to see its first stellar tech-death record. Leiden (suffer or endure?) is the second album from this Tacoma, Washington act who […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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, […]

Brian Eckermann is a prolific solo artist from San Antonio, Texas who has also served in other local obscure Texas bands like Scars of the Flesh, Winters Plague, and Wings of Abaddon.  Plague Bringers is his eighth solo album and a direct follow-up to 2018s Winters Plague (The Final Eclipse), telling the story of an […]

Here’s an interesting one from FDA records. Released a bit before the latest Ophis album, Spew Forth Odium, earlier last autumn, The Tragedy is the third album from this Finnish doom act whom I have never heard and frankly had very little expectations for. The logo, the band/album name, the fact there are hardly any […]

Along with Abscession’s Rot of Ages, the best Swedish-styled HM 2 album I heard last year was the second effort from Italy’s Organic. The follow-up to 2019s solid debut Carved in Flesh, delivers everything a sophomore album should; improving on a fine debut with improved songwriting and confidence delivered a tried tested, and popular sound […]

‘And in the category for 2021s most unreadable logo the nominees are……. Vomit Spell..’ So what do we have in the sea of red and sinewy and blood contained in the NecroFrsot artwork here? The debut from a new German grindcore quartet, that’s what. And while Germany isn’t a renowned hotbed of Grindcore (Japanische Kampfhörspiele […]

In the rather full realm of Bolt Thrower worship, plenty of bands and staked a claim on the mantle left by the departed British warmongers; Hail of Bullets, Humiliation, Frozen Soul, Decaying, Creeping Flesh, Chainsword just to name a few, but you could argue the top two current Bolt Thrower homage bands are of course, […]