Posts Tagged ‘Erik T’

Skulldozer – Non Stop Ruthless Crushing

Non Stop Ruthless Crushing …..what???? I feel like there’s another word that was forgotten here. Anxiety? Diarrhea? Parental disappointment? I keed,  I keed What we have here is a re-release of a 2023 effort from this Texas act formed by Jason Ramsey (notably from Baton Rouge’s Suture, who released solid albums on Deepsend Records, Unmatched […]

Synestia/Disembodied Tyrant – The Poetic Edda EP

Synestia is a new symphonic deathcore duo consisting of Minnesota’s Sam Melchior (all instruments, writing) and Finland’s Ville Hokkanen (vocals). In 2022 they released their fantastic debut album, Malificium, but it was digital only and got kind of bulldozed by that year’s slew of stellar releases in the genre from Shadow of Intent,  Worm Shepherd, […]

Korpiklaani – Rankarumpu

Listen, I was Korpiklaani fanboy for many years loving the band’s boozy folk metal anthems like “Beer, Beer” and “Happy Little Boozer”, but somewhere around 2008s Korven Kuningas up to 2015s Noita I started losing interest in the band and their albums. The band seemed to get a bit of a hangover, lose their fun […]

Deicide – Banished By Sin

At first glance, album number 13 from one of death metal’s true institutions Deicide, appears to be yet another by-the-numbers Deicide album that Bentons (yes I used it as a verb), blasphemes and blasts its way through another effort of Christ-hating death metal. And to some extent it does. It is most certainly a Deicide […]

Veriteras – The Dark Horizon

This spring, two US-based, keyboard-heavy, melodic death metal bands will be releasing their second albums respectively. One, Philadelphia’s Malphas with Portal (via M-Theory Audio), and this album from Seattle’s more old-school influenced Veriteras. And it’s not even close to who the winner is as The Dark Horizon is absolutely stunning.  Part of my enjoyment of […]

Necrocracy – Predestiny

4 years ago I reviewed the debut album, Decay from Glasgow’s Necrocracy and it was a rough and ready, solid release of no-frills, burly black metal. And then out of the blue, the band emails me and tells me about their new digital and cassette-only release they are dropping. So apparently the material on Predestiny […]

Mastiff – Deprecipice

Remember bands like Nails, All Pigs Must Die, Trap Them and other Southern Lord bands of the mid 00s? That grimy, downturned, feedback laced Swedish death metal-meets hardcore and grind/d-beat sound that Gatecreeper , Fuming Mouth and such expanded on more recently? Well, the UKS Mastiff is here to take you back to that with […]

My Dying Bride – A Mortal Binding

So album number 14 (or 15, depending on how you view 2011s Evinta) from England’s long-running Godfathers of Doom sees the band continue down the path of the last album, 2020s The Ghost of Orion, and the subsequent Macabre Cabaret EP both releases I was a bit ambivalent on. Since the band’s 1999 transitional effort […]

Ingested – The Tide of Death and Fractured Dreams

In 2022 UK deathcore/slam titans  Ingested dropped Ashes Lie Still, a more experimental and tempered album that showed the band’s more introspective side as frontman Jason Evans dealt with the loss of his father. The band also clearly saw some of the success Whitechapel had with their duo of The Valley and Kin, as more […]

Alestorm – Voyage of the Dead Marauder EP

To coincide with their current US tour, pirate rockers Alestorm have dropped a 5 song EP following up 2022s excellent Seventh Rum of a Seventh Rum album. You know exactly what you are getting with Alestorm at this point in their prolifically fun discography while and that does not change with the short little EP, […]

Memento Mori – Memento Mori

Shattered Earth Records is a relatively new label with ties to the excellent Dragoncorpse and has awesome bands like Hanging the Nihilist, Spitpool, Obscure Mantra, Loathsome and The Pelennor Field Tragedgy (yes, epic Tolkien-themed deathcore) on their roster. So when they sent me the new release from Memento Mori, I had to check it out….eventually […]

Malphas – Portal

In Demonology, Malphas is a demonic grand president of hell and is second in command to Satan. He commands 40 legions of demons and he appears as a crow to any summoners. It’s also a melodic death metal band from Philadelphia that uses its demonic namesake as the basis for all its lyrics, songs, and […]

Obscura Qalma – Veils Of Transcendence EP

There’s a stunning level of consistency between this Italian orchestral death metal band’s 2021 debut, Apotheosis, and their latest EP, Veils Of Transcendence, despite the label change from Germany’s Rising Nemesis Records to homegrown label, Dusktone (who have been more on my radar recently for their reissues of Stormlord and Spite Extreme Wing albums). It’s […]

Stiriah – Portal

I’ve been on a bit of a black metal kick of late, and one band that has scratched that particular itch is German trio Stiriah and their third album, Portal, released back in February. Lying squarely in the 90s second wave, with a semi-melodic and symphonic sound (there are keyboards here and there but it’s […]

Acathexis – Immense

I went blindly into the promo for this release, as I have been in an ‘atmospheric black metal’ mood of late. But then I dug into the project more and was even more excited as it’s a multinational trio comprised of Jacob Buczarski of Mare Cognitum on drums, an Argentine dude named Dany Tee on […]

Darkest Hour – Perpetual | Terminal

Did you know Darkest Hour was still together? I didn’t. I mean the last thing I reviewed by them was 2009s The Eternal Return. They have released 2 albums since then with 2014s self-titled effort and 2017s Godless Prophets & the Migrant Flora, I own apparently but lord knows I could not tell you when […]

Sun of Nothing – Maze

Good Lord, it’s been 21 years since I heard this Greek blackened-sludge band’s debut, …and Voices, Words, Faces, Complete the Dream way back in 2003. It was, and still is one of the more caustic, brittle, and downright nasty albums I have ever covered, especially vocally. I guess the band has dropped 2 other albums […]

Mephisto – Carpathian Tales (Reissue)

I don’t pretend to know much about the Cuban metal scene. Let alone the Cuban Symphonic Black Metal scene. But when I saw this promo for Symphonic Black Metal pop-up, I checked it out, and it has turned into one of those ‘buy everything the band has released’ affairs. This is the band’s debut from […]

Fall of Serenity – Open Wide, O Hell

So here is a reunion I’m not sure anyone was really clamoring for. Fall of Serenity came up with fellow Germans Heaven Shall Burn, releasing their first material on a split with HSB in 1999. They released four albums between 2001-2007 that all delivered the same sort of metalcore/hardcore/melo death sound (although their debut was […]

Last Ten Seconds Of Life, The – No Name Graves

After a solid career that saw TLTSOL emerge as a solid upper-tier US deathcore act with 6 albums, guitarist Wyatt McLaughlin saw his band gutted back in 2022. He rebuilt TLTSOL and delivered a solid EP, The Disquisition of an Execution in 2023 to get the new lineup greased up and ready for what was to […]

Keres – Homo Homini Lupus

There is one single reason I checked out the promo for the debut from this new Italian Black/Death metal project and that is the stunning artwork from the band guitarist Astahrot. My gosh that is killer- for the love of god, put that on a shirt, please! Now onto the music. Keres plays a relentless […]

Far Beyond – The End of My Road

On its surface, the third album from this German solo act doesn’t seem like a very “Prosthetic Records’ styled release. It’s a synth and choir-drenched slab of European melodic death/power metal in the vein of Ensiferum, Wintersun, Brymir, and such. But then I remember Prosthetic Records has released two albums from Foretoken. The gentleman at […]

Spiritual Deception – Semitae Mentis

While power and black metal was/has often been the primary vehicles for keyboards/ orchestration in metal, I still fondly recall some of my early exposure to more epic keys and orchestration (not just intros or a bit here or there for atmosphere) in death metal such as Nocturnus (arguably the first to do so?), Amorphis, […]

Job For A Cowboy – Moon Healer

It’s been ten years since we last heard from Job For A Cowboy, so let me give a cliffnotes back story: the band is one of the first deathcore bands to blow up thanks to a Spongebob Squarepants video mash-up to the song “Knee Deep” (it is how I first heard the band- and it’s […]

Acrid Death – Abominable Presence of Blight

It’s early days in 2024, but German newcomers Acrid Death (though with veteran members of other bands like All Its Grace, Driven by Entropy, and Synchronic) along with Ceremonial Death (on their split EP with Unformulas) look to be frontrunners for 2024s best HM2/Swedish death metal guitar tone. Fans of Entrails take fucking note here, […]