Yesterday I had my ears shredded. It didn’t really hurt, on the contrary, it felt rather good. The bass drum slap fighting with my eardrums, the blistering guitar work, courtesy of seasoned Death Metal veteran Rogga Johansson (Ribspreader, GhoulHouse, Paganizer) and the crushing vocals of Jens Johansson had my head banging in no time flat. […]

I admit to being a fan boy. Ever since I got into Heavy Metal I felt the need to collect the merchandise from the bands I love. I fulfill this love by ordering patches from all corners of the globe, and with turning fifty this year,I could see it as a midlife crisis, as most […]

Do you ever listen to music from another country and after a bit, you try to sing along? Like, it’s obvious that you don’t know let’s say Finnish; but you hear this song from a Finnish band, and you love the shit out of it and suddenly you think you know Finnish and are fluent […]

This new wave of Black Metal is a nasty fucker. In some ways it seems like they want to outdo what their predecessors did years ago, to push the envelope as far as they can before the paper rips. I’m here today to talk about Daysidied and their pretty fucking rad EP The Day the […]

The other day I was driving my mom around and the car decided it wanted to keep playing this album. She was commenting that it isn’t music and even did a growl (which was kind of fucking adorable, I’m not going to lie), however, Death Metal is extreme music for extreme people (and my mom’s […]

I used to watch Happy Days religiously. Every week my parents and I would be glued to the TV to see what antics those crazy fucks would get into. I mean, they had a fucking band, the Fonz jumped the shark, and every show was wholesome and taught life lessons along the way. Happy Days […]

“That’s a nasty piece of work, sir.” Indeed, it is Death Metal, primitive and crawling on its bloodied knuckles, a foaming Satanic beast. Here I have Messe Mortuaire, a continuation of France’s Sepulchral; the country’s first Death Metal band who have unleashed their debut EP under their new moniker of Messe Mortuaire and goddammit I […]

It’s a sunny day in the Rio Grande Valley. Spring is in the air (for now anyway), all that could change in a matter of days; but for now, it’s a pleasant day. Birds are chirping and I’m reviewing a Melodic Black Metal album. What a time to be alive! I think it’s in the […]

My first introduction to Symphonic Black Metal was Cradle of Filth’s Total Fucking Darkness, sent to me by a friend in England who happened to be Dani Filth’s roommate at the time. Small fucking world, right? Anyhoo, when the intro for “The Black Goddess Rises” started I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, mind you, […]

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 […]

War is hell. It has the power to change borders and boundaries, tear nations apart and displace millions at a time. What India’s  Sarcoptes has done with Prayers to Oblivion, is break down five aspects of war to create fifty minutes of thrashing, blackened military insanity. It’s an album that seems daunting at first, the […]

In 1994, I was a twenty something working at Best Buy. We had received a copy of the Emperor/Enslaved massive split Hordanes Land and it caught my eye. I had no clue what Black Metal was, had never heard of the genre at all. Of course, Emperor comes first, and those four tracks alone had […]

World War One was, without a doubt, the most brutal war in Military History. In terms of lives lost and concerning the horror of trench warfare, was the battle of the Somme. It’s in those blood-soaked forests and fields that form the setting for Feuerwalze and those trenches where thousands lost their lives. What better […]

Funeral Winds has been around for a long fucking time. This makes it a bit daunting to cover a band with a massive discography as theirs (his), whatever. Funeral Winds has been the work of Hellchrist Xul, since 1992. An incredibly talented psychopath, whose heart beats with the elemental rage of 90s Black Metal; his […]

The first time I heard The Ukraine’s Hate Forest was back in the early 2000s. I had found a Russian MP3 site that had Arkona, Nokturnal Mortum, Lucifugum, Astrofaes, and hundreds of other European bands I had never heard of; Hate Forest is one of those bands that I latched onto because with a name […]

The forests of Eastern Europe hold secrets, the landscape wears the scars of battle like badges of honor; trenches and bunkers dot the countryside where years of war have done their worst. This region has contributed numerous bands to the Pagan Black Metal scene over the years, they stand out for their use of traditional […]

Sometimes you hear an album, and it awakens something in you. It pulls you in with long, skeletal arms and shows you sights you never imagined. Cursed lands where Black Metal reigns supreme, and the sky is always overcast with storm clouds. Allow me to introduce Wormgod, two insane Motherfuckers from Bucharest playing uncompromising Black […]

New year, new reviews, right? That’s the name of this tune, anyway. December of 2022 had a lot of surprises, and this tight little cassette split was one of them. Seven tracks, the longest being Fluids’ “Heaven-Sent” (3:17) and the shortest being Nunslaughter’s “It’s You I Hate” (.31). Neither band needs an introduction, Nunslaughter has […]

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 […]

Occasionally I get an album that paints a picture of the world, angry and frustrated; wishing that shit would just get better while summarily knowing that it won’t and will only get worse. A bleak outlook on humanity is how I would describe Snipers of Babel’s powerhouse “Gabriel”.  After producing the “Redemption” ep and a […]

Formed in 2004 Aldaaron are legends of the French Black Metal scene. In fact, it’s hard for me to talk about the likes of Deathspell Omega, Anorexia Nervosa or Ad Hominem without mentioning these Grenoble, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes based titans. With their initial full-length Nous Reviendrons Immortels (2010) and follow up Suprême Silence (2012) then nothing for […]

My love for French Black/Death Metal is not a secret by this point. Will Fall of Seraphs grow on me like a slimy fungus? I mean, 2022 has turned out to be quite the year for grimy, bleak Metal. From Dust to Creation sees Fall of Seraphs Blackened/Death machine blasting like there’s no tomorrow or […]

I’m sure you’re familiar with the snare crack at the beginning of Cannibal Corpse’s “Devoured by Vermin”, 1,2,3, 4… BLAAAAAARGGGGHHHH! Well, that’s how Sedimentum start off their debut Suppuration Morphogenesiaque, with a quick snare count and then the brutality of “Krypto Chronique II” KICKS (yes capitals) into automatic, 0-60 overdrive. The track slows to a […]

I realize that some bands just aren’t for everyone. Japan has always been a solid part of the world of Metal. Loudness and Sigh are the first two that come to mind for me. Metalucifer, not so much. A side project conceived by Gezol (Sabbat), Metalucifer have a body of work that dates to 1996 […]

France has a dark history. Uprisings, wars, and more wars; have left the countryside pockmarked with craters, and flowers grow in the places where blood had been spilled. It makes sense that France has a solid Black Metal history steeped in that revolutionary blood. Deathspell Omega, Mutiilation, Aldaaron, and the infamous Black Legions; forged a […]