Unholy rotting corpses, Batman!  Zombiefication‘s latest EP, Reaper’s Consecration, is about as gnarled and old-school Swedish as death metal gets…and these guys are from Mexico.  Viva la muerte indeed. Reaper’s Consecration consists of five tracks of gruesome death rattling rotting flesh from bone, and the killer riffs ooze forth like hot pus from infected wounds.  […]

Heaven and Hell Records is a rising force in the metal underground, bringing life back to long-dead bands and records and unearthing new talent by means of reformation and reissues. Like a lot of small underground labels, the day-to-day operations are handled by one man, Jeremy Golden, whose responsibilities are seemingly endless. Golden has learned along the way as the label has grown and evolved from a small hobby-type business to a reputable name in the metal underground that releases quality titles on the reg.
Golden spoke with Teeth a while back about all things Heaven and Hell, the good and the bad, and the following is the result of that chat.

What’s swollen with Swedish pride, rife with heathenism and unabashedly oozing with heavy metal thunder?  Grand Magus‘ newest release, of course.  Sixth full-length The Hunt is a smorgasbord of fine riffs and rhythms that’s certain to please ears the world over.  So it may not be as doomy (okay, there’s really no comparison) as earlier […]

One would desperately hope that a metal album inspired by the events of Chernobyl would be littered with hints of occultism, cloaked in sulphuric blackened nuances, and evoking creepy Silent Hill-ish moments.  Agruss‘s Morok has a little bit of this, but it’s not as effective as it could be.  The genre used to convey the […]

Hail Satan! That’s certainly what the folks of Nexhymn have been doing in the mountains of Colorado. Black Horizon is the self-released EP, and it’s essentially a relentless assault of brutal, hateful death metal. Think Suffocation meets Origin…but with a killer female vocalist. Angela Gossow would shatter under the sheer intensity of Holly Wedel’s voice […]

Normally the thought of female-fronted metal is enough to induce gagging. The disgusting combo of sickly sweet pop melodies over watered-down power metal has been done to death and back in recent years, with each group generally sounding as equally boring as the next. Thank goat for Nexhymn and the evil throat of Holly Wedel. No sweet melodies to be heard on the band’s Black Horizon EP, only sheer, unadulterated brutality and rage (but no monotony). Read on for an interview with the voice of Colorado’s underground DM gems.

Astra is a psychedelic/progressive group from San Diego with just a couple releases under their belt, but they sure have created a mighty mature sound in the short period of time that they’ve existed. 2009’s The Weirding, the debut, was a sublime welding of earthy layers of sound with ’70s prog rock. The Black Chord […]

Chicago’s Bible of the Devil is a group that’s always pulling from one place to the next, though you’re never really sure which direction they’re heading until they’ve arrived. Predictability is not in their repertoire. Stability, on the other hand, is — they consistently release high quality, high voltage rock’n’metal records at a pleasingly steady […]

It was a quintessentially awesome May evening with good weather blowing and good beer flowing when Chicago’s Bible of the Devil hit Kansas City’s Riot Room on their “In Raw We Trust” tour. Though it was arguably their worst stop on the tour for attendance and merch sales, the dudes of BOTD were in fine form and put on their show as if they didn’t notice. I got to shoot the shit with drummer Greg Spalding and bassist Darren Amaya over a few beers before they took the stage and below is the result of that meeting.

That old adage about never judging a book by its cover, while generally a good idea, is especially prudent in the case of Fester’s A Celebration of Death. Expecting to be flung into a rotting grave of stench-riddled old school Swedish death metal based on the cover art, it was quickly discovered upon listening that […]

There she stands in the darkness, flecks of her golden hair illuminated by candle flicker and lightning flash. The silhouette of a white nightgown spills to her bare feet on the wooden floor. A gold crucifix spins lightly from the beaded chain around her neck, clinking softly. The knife she clutches glints maliciously. You see […]

Warning: there’s gonna be cursing in this review, because an album like this warrants it, so please check your delicate sensibilities at the door. It’s been quite a while since anything of this ilk has crossed my desk for review, and in preparation I dug out some Morbid Saint and Noia to get me in […]

Arguably the best of the upcoming traditional metal bands in the United States today is Pharaoh. Bury the Light, their impending full-length on Cruz Del Sur Music, serves to further illustrate this point with even more depth and innovative craftsmanship than displayed with 2008’s Be Gone. Guitar aficionado and former Metal Maniacs scribe Matt Johnsen recently spoke to Teeth of the Divine about the coming to fruition of Bury the Light and all that is Pharaoh.

An album able to both warm the bones and embody the cold is generally a good one to have on hand during the colder months. Thank goat for Hammers of Misfortune and their skill at blending both the melancholy and heart-warming aspects of heavy metal so fluidly. Their multi-faceted take on the hardships and triumphs […]

Do you enjoy your death metal most thoroughly when it reeks of decaying viscera and echoes the sounds of torturous carnage?  You do?!  Then hold onto your butts, for Tormented is poised to offend your delicate fuckin’ sensibilities with the churning tomb stench that embodies Rotten Death, the band’s 2009 debut repackaged and exhumed by […]

  I’m sorry, SerpentCult.  I tried to like you; I really did.  I played Raised by Wolves in a variety of settings: in the car while driving, in the car while not driving, in the car idling and half asleep and staring mindlessly out the window, at home doing laundry, at home drinking a beer […]

New Jersey’s Symphony X have been churning out album after album of top-quality neoclassical prog metal for almost two decades. 2011’s Iconoclast, which takes on a heavier, grinding-gears mechanized theme, still sees Symphony X at the tip-top of their game. Guitar virtuoso Michael Romeo spoke to Teeth of the Divine recently about his role in constructing and molding the band’s most solid album to date.

Been searching for a modern counterpart to Mercyful Fate? Hell, even if you haven’t, if you call yourself a fan of King Diamond‘s work, you need to hear Portrait. Crimen Laesae Majestatis Divinae is the group’s potentially unintentional homage to the King, minus some of the creeping horror skulking around most Mercyful Fate/King Diamond material. […]

Kansas City’s got a lot of good things going for it in terms of heavy metal these days.  Locals such as Meatshank, Vanlade, and Ancient Creation (among others) are bringing the metal proper, the latter being the subject of this review.  With the members of Ancient Creation having been involved in various heavy metal outfits […]

The Beaumont Club is a good-sized venue (1000 capacity or so) in Kansas City, Missouri’s Westport area, an area sometimes considered to be Kansas City’s birthplace but that now mostly houses good eateries, shops and nightlife options. The Beaumont’s rectangular shape— with the stage at one of the small ends, the bar at the other, and a long-ass walk in between—usually makes it difficult to traverse in the midst of a packed show. But when the place is mostly empty, the difficulty’s not there. Such was sadly the case of the Forbidden, Revocation, White Wizzard, Havok and Vanlade show held at the venue on Monday, June 27th.

This is a tricky one. Stillife‘s Requiem leaves a bit to be desired initially, but upon further listening, its appeal starts to break through. The Michigan group known as Stillife has its own unique approach to heavy metal, one that won’t willingly be confined to genres. They sample progressive, traditional, doom, modern and then some […]

Whether you’ve been a fan since Paradise Lost or The Damnation Game, you know at least this one truth of Symphony X: everything they release is top notch. The winning combination of stunning technical prowess and flawless songwriting has yet to fail the Jersey boys, and they keep getting better with age. Iconoclast showcases this, […]

What the hell is this? Melody and diversity in an Origin album? More than just skull-pummeling fury and seething insanity? Oh wait, they started that with Antithesis. So the thing you may be wondering about Entity, with its decidedly more varied structure and properties, a huge step in a new direction for Origin — does […]

Peter Tägtgren is a man who is defined by his work, a body of music and ideas that is always morphing and pulling to and from the abyss. He has given life (and death) to fathomless classic albums and hardly needs an introduction, so one won’t be given here. The at one time one-man project Pain, and new album You Only Live Twice, is the man’s current focus, the details of which he divulges here. But fear not — the Hypocrisy mastermind also discusses that which put him on the metal map.

The combination of heavy metal and horror is usually a successful one when both aspects share similarities in subject matter and atmosphere. While it’s often attempted, many times the outcome falls short of being memorable. Thankfully, Razorback bands tend not to let listeners down in this area, with Wooden Stake being no exception. And although […]