It’s 2011, and more than two decades after black metal first slithered out of the darkness, it’s still shifting and changing into surprising and unexpected new forms. Recent mutations include the rambling, crystalline majesty of Pacific Northwest acts like Agalloch or Wolves in the Throne Room, or the unexpected fusion of black metal and shoegaze, […]

Okay, so I’m a few months late on this one, but it’s still the right weather outside to grab your headphones and take October Falls’ newest for a wintry walk. As with 2008’s excellent The Womb of Primordial Nature, A Collapse of Faith doesn’t rush headlong through the forest – it explores, wanders and breathes […]

Satan has risen – and he’s got a Hell of an ear for melody. The mysterious Ghost come from Sweden, but not much else is known about them aside from a few promo shots, which feature shadowy figures led by a skull-masked Satanic priest. Rumor has it that this is actually a side project from […]

Serbian crossover thrash. On a Chinese record label. Man, I love the Internet. Drzavni neprijatelj broj kec is an explosion of vintage ’80s thrash – raw, dirty and frantic – though it tilts much more towards the jagged riffs and drumming of hardcore punk than the more cleanly-crafted melodies of Metallica, Kreator or even early […]

Old-school fans of Southern sludge bands like Eyehategod, Buzzov*en and Crowbar might not like all the dreamy post-rock that’s been mixed into that genre of late (Isis, Burst, Cult of Luna, etc), so here comes Virginia’s Salome to drag things back into the mud again. Armed only with a seriously down-tuned guitar (no bass!), drums […]

When Oregon’s Agalloch first appeared in 1999 with Pale Folklore and its haunting blend of folk and black metal, the metal community quickly drew comparisons to now-landmark releases like Ulver’s Bergtatt and Opeth’s Orchid. At the time, we all knew how special the album was, but I don’t think we sensed how iconoclastic the band […]

After almost twenty years, Enslaved continues to push onwards into uncharted waters. This time, they’re promoting their new, critically-acclaimed album Axioma Ethica Odini on what’s possibly their biggest US tour yet (with countrymates Dimmu Borgir). Frontman Grutle Kjellson took some time to talk with me before the show in Denver. It was just above freezing where we spoke outside, but not surprisingly, the cold didn’t seem to affect him at all.

A one-word album title. Two band members gone, and in their place, the addition of three guest vocalists, booming choirs and a massive orchestra. And then of course, those white leather and fur costumes. Yeah, it’s been an exciting and unpredictable time for Dimmu Borgir. I sat down with Galder sat down before their show in Denver (with countrymates Enslaved) to talk about the creation of their new epic Abrahadabra, the changes in the band’s sound and how to kill time on the road.

Man’s Gin is the side-project of Erik Wunder, one half of American post-black metal act Cobalt – and although it never comes close to that band’s rage, it’s still at times a kindred, gloomy spirit. Instead of Cobalt’s brand of brittle, angular mayhem, Wunder has woven a rich tapestry of dark Appalachian folk and alt-country […]

Ironic that the cover of Kylesa’s new disc is so monochromatic, given all of the color the band has just added to its sound. The past’s last album, Static Tensions (only a year ago), was a tight blend of terse, punchy hardcore and grumbling sludge; with Spiral Shadow, the band has embraced a whole new […]

Brilliant and frustrating – two words that sum up Deathspell Omega. There’s no question that since Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice, the mysterious French duo has offered up some of the most staggeringly complex and challenging black metal the genre has ever seen. However, in their never-ending quest to batter, slash and violate the genre’s boundaries, […]

Saw this New York-based black/death band in the writers’ backlog here at TOTD, so I decided to check out their Myspace. Liked what I heard (from their ‘05 split with funeral doom act Rigor Sardonicus, and also from their full ‘07 release): raw and clattery, with the occasional melodic strain, and huge, gargled demonic vocals […]

As I’ve lamented a few times this year, it really sucked that Burst broke up. They released two of my favorite releases of the 2000s, post-metal or otherwise, and I was really looking forward to a follow-up to Lazarus Bird. Ah well, they say the best way to get over a break-up is to go […]

Where the hell did this come from? For Death, Glory and the End of the World came out of nowhere and hit me like a body tumbling down the stairs – a ragdoll flurry of fists and feet, and capped off with a neck-snapping headbutt. This roiling style of post-hardcore/sludge is frequently described as jagged […]

Vortex and Mustis gone. A 100-strong collection of musicians and singers from the Norweigan Radio Orchestra and Schola Cantorum Choir. All those three-word album titles, lopped down to a single word inspired by the magickal writings of Aleister Crowley – a man whose life was a mystical, semen-slick orgy of occult excess. And speaking of […]

ENSLAVED has been producing quality music throughout the years. Sure, some of the albums have been better than others, but the band has been amazingly consistent with their releases none the less. Their new album, Axioma Ethica Odini, is just around the corner. How does it stack up? Is it a failure? Best album of 2010? Find out and read our review!

A Lizard Skynard album arrives in your inbox. Before listening to it, you guess what it might be. Do you guess: a) A groovy, psychedelic mix of southern rock and thrash? b) A cheeky mix of lounge music, psychobilly and sludge fronted by a guy in a lizard mask? c) A lurching blend of hardcore […]

Back in the symphonic black heyday of the mid to late 90s, Norway’s Limbonic Art released three albums in a highly pompous, gothic, orchestral style: Moon in the Scorpio, In Abhorrence Dementia and Epitome of Illusions. 1999’s Ad Noctum: Dynasty of Death and its follow-up, The Ultimate Death Worship, switched up the Limbonic Art sound […]

It’s probably not a good sign when your 3-year-old digs a metal album more than you do. But there he was, strapped in his car seat and still singing “Rockin’ and a Rollin’ Tonite!” after I’d skipped past the first track of Armour with a mix of impatience and disgust. Guess I don’t need to […]

If your version of industrial metal starts with Ministry and ends with Rammstein, then you haven’t heard Front Line Assembly – particularly their pulverizing 1994 release Millennium. On that album, Bill Leeb and Rhys Fulber (yes, the same electronic wizard who collaborated with Fear Factory on Demanufacture and Mechanize) took riffs from Sepultura’s Arise and […]

I’ve handled a lot of atmospheric, forward-thinking material on the site in the past few years, so by now, I know if I get a black metal assignment, it’s going to be something interesting. Or, at least I hope so, because it’s those gems, twinkling in the darkness, that really make this gig enjoyable. So […]

Just as black metal keeps mutating into even more virulent strains, thrash continues vomiting up fresh new abominations as well. Not exactly sure what to call Australia’s charmingly titled Vomitor – necro-thrash seems to be the best fit, as it seems a filthy antipodal cousin to Darkthrone and Mayhem, as well as newer, bestial black […]

The Morningside’s debut, The Wind, The Trees and The Shadows of the Past, was one of the very first reviews I wrote for this site, and so it’s a pleasure, several years later, to revisit these Russian doom-deathsters and see how they’ve progressed. Just as before, there’s a heavy Agalloch and Katatonia influence throughout, and […]

Assassins: Black Meddle Part I, the first chapter in Nachtmystium’s post-black metal transformation, was aptly named in that it mashed up Floydian psychedelia with the band’s gritty, scuzzy and vaguely punk brand of USBM. When I reviewed the album two years ago, I latched more onto the rippling, expansive sections than the fiercer black-punk explosions […]

Looks like the guys in Soilwork have finally dug themselves out of their hole. Opener “Late for the Kill, Early for the Slaughter” is the fastest, most relentless thing they’ve done in a long time, and from that very first blastbeat, it’s clear that Soilwork wants you to forget about Sworn to a Great Divide. […]