After a pretty extensive stay with Willowtip Records Defeated Sanity was snatched up by Season of Mist and Chronicles of Lunacy is their first release for their new label.  This is their seventh full-length album and Defeated Sanity knows how to pack a solid uppercut with streamlined songs.  It fits them best since they’re pretty […]

1349 is the year that the Black Death swept through Norway. It’s only fitting that a Black Metal band would eventually take such a brutal portion of time and name their band after it. 1349 came out of the ashes of Alvheim in 1997 with Ravn (vocals, drums), Tjalve (guitars), Seidemann (bass), and Balfori (guitars). […]

I love French Black Metal, and that goes back to the early 2000s when I first heard Mutiilation, Anorexia Nervosa, Deathspell Omega and Osculum Infame. From the press release: Gravenoire was formed in early 2022 by Maximilien Brigliadori (BÂ’A, Diablation, former Hyrgal), Emmanuel Zuccaro (BÂ’A, Verfallen, former Hyrgal), Vicomte Vampyr Arkames (Diablation (former Seth / […]

Spain’s Wormed has been around for over 25 years – wow how time really flies into a space vortex!!!  The band takes their time with releasing albums and other than a 2019 stop-gap EP Metaportal, which I reviewed, Omegon has taken eight years to come out since the scorching Krighsu. Omegon is Wormed’s fourth album […]

Technical Death Metal is one of those sub-genres I must be in the mood for. The same goes for Power Metal, but I’m talking about Replacire and not Sonata Artica; the former being the Eric Alper driven death machine that I had no idea existed and the latter being one of the best Power Metal […]

35 years. Existence and longevity come from quality and excellence. Releasing album after album with diabolical precision has been the Rotting Christ ethic throughout their career, since 1988 when they were a Grindcore band and then transitioning to Black Metal in the early 90s with 1993’s Thy Mighty Contract, they have forged and put together […]

International supergroup Vltimas released a killer debut in 2019,  Something Wicked Marches In, which I reviewed and gave high praises of their stamp on blackened death metal.  One of the many things going for that debut was how damn catchy it was – I still listen to that sucker!  The same members return with Flo […]

Years ago I came upon the Putrid Death Sorcery debut album from Necrowretch, a French death metal band.  I reviewed the impressive album and was able to be in touch with vocalist/guitarist Vlad and interviewed him as well.  I have followed this band closely over the years reviewing the majority of their albums and continuing […]

When talking about French technical death metal, the absolute top of the list is Gorod, but I think there is an argument to be made for Exocrine to be right there with them. The Bordeuax band has been on an absolute tear since 2018’s Molten Giant, which was somehow their third album already. Then with […]

Though 2023 is in our rearview mirror, there’s still a slew of quality late 2023  releases lingering that deserve your attention. One such release is the third album from Belgium’s Carnation, who burst onto the scene with the impressive debut Chapel of Abhorrence back in 2018 and followed it up with the equally impressive Where […]

Los Angeles Infernal Black Metal Wrath of Logarius (formerly Martyr Logarius) returns with Necrotic Assimilation.   This is an EP at a little over nineteen minutes.  Things get kicked off with a ninety-second intro track called “At the Knighted Throne”.  Kind of eerie swelling synth strings.   Tempo builds and builds and segues into track two. […]

No one here needs me to tell you, but I’m gonna do it anyway – times is tough! As such, I recently took up a weekend gig to help make ends meet and, after a nearly decade hiatus, rejoined the food service and hospitality industry (bear with me I promise there’s a point to all […]

No longer a band with international members, USA’s brutal tech death metal/deathcore band Wormhole returns with their third album, Almost Human, and debut on Season of Mist Records. Wormhole has been around for 8 years and their 2016 debut, Genesis, caught my attention with the monstrous tech brutality and brutal beatdown slams.  Outside of the […]

Germany’s Alkaloid have returned with a massive double disc release in Numen.  For those of you not familiar with Alkaloid it is a side project of guitarist Christan Muenzer (Obscura) along with bassist Linus Klausenitzer (Check out his solo record also released this year) and drummer Hannes Grossmann (Hate Eternal, Obscura). The opening track of […]

Finland’s long-running grindcore band, Rotten Sound have returned with their eighth full-length album, Apocalypse, and crowbarred in between all those albums are some EPs.  Over the years they have taken more time in between full-length albums but always release an EP just to whet our grind appetites before another grind power violence album is unleashed […]

I really enjoyed Portugal’s Oak’s debut album, in 2019 – Lone.  As one would expect with funeral death/doom metal the songs are ultra-long.  The debut album had four songs and the album length exceeded 50 minutes.  Lots of atmospherics and plodding and bludgeoning heaviness.  The music never got into that sludgy type of style, just […]

Bizarrekult hail from Norway, but originally was from Russia-go figure?  Starting out in the mid ‘00’s the band went on hiatus a few times and really got their basic start in 2019 with the first EP, but it was in 2021 they released their debut album – Vi overlevde.  I became an instant fan, especially […]

As I’m sure most of you know, …And Oceans returned after an 18-year hiatus ( not including the Havoc Unit years) with 2020’s superb Cosmic World Mother. And after a relatively quick tuned around have returned with their second post-hiatus album, As in Gardens, So in Tombs. Now, there is sometimes potentially a bit of […]

It’s been 9 years since the Australian one-man project (aka D.) Woods of Desolation dropped As The Stars, one of 2014’s more critically acclaimed black metal albums that leaned hard into the Ghostbath, Vallendusk, Alcest, Spectral Lore, Mare Cognitum, Deafheaven style of atmospheric/post-black metal. Well, again assisted by Drudkh’s Vlad on drums and keyboards, D. was […]

This review has had several different openings (like your mom). At first, I was disappointed with the new Deathwhite. Maybe it’s because of lofty expectations, being a big fan of their previous gothic-tinged doom. Think modern Katatonia with better choruses. Yeah, I said it. However, after a very short amount of time, I found myself […]

For metal mastermind Andy Marshall, Saor has been a means of immersing listeners in his beloved Scottish history and heritage through a sprawling, intoxicating mix of incredibly atmospheric black and folk metal, dubbed colloquially by Marshall himself as “Caledonian Metal.” For all intents and purposes, while each of his previous albums certainly had some characteristics […]

For 3 albums now, Canada’s young tech-death masters have shredded their way into the upper echelon of the genre. From 2011’s barely registering debut, All Shall Align, to 2014swatershed album,  The Lucid Collective, which put them on the map, to 2017s Relentless Mutation, which signaled they were now masters of their craft they have improved […]

Pessimist started in Maryland in the early 90’s and had a bunch of hype surrounding them and I became friends with guitarist Kelly Mclauchlin through mutual friends.  To see him see me back with Internal Bleeding 3 years ago in the mid-west -wearing the Voracious Contempt purple tour longsleeve from the tour was a huge […]

Fuck. So back in February, I swore that Ominous Ruin‘s Amid Voices That Echo in Stone would be the tech death album of the year. Then shortly after that, Stortgren’s Impermanence,  was definitely going to take that mantle. But then Hannes Grossman dropped To Where the Light Retreats, earlier this summer, and THAT album was […]

In my 20 plus years of music ‘journalism’,  I’ve had the pleasure of meeting lots of folks at shows, for interviews, over the phone, etc. However, a few dudes standout out as absolutely the nicest , chillest guys I’ve met; all the chaps from Between the Buried and Me, Carnifex drummer Shawn Cameron, and Mike […]