Posts Tagged ‘Season of Mist’

1349 – Massive Cauldron of Chaos

Sometimes you have to realize just how much your relationship with a band is like your real life relationships.  For example, I’ve been in a relationship with 1349 for over ten years.  We’ve had six albums together including new offering Massive Cauldron of Chaos.  That’s longer than my marriage lasted and actually quite a good […]

Cannabis Corpse – From Wisdom to Baked

Gruff, groovy and packed with their endlessly inventive weed puns, death metal parodies and demented lyrical tales, Cannabis Corpse are well and truly in the zone on their fourth full-length album, entitled From Wisdom to Baked. After kicking around on Forcefield records and Tankcrimes the band’s hard work and genuine scene cred has culminated in […]

Bastard Feast – Osculum Infame

Newly-christened Bastard Feast, a band from Portland, Oregon formerly known as Elitist, have released their first album under the new name, and it is a doozy. Their previous offering, Fear in a Handful of Dust was an exhausting affair of blackened hardcore/sludge, standing comfortably but distinctly alongside the likes of Coffinworm or Generation of Vipers. […]

Septicflesh – Titan

You’d think I’d be more familiar and versed with Greece’s long running Septicflesh. They are after all part of the long running and somewhat influential Greek metal movement from the early 90s along with Rotting Christ, Thou Art Lord, Varathron and Necromatia and of course, one of the early death metal bands to add cinematic orchestration to […]

Rage Nucléaire – Black Storm of Violence

Those who thought that former Cryptospsy vocalist Lord Worm’s new project, Rage Nucléaire was a mere flash in the pan had better think again. Lord Worm has returned two years after his first real, post Cryptopsy foray with yet another hate fueled, apocalyptic, industrialized slab of unrelenting black metal, and it’s just as solid and unforgiving […]

Mayhem – Esoteric Warfare

Seven years. That’s how long it’s been since there has been a new Mayhem album. Seven…Years. But I have to say that it was worth the wait, because Esoteric Warfare is a really good album and a worthy addition to their legacy. Obviously, this isn’t the Mayhem that we know from De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas […]

Archspire – The Lucid Collective

Wow. 2014 is shaping up to be a banner year for technical death metal. You’ve got Unique Leader’s killer 2014 releases (Soreption, Beneath, Near Death Experience as well as upcoming Pillory and Inanimate Existence records) Willowtip chipping in with Abysmal Torment Cultivate the Apostate, Italy’s reliable masters Hour of Penance withRegicide, respectable US efforts from Rivers of Nihil, […]

Cynic – Kindly Bent to Free Us

Cynic’s polarising shift away from their technical death metal roots has created enormous debate since they reunited with the largely successful but divisive Traced In Air in 2008. The trio of Paul Masdival, Sean Malone and Sean Reinhert made their new found intentions very clear with the increased experimentation, strong melodic sensibilities and progressive bent […]

Benighted – Carnivore Sublime

Although they started back in 2000 as a black/death act with nods to early Opeth (hence the band name), now France’s Benighted is a filthy, ultra-groovy and much different beast altogether. Most of their albums, including 2011’s excellent (and, for me, list-topping) Asylum Cave, are like being flung around inside a brutal death/grind bounce house packed with […]

Season of Mist Announce Addition of WORMED to Label

Season of Mist is proud to announce the signing of the sci-fi focused technical death metal masters WORMED. Fresh off the heels of 2013’s critically-acclaimed album ‘Exodromos’, the Madrid-based band is currently writing for their first Season of Mist full length. One of the most respected bands in the international death metal underground, WORMED has […]

Necrophobic – Womb of Lilithu

After some demos and EP of fairly standard Swedish death metal, Necrophobic morphed into a black/death act and released a handful of pretty revered albums in 1993’s The Nocturnal Silence, 1997’s Darkside and 1999’s The Third Antichrist. However, it’s 2002’s Bloodhymns that I will always have a soft spot for, being one of my very […]

Gorguts – Colored Sands

After really thinking about what I wanted to say about this record, I began to question whether reviewing a release this high-profile truly mattered. Please let me know if you’ve never heard of Gorguts, and are just reading this review because you are interested in who they are and what they do. Contact me too […]

Kylesa – Ultraviolet

Kylesa are, along with such other psychedelic sludgy metal counterparts as Mastodon, Baroness, Black Tusk and Zoroaster are part of the Georgian scene, which at this rate could at some point go down as legendary as the early ’80s Bay Area thrash or the late ’80s Floridian death metal scene. Like their contemporaries Mastodon and […]

Tsjuder – Desert Northern Hell (Reissue)

Norway has never been short of black metal bands. I read somewhere a few years back that, according to some study, almost 2% of the country’s entire population belongs to a black metal band. Whether that’s actually true remains to be officially verified, though it’d be cool if it was. In any event, Tsjuder remains […]

Imperium Dekadenz – Meadows of Nostalgia

It’s been a relatively quite three years since Germany’s Imperium Dekadenz released their solid though unspectacular Procella Vadens LP. After unleashing two impressive albums (…und die Welt ward kalt und leer and Dämmerung der Szenarien), Imperium Dekadenz seemed to take a step back with their aforementioned 2010 release. However, with their latest album Meadows of […]

Rage Nucléaire – Unrelenting Fucking Hatred

I’ll be honest, the French (Canadian) spelling of the word ‘nuclear’ is about as threatening as George W. Bush’s ‘nucular’. Also, when you title your album Unrelenting Fucking Hatred, that sets all kinds of warning signs that this is not going to be particularly original. However, given that this project was started by Lord Worm […]

Drudkh – Eternal Turn of the Wheel

Human beings have been obsessed with the ideal of beauty ever since scientific philosophers first tried figuring out when aliens first touched down on little ol’ Earth. In the early days of modern science, many scientists tried—but failed—to come up with a wheel that could naturally spin for all eternity on its own without the […]

Ghost Brigade – Until Fear No Longer Defines Us

Two years ago, Ghost Brigade painted the wall behind me red with a shotgun blast that was Isolation Songs; it blew my mind. Just like having the back of your head wide open, the album, with its perfect combination of dread and melody, shimmered light into the genre that had long been somewhat stagnant. It […]

Nightbringer – Hierophany of the Open Grave

I love the idea that there’s such a thing as “traditional black metal”. I like the idea that tortuous tritone riffing, compulsive blast beating and hell-rasping-reports from various levels of Hell can now be wrapped in such a cuddly honorific as “traditional”. I mean, “traditional” is a word I associate with folk music, with things […]

Benighted – Asylum Cave

Right-wing yahoos in this country may still hold the French in contempt, but those of us in the underground know better. Not only has France been dominating horror the past few years with brutal films like Inside, Martyrs and the work of Alexandre Aja, but it’s also got its share of stylish, unfuckwithable metal acts. […]

Morbid Angel – Illud Divunum Insanus

This has to be a late April’s Fools right? Or some sick practical joke and somewhere Trey Azagthoth and David Vincent are laughing it up, and will let us in on the joke, then release a proper album, right? Because if not, I’m going to be pissed, as are lots of other death metal fans. […]

Septicflesh – The Great Mass

Well, it sure is big. And some metal people, you know, they like big ones. And Greeks, well, it almost goes without saying. They have this entire history of bigness. And now they have The Great Mass. Even though Septicflesh have been giving us really good big ones for a while, with 2008’s Communion flirting with great, they’re sometimes even […]

Silent Stream of Godless Elegy – Návaz

It seems so easy. Take some folk, mix it with some metal, add some tribal-this, some ethno-that, heat until fused and ta-da!–awesomeness. But as Finntroll, Korpiklaani, Moonsorrow or even the relatively rougher Eluveitie prove in endless genre-mix soufflés, things usually collapse under the weight of whimsy, uneven beauty/beasting, or heavy-pretense (yes, I’m thinking of the new Agalloch‘s tendency to meander, or Swan‘s pointlessly […]

Kylesa – Spiral Shadow

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 […]

Otargos – No God, No Satan

The first time I heard Otargos was their blackened death metal waltz “Hexameron” that apropos of nothing turns into this stripper-friendly fuck-me groove featuring what sounds like a sampled philosophy lecture. Okay, fine. Maybe you’re just cooler than me. Maybe you’ve already been into and tired of the whole blackened death-metal, stripper-friendly, fuck-me groove/philosophy-lecture craze. […]