Spellbook, the 2012 debut from this Canadian/Balkan one man project was a pretty solid slab of thrash/death/black metal. Not much has changed in 3 years. The sound is a tight, almost robotic (due to programmed drums), death/thrash release with gruff almost Chris Barnes is growls. There’s no wasted sound, no intros, no interludes, and while […]

Canada’s a good place to make black metal.  Some of my bandmates are from Canada, and I know the cold up there is dogging and leads some folks to produce music that reckons of the endlessly lashing frost that befalls every inch of the country.  Murderous death/black quintet Vile Insignia are a good representation of […]

Necrocrosm is a curious one for me. When I saw the promo sheet and read the bio and saw the artwork, both got me interested in them and I decided to give them a listen. I was impressed on the onset with the sound, in which you can hear all members and even the bass […]

Hailing from Ohio, this is TON’S, Jeff Shepler’s other band, Fully Consumed.  The band is labeled as technical death metal.  I found the band to be more straightforward brutal death metal.  Think Gorgasm/Lividity/(early)Deeds of Flesh  type of stuff. I really love TON and their new album, but I’m not the biggest fan of Fully Consumed’s […]

Seeking to take the classic sludge sound into busier, high traffic avenues, Arizonians Gale spare no expense and leave no boulder uncrushed in their mission to plow eardrums under six feet of sediment in the name of their mission.  They’re atmospherically heavy like before Neurosis went all soft on us, heavy and ugly like an […]

Like fellow North Carolina instrumental sages Husky (now known as Watch Husky Burn), three-piece Boar weave gracefully manic, deviously diverse jams across their debut Self-Titled EP.  Their tricky, psychedelic work casts a magician’s mind control spell on the listener as it traverses the briny depths of psychedelic rock, ascends the mountainous plateau of heavy metal […]

It’s pretty much a given that I’m going to be all about anything that either Erik Burke or Dan Lilker put their hands to; they being two of my all-time favorite grindcore musicians. This is even moreso in light of the disbanding of Brutal Truth at the end of last year, which left a huge […]

  The problem with the modern thrash scene is too many bands are relying on the nostalgia of the genre’s ‘80s heyday instead of forging their own path forward. Naturally there are exceptions, but most decent modern thrash bands tend to hybridize with other styles to create something unique and noteworthy. I might sound a […]

This is Behold! the Monolith’s first release since Vocalist/Bassist Kevin Dade was tragically killed in a car accident a couple years back; not too long after releasing their sophomore album, Defender, Redeemist. That album was a pretty solid slab of whatever you call their punky/doomy/sludgy/thrashy/modern/traditional heavy metal; and an album that showed a lot of […]

Man, this is THE shit.  This is like a long lost high school reunion for my ears.  Chris Chiera swingin’ axe (he the man behind Sofa King Killer’s purely classic guitar sound), Aaron Brittain kickin’ the cans (his hard hits have been missed since the Fistula days) and bassist Adam Horwatt (So Long Albatross) keeps […]

In continuing with my presenting different horizons to you, our loyal readers, I present to you Salem’s Lott. At first glance if you see the pictures of the band you may be….”WTF?!?….but if you went just off the music alone without seeing them you may say…okay…not too bad. So with that being said, remember these […]

  The hallucinatory, Kyuss-ian chords that entrance “Destroyer Television,” the EP opener of Phoenix, Arizona doom lords Horse Head and their debut release The Missionary may be one of the all-time great red herrings.  Aw, what a gracious melody…so inviting, relaxing and warm that it’s like good sex meets a fifth of whiskey…and then planes […]

  I find many unjust situations bordering on criminal acts.  Here are some examples.  The fact that I have been playing the Mega Millions for close to 2 decades and I have only won, maybe 40 bucks over this course.  Another one that comes to mind is my damn Dallas Cowboys have only won 2 […]

Auric is a band from my home state of Arkansas; which has always had a tiny, but vibrant heavy music scene. Arkansas has contributed a couple pretty notable bands to the whole southern/sludge/doom lexicon, as well as a lot of really good punk and hardcore. And now we have Auric, who could be the fourth […]

Progressive, now there’s a word that gets a lot of use in the metal vernacular, maybe just under “brutal” and “cult”, or “kvlt”, depending how true (troo?) you are. I’m not going to lie to you, I’m not a progressive type of guy. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about progression in songwriting […]

I usually dismiss the press sheet that comes with a promo out of hand; I don’t need no PR dweeb filling my brain with their hyperbole, before I create my own hyperbole to fill all of yours with. But for once, the press sheet describing Black Queen as “Witch Metal” is pretty apropos. Even the […]

Euro-Asia (Orwell fans will get the wordplay) piles on the tonal goodness with their latest EP release A View of the Earth.  These Floridian netherworld dwellers gravitate between the Empire State Building tall riffage and trance-y space-outs of heavy/pretty greats such as Hum, Shiner, Floor, Swervedriver and Cave In.  Not quite crushing enough to be […]

While the likes of Fleshgod Apocalypse, Hour of Penance, Logic of Denial and such get the lions share of the attention when it comes to Italian death metal, a couple of lesser known Italian bands have come to my attention of late- namely Inverted and Necrosy. Inverted with their impressive The Age of Harvest and Necrosy […]

For those of you not family with Ambassador Gun started off as a group called A Second from The Surface.  If you get to check out their older material it is worth checking out. Ambassador Gun definitely no rookies to The United States metal community having done a record with Prosthetic Records and also appearing […]

Folk metal so often gets bogged down by excess layers of cheese, bombast and pretentiousness that it rarely moves me or finds a way into my listening rotation. But every now and again a style of metal that generally falls outside my comfort zone proceeds to blow me away and forces me to rethink my […]

Lately, my wanton lust for grinding, d-beat flesh is insatiable.  It could be the nice weather, a mental illness or some other factor bringing it out of me again, but shit man, I got the bug.  Scotland’s own sewerborn hellspawn Rats of Reality are really hitting me with a ball peen hammer right between the […]

Well here it is. At least based on this interview, this is Rory Heikkila’s final release doing business under the Shroud of Despondency brand. This is a huge bummer for those in the know, but I can’t be too sad about it, because Family Tomb is one hell of a consolation. I haven’t enjoyed a […]

Australia sure seems to do a wonderful job of producing unbelievably groovy and polished death metal, Ulcerate and Psycroptic to name two that come to mind.  Hailing from Perth, Western Australia comes Sanzu.  Sanzu’s Painless EP is a testament to experimentation and really well thought out song writing. “18 days of Rain”starts off with an extremely […]

Palinopsia are unsigned band from US,  Vermont specifically,  and they bring their take of doom to the metal table with this EP release. They describe their music has blackened doom sludge and that is exactly what you are getting. The black primarily in the vocals with some death vocals scattered thru the songs and the […]

So Floridian black metal act Mindscar were around back in the early 00s with a few demos and such and back then, their guitarist/vocalist Richie Brown was the bassist for Trivium for a year, before Heafy and co got famous. But the band faded out of existence after a lone 2001 EP, However Brown reformed the band with in […]