Suffocation – The Close of a Chapter: Live In Quebec (Relapse Records)
Here’s a shaky proposition: a death metal live album. Just about all of the big names have done one and they’ve all failed in their own right. Methinks no one is reaching for When Satan Lives over Legion or Entangled...
Otargos – Fuck God-Disease Process (Season of Mist/Underground Activists)
Not only is Fuck God-Disease Process the black metal album title of the year, it’s the black metal album title of the decade. We’ve waited nine long years for a title like this, so Otargos better not...
Vetus Obscurum – Blood Revelations (Debemur Morti)
USBM of the Northwestern variety, meaning it’s not Wolves of the Throne Room, but yeah, there’s some parallels. Essentially the project of one Numinas (who also does time as drummer in American death metallers...
Austrian Death Machine – Double Brootal (Metal Blade Records)
This is dumb, but “funny dumb,” if you will. The second album from this Tim Lambesis (As I Lay Dying) side-project, Double Brootal is a 2-CD tribute to actor/current California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in the form of...
Bone Gnawer – Feast on Flesh (Pulverised Records)
At its core, death metal is at its most dominating when the onus is on simplicity and brutality. There’s no real trick to it – some bands have it (i.e. Jungle Rot, the subject of our...
Pestilential Shadows – In Memoriam, Ill Omen (Pulverised Records)
Leave it up to a black metal band to give itself yet another outlandish tag. This time, it’s “Anti-human plague black metal” from Australian primitive black metallers Pestilential Shadows and yeah, it’s fitting, but...
Bleeding Fist – Bestial Kruzifix666ion (Moribund Records)
Credit Moribund with this: they always seem to find the most deranged and off-the-grid extreme metal bands. From Ayat to Dodsferd to Brown Jenkins and pretty much anyone else on the roster, the label...
Aetherius Obscuritas – Black Medicine (Paragon Records)
The infusion of melody into black metal is forever a source of debate. In its glory years, melody was a huge (for lack of a better term) no-no, thus preserving the sanctity and “trueness”...
Armed for Apocalypse – Defeat (Ironclad Recordings/Metal Blade)
In its applicable form, heaviness is applied on Defeat. We often make conjectures as to how Band A is “heavy as this” and Band B is “heavy as that,” but Armed for Apocalypse spare no...
Bibleblack – The Black Swan Epilogue (Vic Records/Candelight)
With Mercyful Fate on hold for what seems like an eternity (1999’s 9 needs to be followed-up in a serious way), its members continue to pop up in new bands. No different than when guitarist Hank Shermann...