Quite the fuss around these Dutchmen (and woman), primarily because of Martjin Westerholt’s (ex Within Temptation) involvement and the fact singer Charlotte Wessels is another in a now very long line of beaming sirens to front...

The majesty of Mandylion and Nighttime Birds seem so far off that The Gathering feels like a different band. Well, they are, obviously and that’s both with the departure of longtime singer Anneke van Giersbergen and their gradual move away...

A stop-gap EP before the next full-length (due sometime later this year or early 2010), Ephemeral is merely a snippet of what Pelican (far and away the best instrumental metal band of the last decade) can...

Now three albums deep into their reformation (wow…already?), legendary Floridian death metallers Obituary have come through in the clutch yet again with Darkest Day. It’s more of the same, and since Obituary has made a...

Anytime anyone deviates from the norm in black metal, you run the risk of it working or falling flat on its face. Black metal may forever be out of its fully-experimental phase that occurred...

The age-old question: “How do you keep brutal death metal interesting over the course of 10 songs?” is a tricky one. It’s a bit maddening really; you take music so rhythmically pummeling and brutal...

For those of you who like your death metal devoid of cliché then the cover of Jungle Rot’s latest release, What Horrors Await is going to be immediately off-putting. Once you get beyond that though, there’s...

Opening with a sustained burst of feedback and slowly building noise, Magrudergrind are back, ready to tear off faces with the aptly-titled “The Protocols Of Anti-Sound.” It’s both a statement of intent and reinforcement...

A lazy person would dub Ex Deo as “Kataklysm without the hyper-blasts,” but it’s not that way at all, dude. Sure, all four current members of Montreal-based DM mongrels comprise Ex Deo, yet this...

We’re barely a year removed from the quite excellent Land and here comes the even more excellent By the Light of the Northern Star. It’s no coincidence that Tyr are perhaps the preeminent Viking/folk/Pagan/whatever metal band –...