…when locked away working on their previous record Violence Unimagined from 2021. Instead, they got down to business writing and recording Chaos Horrific – their sixteenth studio album as the band celebrates thirty-five years as a unit. Most people should respect the work ethic and commitment to the cause, and as such these ten tracks of pounding brutality contain the right balance as far as memorable riffs, neck whipping grooves, devastating grow…
…about the final outcome in relation to your previous record The First from 2021? Carvalho: The songs of our second studio album were written during 2022 and we finished the arrangements early in 2023 to start the recording sessions. I start the songs using my piano and then I get the ideas of the other members, we discuss some parts, redo some parts and when we feel the body of the song is done, we start arranging the song, mainly the orchestrati…
…Stepping back to the independent ranks for the 2018 EP Five CC of Pure… and 2021 follow-up Devil and His Dog, we’ve now arrived at the sophomore album for Where To From Here?, a ten-song platter that showcases the trio in a power groove, thrash-oriented platform where the organic purity shines through, keeping the material very lean to launch easily from these studio cuts onto the stage. Simplification in terms of riffs, hooks, melodies, and tempo…
…were all about the act’s newest member, screamer Emily Arima (who joined in 2021 after the dissolution of Ladybaby, taking the spot of former vocalist Yuna Imada). Arima herself left the most metallic impression, coming out as far as she could to the crowd with lots of big arm motions, inciting the audience as she growled with just as much tenacity and power as any brutal death act. Kaede and Hinako joined in with equal fervor to this mix – it hon…
…um for Dolorem Records As Cold As a Stranger Sunset came out in the fall of 2021 – setting things up with Portuguese label Gruesome Records with Beyond Frozen Heights. A tidy five-track offering that creates a swirling storm of chaos in just over fourteen minutes, you can expect stunning energy from top to bottom, these musicians pushing the parameters of their abilities as artists, incorporating the best of 90’s/early 2000’s influences in the mel…
…re the technology has rapidly evolved and everything is available for free online. We can finally get information that we couldn’t have unless we went to a library or paid for a subscription. Right now, we can google anything you want and be more informed on things that were more difficult to get information on before. That’s what’s happening. Dead Rhetoric: What’s next for Death Dealer Union, as well as yourself with Infected Rain? Cataraga: Deat…
…tention of Prosthetic Records through their two initial singles released in 2021 – finally releasing their debut album with A Kingdom Built Upon the Wreckage of Heaven. Incorporating a mix of death metal, grindcore, and black metal with lots of influences across the 90’s, 2000’s and current marketplace, the material contains aggression, fury, and emotional resonance that the underground mavens treasure when it comes to this style. We spoke to mult…
…eclectic sound for this sophomore album Blossom & Plague. The follow-up to 2021’s And Yet It Moves which not only received rave reviews from domestic/international press but led to Danish tours with Thundermother and Artillery among others, the quartet set out to impress once again a collective audience who yearn for something fresh, addictive, as well as inspiring. The results are very captivating, as decades of inspiration pour into these eight…
…o you see the differences or growth of the band from your previous album of 2021 The Great Acceleration? Hansen: You can say the songwriting process was very much in line with the theme and concept of the record since it was very stressful to make this one. We were a bit fast to agree when we would hit the studio, and that rushed the songwriting. But sometimes, you need a sharp deadline to really put in the work and that’s what we did. I think the…
…m the band would release a live album The Devil You Know during the fall of 2021, finally getting down to work over the last two years for the next record The Hellish Joyride. Edguy bassist Tobias ‘Eggi’ Exxel is the latest member to join the sextet, adding his professionalism and songwriting skills to an already strong array of talent contained within the group. Those listeners who love melodic power metal that spans a wide range of textures espe…
…g more ears with an entertaining cover of Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy,” it was 2021’s emotive single “Messy” that brought Conquer Divide into ‘must hear’ status for yours truly. Now in 2023, we are finally seeing the album follow up to their debut, and it was well worth the wait. The long and the short of it is that regardless of whether Conquer Divide was already on your radar, Slow Burn will leave a strong positive impression. The same metalcore me…
…you see this record compared to your debut album Into the Maw of Death from 2021? Stjernfeldt: I think that once again as with Into the Maw of Death we never said that we should do another album. It just happened, we have enough songs for a new album, and once again we worked with the same people behind the scenes, the same studio. The producer came up with more ideas for the songwriting process, we came up with where we wanted to go as far as the…
…ctive approach to this melting pot of musical direction. First surfacing in 2021 with an EP titled Armament, it was immediately obvious that this group purveys an advanced vision of where they wanted to go, with furious crust infused riffs and blackened shrieks built upon a foundation of complex song structures. Rană is now here with their first full-length Richtfeuer in tow, and they’ve expanded upon everything established two years ago with unbr…
…with their playing abilities due to all the tutorials and tools available online? Gonzalez: Oh yes. I think there is only one drawback with that. It doesn’t encourage jamming with someone else. I think it’s how I learned a very important skill – to follow along with someone else, groove with someone. Even if you are a little off, that doesn’t matter. It will sound better than hitting a wrong note here and there. I learned to do that with my cousi…
…rumblings of new Dethklok and Metalocalypse material was surfacing back in 2021. But here we sit in 2023 with a movie soon to be released (Metalocalypse: Army of the Doomstar), a tour with Babymetal this fall, and not one, but two albums on the horizon (one of which being the soundtrack to said movie). Dethalbum IV is the subject of this review, and it carries with it the distinguished pedigree of the Dethalbums before it. The knack that Dethklok…
…ut any auditions. We didn’t want to audition someone else. His playing – in 2021 the last album we brought out was the live album, which was Jogi on the bass. The Hellish Joyride is the first album to feature Tobias on bass. It was really cool to work with him. On the one hand, we have six songwriters now in the band. He contributed the song “Stay the Fool” for which he wrote the music. His playing – he’s a real heavy metal bass player. He has a l…
…ex-Soil), and while they formed in 2018, it was the ‘rebirth’ of the act in 2021 (Glass is the only initial member remaining) and subsequent signing to label Noble Demon that initially grabbed some deserved attention. Also featuring Product of Hate vocalist Adam Gilley, the group’s first EP Volume 1: Reborn set the tone for their vicious yet melodic template. To that end, The Process of Human Demise provides an energetic romp through thrashy yet c…
…rowth or differences in this record compared to your self-titled debut from 2021? Laz: I think one of the main differences is we had much more time to rehearse. Before the first record, we had one show. That’s the most important difference between the two albums. Nihil: At least this is how I feel about this – the main difference is how the drums sound. Not the style of playing but the sound of the drums. We more or less stuck to the same formula…
…will never satisfy me because somebody is always going to be making more. Online popularity – that’s about the most bullshit metric that existed in the history of the world. Success to me means, I’ve been writing new material the past three days. That’s success to me – I got caught up in the business side of things, trying to play your favorite shows with bigger bands, or your favorite bands. I’ve played with Metallica and Iron Maiden now, so the…
…terms of the material and the overall final product, especially compared to 2021’s Absolvere? Bobby Crow: I would say this record feels a lot more natural. We did a lot more trusting of our guts. We wrote this record very quickly. Most of the records we would write at my house and have tons of time, years to work on them and go over parts. We wrote most of this album, 75% of this, in the studio. We would go through a song, like it, make little cha…
…across the Atlantic, it’s amazing. When I started my Twitch stream in April 2021 and Madeleine started hers in June 2021. A bundle of game changers and highlights of our careers. Dead Rhetoric: How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success in life? Or do you have a favorite failure of yours that happened when it comes to your music career, and how did you end up pushing through? Ekberg: A failure can mean so many things to a…
…an death metal quartet Crypta as they made quite a first impression through 2021’s Echoes of the Soul debut. Switching out second guitarists as Sonia Anubis steps aside for fellow Brazilian Jéssica Falchi, Shades of Sorrow continues the brutal assault of death metal that these ladies stand for, featuring a bevy of aggressive to semi-technical tracks, plenty of riffs/hooks to capture one’s headspace, plus tempos that range from tribal-like maneuver…
…f Sorrow is the second Crypta album – a strong follow-up to your debut from 2021 Echoes of the Soul. How do you see the evolution of the band in terms of the songwriting and performances between the two records? Luana Dametto: Well, I think on the first record we were very much breaking the ice amongst each other. Fernanda and I of course had played together before in Nervosa, but we didn’t really know Taina and Sonia at the time, it was like gett…
…gain. [Laughs] It’s been great. Of course, I got this break during 2020 and 2021 from Covid, so it was a good time to recharge my batteries and find new things and approaches. The lockdown wasn’t all bad. Before that, I was doing 200 gigs a year with both bands. I needed the break. Now, it’s all good. Both bands are starting to tour a lot again. Everything is cool. I wrote a lot of music during lockdown and have put out two EPs and full-lengths wi…
…thought that was the coolest with the whole punk thing. When I saw Pantera online for the first time, I got more into metal. I had been listening to Metallica, but I was more into heavy stuff, Pantera I thought was really heavy at the time. I got into Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel, Carcass, stuff like that. Dead Rhetoric: The latest album from Demolizer is Post Necrotic Human. How did the songwriting and recording sessions go for this set of mater…
…domestically and abroad. Previously under this scribe’s listening radar for 2021’s V EP, the follow-up VI – Molten Rainbow is a nine-song platter that continues an energetic blend of traditional riffs, savage vocals, plus heavy tempos that flies firmly in the camp that the trio will not compromise to achieve purity in the conquest for the cause. Performing double duty at bass/guitars, Jordan Rhyno layers his riffs plus bottom end support with this…
…that maybe differed from your last effort Creatures of the Dark Realm from 2021? Patrik Selleby: We have been working in the same way as we have over the past five albums. Myself, Fredrik and Tomas are the main songwriters in the band. The writing process is an ongoing process all the time. If I have a riff, I record it and save them in the vault for later. When we start to talk about things at the time to do an album, we start to send each other…
…igning with Ván Records and issuing a debut album for Moonlit Cross in late 2021 that won them top three rankings in major domestic metal magazines. Now the highly anticipated follow-up Fatale arrives, another hypnotic, catchy affair for those who love a mix of 70’s/80’s guitar-driven heaviness along with gothic/haunting vocal melodies that conjure up a wide array of darker, thoughtful influences. The mesmerizing riffs swirl around equally intoxic…
…ere do you see the major differences between this album and your debut from 2021 The Fragments of Wonder? Were there any surprises, obstacles, or setbacks to overcome during this process? Lunesu: I already had some songs from the new album during the promotion of the Wonders’ debut album, the last songs I wrote at the end of the promotion of the debut album. Compared to the debut album everyone worked at home because of the many commitments of eac…
Vexed made a pretty massive splash with their first effort back in 2021 with Culling Culture. Mixing elements of modern metal, vicious deathcore and metalcore, as well as electronic elements, they had a sound that hit the sweet spot of being heavy, angry, and memorable. Two years later, the band have recorded the follow-up in Negative Energy. Ramping up the heaviness and insightful social commentary from the previous effort, Negative Energy is in…
