Emotive Bavarian folksters Empyrium, a band releasing high quality material dating back to 1996, return with their first full-length in twelve years on The Turn of the Tides. Where they were once noted Read more […]
Ironically, the most notable item about Dictated is the thing you are least likely to notice if you are listening to the album. It is kind of a bummer that it really needs to be addressed here in 2014 Read more […]
With the overflow of incredible releases from Unique Leader this year (Fallujah, The Kennedy Veil, Inanimate Existence, etc etc), it was inevitable that a dud would be launched at some point. Enter Acrania, Read more […]
Hands down, I’d place this among the best of the best black/death metal albums this year. Belphegor seem to have put everything into Conjuring the Dead and it conjures much more than the dead. This album Read more […]
While perhaps not to most, Oubliette comes across as a bit of a supergroup to this writer’s eyes. Consisting of members of Inferi (Mike Low) and Aether Realm (Vincent Jones), it seemed this one was Read more […]
Saint Petersburg Russia’s Exhumation, a melodic death metal band, has been kicking around in one incarnation or another since the mid-nineties. Finally, with their current lineup, the band seems well poised Read more […]
Mike DiMeo may be best known in the metal community through his 12 year tenure as Riot’s vocalist, showcasing his solid bluesy pipes during the 1990’s and early 2000’s. Following a brief excursion Read more […]
It’s cool (or “kool”) to be cult (or “kvlt”) at the moment, even if you’re essentially swiping ideas from those who are swiping ideas from others. San Francisco’s Cardinal Wyrm play a mystical, 70’s-based Read more […]
It’s not often that you hear about death metal from Iran. For Azooma’s debut EP, the band set a pretty high standard for themselves. The EP is a concept album about the idea that a man who is a victim Read more […]
Time hasn’t done much to distort how important Roadrunner Records were in the early 90s. A lot of what the label put out at the time usually amounted to something, including some bands with commercial Read more […]
Tie-in American black metal, with nature, with nose-in-the-air song titles like “Spire of the Hunt” and “Cold Wounds of Virtue,” and automatically, it’s Cascadian black metal, right? It almost has to be. Read more […]
Pathology is a bit of a storied brutal death metal band at this point, being able to crank out an album every year (since 2008) and having a number of member changes within that framework. Notable for Read more […]
You only get one chance to make a reunion impression, and the stakes are high in the case of Accept. 2010’s Blood of the Nations certainly put the current multi-continent act back on the map (three-fifths Read more […]
The title Reality Cleaver admittedly seemed quite brutal so this one mistakenly got tossed into the “get to it when I get to it” category. Interestingly enough, this is Nefandus’ third full-length Read more […]
Just as Sweden has it’s key giveaways when you first listen to a band blindly, so does Poland. Preludium, clearly of the Polish ilk, take on the same militant death/black metal of their peers Behemoth, Read more […]
Halcyon Way’s fourth album, Conquer, has been a long time coming. The last full-length from the band was back in 2010, with 2011’s Indoctrination EP being the only exposure the band has had since Read more […]
Speaking from personal experience, Dragonforce are a band whose reputation definitely preceeds them. Meaning, through all of my wanderings into the lands of power metal, Dragonforce were a band from whom Read more […]
Starting in 1989 as a small festival for 500, this German metal festival has grown over the decades to a 3 day plus affair, featuring hundreds of bands on a variety of stages and sold out to 75,000+ attendees Read more […]
The swansong that you see coming means a certain level of pressure to deliver on a level that you’ll be remembered for. It’s been a very long two years for Blake Judd since the release of the formidable Read more […]
When a band as far into their career as Darkest Hour release a self-titled album, you know there is going to be a purpose behind it. The band’s eighth full-length is bound to split the factions of their Read more […]
The fourth album from Swedish death metal band Those Who Bring the Torture should find itself giving no one any questions about its material. The mere mention of Rogga Johansson should give you a pretty Read more […]
Fortunate to gain appreciation on the ground floor from their self-titled debut album back in 1999 during my Snakepit magazine co-editor days, Sweden’s Wolf has been a long-running traditional metal Read more […]
Very Nuclear Assault, this whole package from Italian thrashers Game Over. Their font certainly is a swipe of NA’s old logo, not to mention their name, which is quite apocalyptic, death and destruction, Read more […]
Talk about a trip down memory lane. Reminiscing of having to go to a store and special order this when it was originally released as a teenager (back before the Internet was such a destination), your Read more […]
Well documented are the trials and tribulations of any Michael Kiske-fronted Helloween reunion coming down the pike these days. Despite any resurrection/reunion craze (and supposedly six figures festival Read more […]
Someone must have really bothered Corrupt Moral Altar something awful, because Mechanical Tides is a pissed-off ball of fury. Combining grindcore, sludge, hardcore, and even some stoner rock, they do Read more […]
Holy technical death metal Batman! This album was quite an unexpected kick in the groin. Fitting in well with some of the strongest that Unique Leader has offered up here in 2014, Fragments of Flagrancy Read more […]
Splits are a great way to cross-pollinate between disparate fanbases or concentrate your efforts on bringing similarities together for something truly staggering (a lot like Windhand/Cough last year or Read more […]
[9/10] When a band faces a potential death penalty for playing the music they play, it’s bound to be something great and worth the risk. Black metal like this is totally worth the risk. No joke, if these Read more […]
Yet another project featuring the considerable and wholly intriguing talents of Australia’s Tim Yatras (also of Germ, Austere, Grey Waters, etc., and is going under the name of “Sorrow”), Autumn’s Read more […]
