Expectation is a fickle thing. Add in more experimentation between two groups than most bands could hope to cover in half a dozen lifetimes and it’s easier to understand why a proposition like Terrestrials Read more […]
Ever the disconnect with Primordial/Twilight of the Gods vocalist Alan Averill serving as talent scout and getting this sleazy Swedish bunch signed to Metal Blade. Who would have thunk? But it happened, Read more […]
Going back to my tape trading days in high school/ college, I first discovered Italian progressive/power metal band Eldritch when a US friend dubbed me a cassette of their first two demos, Reflection Read more […]
Is it possible that somewhere in Middletown, New Jersey, Michael Romeo is laughing diabolically when he hears the drivel that is Adrenaline Mob? After all, it’s hard to forget Russell Allen’s lone Read more […]
The smart grind bands are the ones to hone in on metal, for frankly, those plug along with punk and/or crust could not be more uninteresting. The fact grind is such a limited form of music isn’t much of Read more […]
Talk about a split personality! Shroud of Despondency’s newest (double) album, Tied to a Dying Animal, sees the band veering into two different directions. The first part (“For Innocence, Beauty, Read more […]
With their sophomore release Sinister, Deathpoint has dropped an admirable—but uneven—follow-up to 2010’s Fixation. The level of musicianship is lofty and the intensity consistent, but the songwriting Read more […]
“Can a human sing like this?” That was the question posed to me by my four-year-old son (yes, he loves heavy metal) as he listened to Benighted’s seventh album, Carnivore Sublime. It’s a fair Read more […]
Their straightedge/vegan agenda still front and center (where it belongs), long-running hardcore metal vanguards Earth Crisis have gone the conceptual route with their sixth album, Salvation of Innocents. Read more […]
With the amount of evolution happening in the world of extreme and underground metal, there are always many who embrace the familiar and cherish the old, if well-worn sounds. The seemingly endless devotion Read more […]
A few years ago everyone and their mother’s nipples happened to be playing ‘post-metal’ in its many forms right into the ground. That heyday has come and gone but as with any movement, after the Read more […]
In a genre that literally screams melancholic agony and wretched misery, never disregard or underestimate the emotional reaping that revolves around depressive suicidal black metal. Particularly for Incursus, Read more […]
Sporting some gorgeously bleak sci-fi cover art, Artificial Brain’s Labyrinth Constellation debut album is the latest entry into the ever-expanding realm of “space metal.” Some may discover the band Read more […]
Breaching from the pits of Greece’s stellar underground scene and unchaining their demons straight from the underworld, Macedonian black metallers Kult of Taurus illuminate the darkness of the occult, Read more […]
It’s no longer surprising that France is a real hotbed of some of the best black metal to come out of Europe, and it follows that my interests were piqued when I saw where this band, Folge Dem Wind, Read more […]
In the currently crowded field of melodic death metal, more often than not, if there isn’t something unique to a band’s sound, they are destined to be left to relative obscurity. Thankfully for Whispered, Read more […]
Finnish from-the-depths death metal, meaning, sounds of the abyss are in play, as are songs long as they are involved. Lie in Ruins have been around for over 20 years, spending their first ten as Dissected, Read more […]
Perhaps the most profound moment of my many hereto listens of Kindly Bent To Free Us came while walking the streets of Monterey overlooking the bay to opener “True Hallucination Speak”: a feeling of Read more […]
There are all those bands that have gone from brutally dark to light progressive rock, alternative-techno, or whatever else it takes to break from the depressive lunacies of black metal. Frustrating for Read more […]
Ugly, disgusting, and filthy. Completely sick and twisted. Truly a thing of beauty. Chicago’s Indian have unleashed a monster in album form with From All Purity. There’s no build-up or intro to ease Read more […]
On the level enough to have the ever-choosy Nocturnal Culto lend some guest vocals, Norway’s Nocturnal Breed have largely been on the cult fringe since their 1996 formation. Being that they are a black/thrash Read more […]
Fans of symphonic deathcore a la Ovid’s Withering have been undoubtedly counting the minutes waiting for Lorelei’s debut album, Lore of Lies, to be released. Taking their formula of chugging riffs, Read more […]
Practically an institution for vintage metal of the substance-laden, storytelling kind, San Francisco’s Slough Feg veered off from their traditional every-other-year release schedule for Digital Resistance. Read more […]
Discussion regarding Sweden’s Kayser should begin with the song “Evolution,” which appears on the band’s most recent studio album, 2006’s Frame the World…Hang It On the Wall. A blunt groove Read more […]
I Shalt Become, the rather enigmatic American black metal project of multi-instrumentalist S. Holliman, has released its sixth album in Louisiana Voodoo, since the debut full-length, and kvltishly revered Read more […]
Progressive death metal as a subgenre has been one that has been continuously expanding over the years to the point where it’s not entirely possible to figure out a band’s sound with that label anymore. Read more […]
The most visible aspect of Def Con One is that of drummer Antton Lant (Venom), but don’t expect anything along those lines here. Def Con One play modern metal that owes much of it’s sound to that Read more […]
If the ear of Karl Walterbach is to be trusted – and it should – then Israel’s Hammercult are the next viable entry into the death/thrash derby. Walterbach, responsible for signing the likes of Celtic Read more […]
Composed mostly of ex-Sonic Syndicate members, The Unguided’s debut, Hell Frost, sought to show the world that they had not lost their metallic edge. Playing it safe, it waded through pretty familiar Read more […]
Surely DR isn’t alone in the sentiment that it’s halfway remarkable a mid-level, often derided outfit like Caliban can still be operational in the sometimes-abhorrent sphere that is metalcore. And Read more […]
