When confronted with the ambiguous genre tag of avant garde I toss aside all expectations because it can either be a complete waste of time or something glorious and I have no way of knowing which way it’s going to go. Naiv is in the latter category, bringing a rejuvenating sound that has an interesting swing to it. It only took the second track to make me fall in love. […]
Fucking speed and darkness! What else is there to say about Midnight? They set up a simple premise and stick to it with mastery. If you aren’t familiar with Midnight then I’d best describe them as Gwar sped up with black metal and sex thrown on it. I first became a fan after hearing Sweet Death & Ecstasy which I promptly paid out the ass to get on cassette shipped to Australia. How does this one compare? It’s not bad, that’s for sure but it feels more straight forward. At its worst it’s more of what fans love, so that’s pretty valuable and something veteran bands need to achieve in order to maintain longevity. […]
This is an interesting album. It’s somewhere between progressive death metal with a raw mix and elements of hardcore or mathcore, particularly on the vocal side of things. It’s hard to pin this one down to an exact essence, it very much does its own thing without necessarily considering where in the world of metal or even alternative music they would belong. I can only respect them for that in an era of redundant worship releases. […]
I’ve always enjoyed Japanese metal, they just do it that little bit different and have a way of cutting through the huge amount of monotonous releases I hear each week. Infinite Regress is a well rounded album that is a smooth blend of old school death metal and technical death metal. It discards all of the new ideas currently circulating in tech death (such as the rise of deathcore and synth prominence) and focuses on bringing the old ideas into their framework of intensive mathy timing. The result is a pleasure to listen to as it sounds familiar but also grooves different. It’s well crafted. […]
Four good albums, four mini reviews. A bit of everything. This week it’s a bit more of a drastic variety with a combination of raw black metal, death metal and fucking Scissorfight. The 2019 ones were released as recently as December so dig in. […]
Spanish Thrashers HOLYCIDE have delivered their second full length album upon our ears. And they are not here to play nice. Starting off with their album cover which was done by Akriant Illustration who has worked with IRON MAIDEN. They’ve created what can only be described as some sort of toxic robotic humanoid beating the crap out of Donald Trump. Nice! […]
Alright, what is in the bloody water over at Perth? The amount of bands coming out of there at the top of their game is intense. It’s unlike anywhere else on the continent, and they’re even on my favorite label, Transcending Obscurity. This label has good taste, every album that gets released there has some kind of quirk or progressive music ideology that separates the bands from their genre. This isn’t just another black metal album, it’s an experience equally capable of being a mosher and a thinker. It unravels unto your mind and stirs something in your soul. Acts of Repentance releases on the 20th of March and will be one of this year’s highlights just based on the sound and presentation combination happening here. It’s a high quality and well-rounded album. […]
Eternal Storm made one hell of a splash in 2019 with “Come The Tide”, a sophisticated album that made its way into many end of year lists including my own. I still listen to it every week and cannot recommend it enough. It’s cumulative of it’s inspirations while also maintaining its own identity throughout. There’s a strong sense of voice across this album matched by strong musicianship and song writing. Essential listening for fans of Swallow The Sun, Opeth, Amorphis or anything good that has the duality of melody and death growls. […]
This is one of those times where I got a tape just because of how awesome the cover looked. This is some fun straight out of the 80s and carries both the sound and mentality of the era with it. We’re talking heavy metal guitars and clean vocals about sex and BDSM. It’s dated but highly listenable. […]
I’ve said it a million times and I’ll say it again, the Aussie underground has some of the best sludge bands in the world. We add sludge to everything, like it’s fucking tomato sauce, because it’s the best genre ever. Whether it’s black metal, death metal or doom metal you bet we’ll sludge it up and make it sound as strange as possible. […]
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