SHORT BUT SWEET: DECONSECRATION’S DEBUT DEMO

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Jun 292020
 

 

If you’re in the mood for death metal cut from particularly foul and disease-ridden cloth, ghastly in the extreme and gruesome in almost every way, then the debut demo of Deconsecration is just what the mad doctor ordered, to make the sick among you even more ill. We have Chaos Records and Caligari Records to thank for this musical abomination, which they’ve just released on CD and cassette tape, respectively.

This Seattle quintet, whose line-up is composed of ex-members of Capitalist Casualties, Catheter, Wilt, and Hideous Creep and features current members of Foul and Anoxia, were obviously in that mood when they recorded these four tracks. Each of the songs is dynamic in its pacing and variable in its other energies, but there’s nothing about it that’s healthy. On the other hand, it’s very true to the old spirit of death metal that had the stench of the morgue in its nostrils and relished images of reanimated corpses crawling from festering graves. Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH: OHHMS / TIBERIUS / WREN

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jun 292020
 


OHHMS

 

(Andy Synn wrote this trio of reviews, covering just-releqsed albums by bands from his home country.)

This edition of “The Best of British” – my long-running column where I take a look at some of the best-kept secrets and flawed-but-fascinating gems coming out of the UK underground – is a particularly timely one… or, at least it was meant to be, since it was originally intended to be published on Friday last week, the same day that all three of these bands released their new albums.

Sadly the twin pressures of my day job (which remains reliably, sometimes excessively, busy) and some important band business (which I’ll hopefully be able to talk more about soon) meant that I didn’t manage to get the column fully finished until far too late in the day, at which point our beloved leader convinced me that we’d be better off waiting until Monday (i.e., today) instead.

So, here we are, better late than never, with three new albums straight from the bountiful bosom of the British music scene. Continue reading »

WOLFHEART: “WOLVES OF KARELIA”

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Jun 262020
 

 

(Here is DGR’s review of the latest album by Finland’s Wolfheart, which is out now on Napalm Records.)

If you’ve been following, with …And Oceans and Feastem having gotten reviews, Wolfheart marks three from Finland that had been hanging out in the backlog pile.

With the April release of Wolves Of Karelia, it is clear that by their fifth full-length album — their second for Napalm Records after their couple on Spinefarm — Wolfheart have found a pretty solid niche for themselves. Performing epic-length hybrids of folk metal, melodeath, and a very light airing of the sort of ice and melancholy that affects their region’s branch of the doom metal tree, Wolfheart have for some time now been the ultimate representation of frontman/guitarist and project owner Tuomas Saukkonen‘s musical consciousness.

In fact, up until the release of this year’s Dawn Of Solace album Waves — arriving nearly fourteen years after that group’s previous disc — Wolfheart has been his only project for the last seven years and was consistently dishing out enjoyable music, Wolves Of Karelia included (for the early spoiler), on a nearly two-year interval. Other than the addition of new guitarist Vagelis Karzis into the band’s ranks, Wolfheart remain largely unchanged from when they became a full group rather than just a solo project. Continue reading »

FEASTEM: “GRAVEYARD EARTH”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jun 252020
 

 

(As part of his effort to circle back to earlier parts of the year and catch up on stuff we missed, DGR has a good time reviewing the nuclear shockwave of an album released in March by Finland’s Feastem.)

It’s tempting to write short reviews for grind albums, in part because in the time it takes to hammer out some words about them there’s a distinct possibility that you could loop around the whole disc four-to-five times. Feastem’s Graveyard Earth is no different in that regard: Released in March to close off a close-to-seven-year gap between full lengths, Graveyard Earth clocks in at a little under twenty minutes of drum kit battering and shrieking violence.

Grind albums trend toward being quick expulsions of auditory violence and Graveyard Earth is very comfortably nested in that musical family tree. It is – understandably – seething and mean, with a whole range of targets serving as musical clay pigeons for Finland’s Feastem to knock out of the sky, with only one song clearing the two-minute mark.

Feastem move fast and Graveyard Earth will likely toss its fair share of people to the side, and honestly, Graveyard Earth is easily one of those albums better suited for a specific mood. But if you need all-consuming blasts and guitar work that could power you through even the slowest of events, then Graveyard Earth is fantastic.

Especially the way everything hits after the opening bass guitar dirge in the title song, my goodness. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SHED THE SKIN — “THE FORBIDDEN ARTS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Jun 242020
 

 

Regardless of how completely awful the current situation may be on almost too many levels to count, any year that includes a new album by Shed the Skin is a good year, and any day that gives us another chance to premiere their music is going to be a devilishly joyful one regardless of how miserable it might have been otherwise. It should also be a joy for all fans of evil but electrifying death metal.

We’ve been helping to spread the word about Shed the Skin for many years, but hopefully by now they don’t really need any more help. With a veteran line-up drawn from a host of well-known bands, they were able to hit the ground running with their 2014 EP Rebirth Through Brimstone and powered through to even greater acclaim with their first two albums, 2016’s Harrowing Faith and 2018’s We of Scorn. And now their steadfast label Hells Headbangers is poised to release their third album, The Forbidden Arts, on June 26th, and that’s what we’re giving you the chance to hear in full right now. Continue reading »

AETERNAM: “AL QASSAM”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jun 232020
 

 

(Three months after its release, DGR finally dug into the fourth album by the Québec band Aeternam and is damned glad he did, as explained in this extensive review.)

Easily one of my biggest brick walls in terms of recent writing, because I have kept going back to it, over and over.

I wracked my brain for a while wondering where exactly I had picked up on Montreal’s hybrid symphonic death/folk/blackened-death metal group Aeternam and their new disc released in March, Al Qassam. It’s been a ghost haunting the backlog for a little while now, until it occurred to me that we hadn’t really covered the lead-up to their new disc at all.  Our most recent mention of them was due to vocalist/guitarist Achraf Loudiy appearing on Egyptian death metal group Scarab’s new disc, Martyrs Of The Storm — also released in March.

The whole reason they’d remained in the ‘keep an eye on’ pile was due to a handful of enthusiastic reader recommendations for them in previous years during our year-end list roundups. In fact, I think both 2012’s Moongod and 2017’s Ruins Of Empires are part of my collection now due to those recommendations. So, Al Qassam and its excellent cover art have been waiting for a proper look up and down almost since its announcement.

Given my current quest to sweep through the early parts of the year for anything we might’ve missed on top of the usual collection of albums I’m prone to dive into, finally diving headfirst into Aeternam’s latest felt like a natural thing to do. And wow, what a fantastic choice that has been proving to be. Continue reading »

ACHERONTAS: “PSYCHIC DEATH: THE SHATTERING OF PERCEPTIONS”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Jun 222020
 

 

(On June 26th Agonia Records will release a new album by the Greek coven Acherontas, and today we present Andy Synn‘s review of this eye-opening, mind-expanding new record.)

The only constant in life, or so they say, is change.

But that doesn’t mean change is always good, or even wanted, especially when it comes to music.

By the same token, however, bands who refuse to change, refuse to progress, run the risk of sinking into a swamp of creative stagnation from which it’s often impossible to escape.

It’s a conundrum. How much change is too much… and how much is not enough?

Eight albums into their career, it seems like cult Black Metal coven Acherontas have found their own answer to this question, as while Psychic Death may not have shattered my perceptions of the band, it’s certainly made me rethink how I perceive their music. Continue reading »

DEFEATED SANITY: “THE SANGUINARY IMPETUS”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jun 222020
 

 

(We present Vonlughlio’s review of the new sixth album by German stalwarts Defeated Sanity, which is set for release by Willowtip Records on July 24th and features cover art by Jon Zig.)

Today’s review concerns a band who have been dear to me as a fan for more than 10 years.  Their music has given me great joy, through good and bad times.  They are one of the best Brutal Death Metal acts out there, with classic releases that will be forever remembered.

I am talking about Germany’s Defeated Sanity, originally formed by Lille Gruber (drums) and his late father Wolfgang Teske (R.I.P.).  After their inception, the project released a series of demos and splits from 1996 through 2003, and their debut album Prelude to the Tragedy (2004) became one of my favorite debuts ever by any band in the genre. Continue reading »

ALTERNATIVE RELEASE DAY ROUND-UP: ACÂRASH / AVERSIO HUMANITATIS / DÈARTH / FORNICUS / GRAVENCHALICE / SXUPERION

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Jun 192020
 


Acârash

(This is a collection of reviews and full-album streams assembled by Andy Synn.)

As everyone knows, the devil has all the best tunes, so today’s “Alternative Release Day Round-Up” has a demonic, Black/Death theme to it.

It also, for once, actually includes quite a few albums which are only just seeing the light of day today… although even the “oldest” albums featured here were all released within the last month or so. Continue reading »

BIESY: “TRANSSATANIZM”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Jun 182020
 

(Here’s Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by the Polish band Biesy, which was released by Godz Ov War Productions on May 8th.)

Black Metal is, let’s face it, an inherently contradictory genre.

By turns both fearlessly progressive and rigidly (some might even say “religiously”) conservative, infinitely malleable yet stubbornly inflexible, it’s the sort of place where bands can preach rebellion and non-conformity on one hand while ostracising anyone who dares to colour too far outside the lines on the other.

And while I love pretty much everything about it – the sound, the fury, the blending of avant-garde artistry and punk-as-fuck attitude – I’m also not afraid to acknowledge the high camp of it all either, considering how much time I’ve spent in small, dark rooms, watching shirtless, make-up covered men with pseudonyms like “Goat Impaler” and “Ultra Sodomite” hammering out priapic hymns of uber-masculinity, all while rocking a borderline-erotic amount of leather.

So it’s actually kind of surprising that it’s taken so long for someone to connect the obvious dots between the nihilistic escapism of Black Metal’s corpse-painted pageantry and the performative, provocative world of drag, but that’s exactly what the mastermind behind Biesy has done, adopting the persona of blue-haired punk-rock princess “Faustyna Moreau” to create an album designed to make you question your own prejudices and preconceptions about the necro-metallic arts. Continue reading »

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