DEADSPACE: “A PORTRAIT OF SACRIFICIAL SCARS”

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Mar 092020
 

 

(This is Andy Synn‘s review of the final album by the Australian black metal band Deadspace, released on March 2nd.)

It’s always sad when a band you love announces that they’re calling it a day, especially when the band in question are currently producing the best work of their career.

Such is the case with Australian Black Metal crew Deadspace, who recently declared that, due to a variety of reasons, this year would be their last as an active band.

Before their final dissolution, however, they’ve thrown themselves into a flurry of activity, including multiple national and international tour dates (they recently performed their last ever show in their home country and are set to begin an EU tour alongside Lebenssucht at the end of this month) as well as the release of their sonic swansong, A Portrait of Sacrificial Scars, just last week.

And, let me tell you, if the band truly does have to come to an end this year, then they couldn’t have asked for a better way to bring down the curtain. Continue reading »

TORPËDO: “MECHANIC TYRANTS”

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Mar 092020
 

 

(We present Todd Manning‘s review of the 2019 debut demo by Germany’s Torpëdo, which was reissued last month by Gates of Hell Records.)

Gates of Hell Records is a subsidiary of Cruz Del Sur Music dedicated to bringing the best of Old School Heavy Metal to the world, and they’ve certainly found a prime candidate in the form of Germany’s Torpëdo. The label reissued the band’s demo Mechanic Tyrants on February 21st, complete with new cover art that captures the spirit of the Speed Metal vibes contained within.

The first thing that is apparent when “Maniac” comes ripping out of the speakers is the band’s ability to successfully blend the raucous sound of early Motörhead with Kill’em All-era Metallica. The album was recorded by the band themselves in a basement and it even captures the sound of that bygone time perfectly. Gritty but clear and powerful. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: APOGNOSIS, HRÆ , VENOMOUS SKELETON, ADAESTUO, SCHWERMUT

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  10 Responses »
Mar 082020
 

 

For this week’s edition of the column I decided to include five complete releases, four albums and an EP, all but one of them released since late January. But my time is short, and so, with apologies to the bands, the only way I’ve been able to manage this is to pursue a strategy of picking only one song per release to focus on, accompanied by just the most general overview of everything else. With luck, this will be enough to seduce people into exploring each release in greater depth, despite the relative shallowness of my own words.

APOGNOSIS

The Greek black metal band Adaestuo is one of two in today’s feature whose past work I was familiar with, and that past work — a self-titled demo in 2016, the Phase 6 debut album that same year, and the Cult of Human Sacrifices EP in 2018 — has been remarkably impressive. The new release is an album entitled Dominion In Polarity. It came out last September, and I really should have written something about it before now, because it’s tremendous. Continue reading »

BLACK METAL BONANZA: BLAZE OF PERDITION, GLACIATION, GRIMAH, IZTHMI, KVAEN, SOPHIST, WORTHLESS

 Album Reviews  7 Responses »
Mar 062020
 

 

(In this post you’ll find a collection of reviews by Andy Synn, focusing on seven black metal albums released during the first two months of the year.)

It’s now just over two months into 2020 and I am already ridiculously behind when it comes to covering new albums.

That’s a particularly galling admission to make considering how great some of the records you’re about to read about are, many of which I’ve been listening to religiously since the start of the year but which, for various reasons, I’ve not gotten around to writing about before now.

Still, the advantage of grouping all these records/reviews together is that if you happen to already like one (or more) of these artists already then there’s every chance you’re going to discover something else to love too.

So, without further ado… Continue reading »

VOLCANDRA: “INTO THE AZURE”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Mar 062020
 

 

(This is TheMadIsraeli’s review of the debut album by Volcandra from Louisville, Kentucy. With cover art by the great Adam Burke, it was released on February 28th.)

Kentucky isn’t exactly a place where you imagine black metal springing from, especially good black metal, but new blood Volcandra are an interesting case study in that regard because not only are these guys really good, they may well be one of the most talented American black metal bands to rise up in the 2010‘s (I’m going to be pedantic and be that “the new decade isn’t till 2021“ guy).  Quite simply, through channeling a combination of Norwegian and Finnish influences on top of an adoption of more American progressive death-metal window dressing, Volcandra may very well have released one of the first great black metal records of 2020. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BORGNE — “Y”

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Mar 052020
 

 

Originally the solo project of Bornyhake (whose name has been associated with a significant number of other groups), but eventually expanding into a full band, the Swiss entity Borgne released their first album in 1998, and their path since then has resulted in eight more full-lengths. The most recent of those, entitled Y, on which Bornyhake is joined by keyboardist Lady Kaos and other guests, will be released by Borgne‘s new label Les Acteurs de l’Ombre Productions tomorrow, and on the eve of that event we’re presenting a full stream of the record.

Borgne‘s musical hallmark has been the integration of industrial music into black metal, with an increasingly atmospheric quality that combines with the compulsive mechanical rhythms and intense, ravaging aggression. All those qualities are very much present and accounted for within Y, yet the combined impact of them on this new record reaches levels of staggering power and immersive intensity that may be the zenith of Borgne’s work to date, putting us in the presence of forces almost unimaginably more vast than we puny humans. Continue reading »

DEVANGELIC: “ERSETU”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Mar 052020
 

 

(Here’s Vonlughlio’s review of the new album by the Italian death metal band Devangelic. It will be released by Willowtip Records and features cover art by Nick Keller)

This time around I feel fortunate to write about Devangelic’s third opus, Ersetu, to be released via Willowtip this upcoming May 15th.  They are one of my favorite BDM bands from Italy, and this release is their most mature work to date.

This band was formed back in 2012 by Mario Di Giambattista and Paolo Chiti, and they released a two-song promo that just blew everyone away and made me a fan on the spot.  Two years passed and they grace us with their debut album Resurrection Denie”, that is one of my top 10 debut albums from any BDM bands out there. The cover, music, and lyrics represented the full scope of this project with songs that were raw, fast, and in-your-face — 30 minutes of pure madness. Continue reading »

KROSIS: “A MEMOIR OF FREE WILL”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Mar 052020
 

 

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the new album by the North Carolina band Krosis, which was released last month by Unique Leader Records.)

These last three or four years we have witnessed a rather interesting demographic shift in US extreme metal that’s a bit unique to the current era. We’re seeing this in long form with bands such as Fit For An Autopsy, but in the case of bands like Krosis we’re hearing these guys in the middle of their musical journeys. To put it simply, a LOT of people who grew up with or got into heavy music via deathcore and djent primarily are now moving away from those sounds.

It’s only inevitable I think that these bands eventually realize how stifling those sub-genres are, and thus they turn to retaining the best parts about those sounds while embracing more front-and-center extreme metal along with modern progressive tendencies to create something that is wholly a post-2015 or ’16 phenomenon and that’s resulted in some of metal’s best modern music. Continue reading »

KANNUSTAA: A REVIEW OF “KANNUSTAA” AND THE PREMIERE OF “MOTHER”

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Mar 042020
 

 

One glance at the track list for the self-titled debut release of the multinational band Kannustaa will clue you in that their music is not conventional black metal. Song titles such as “To Give and Forget”, “Don’t Leave Me”, “Encourage”, or the track we’re premiering today — “Mother” — point in different directions than more typical misanthropic, anticosmic, or blasphemous lyrical outbursts of the genre. Truth be told, the music isn’t conventional either.

To be sure, Kannustaa are full capable of viciously stabbing your neck with high-voltage electrification. That much was evident from the first track they released, “Don’t Leave Me”. The wild yowling tone of the opening riff is so potent that it almost drowns out the rampant drumming and the throat-ripping vocal madness. The drumming switches gears into more measured cadences, but the thermonuclear guitar work continues to dominate, rising and falling, twisting and turning, flickering in anguish and moaning in despair, slashing and scything and whirring with incredible vitality. Near the end, the bass becomes a bludgeoning presence, helping to send the song out in an explosive, vertebrae-cracking finale. Continue reading »

A DUAL REVIEW: NAPALM DEATH (“LOGIC RAVAGED BY BRUTE FORCE”) / HUMAN SERPENT (“SHROUDS”)

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Mar 042020
 

 

(In this column DGR has combined reviews of two EPs, both of which are out now, one by Napalm Death and a charitable endeavor released by the Greek black metal band Human Serpent.)

 

NAPALM DEATH: “LOGIC RAVAGED BY BRUTE FORCE”

It’s wild to think that we’re a little over five years since the release of Apex Predator – Easy Meat, Napalm Death‘s most recent full-length album, but here we are with something new.

It’s always a bit of a struggle to review a Napalm Death disc. The band have become such a weirdly monolithic cultural force in the grind substratum of heavy metal that at this point you can almost take the band in sight unseen (or rather, sounds unheard) and know that the ever-prolific crew are going to find some way to beat your skull in. Yet across their immensely vast discography there remains a healthy bit of experimentation as the group fling themselves from the now traditional high-speed blasting grind to chunky death metal to songs with a fairly defined sense of groove to the noisier and more industrialized chaos that Apex Predator started to hint at. Continue reading »

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