BLEEDING ANTLERS: “STAGMATA”

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Feb 222021
 

 

(It looks like Andy Synn had as much fun writing this review of Bleeding Antlers‘ debut album as he did listening to it — and he had a LOT of fun doing that.)

Heavy Metal is, as we all know, a “no fun allowed” zone.

It’s a place for serious musicians to write serious songs about serious subjects, riddled with serious darkness, while wearing their most serious faces.

The thing is, no-one seems to have told London lotharios Bleeding Antlers that, because their debut album, Stagmata (yes, there’s even a pun in the title) is one of the most ridiculously riff-happy and unashamedly fun experiences I’ve had in a long, long time.

Don’t go making the mistake of thinking the band are a joke, however.

While the group clearly aren’t taking themselves too seriously, the music itself is more than capable of standing on its own two (or four) feet, while also answering the age-old question… what would happen if you took the catchiest bits of Candlemass, the hookiest parts of Paradise Lost, added a dash of the grim grandeur of Primordial and a touch of almost Nu-Metal-ish groove, and then laced the whole thing with a hefty helping of folk-goth glamour, Hammer-horror camp, and drunken satanic swagger?

Well, you’d have a hell of a good time, I can tell you that. Continue reading »

SWAMPBEAST: “SEVEN EVILS SPAWNED FROM SEVEN HEADS”

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Feb 222021
 

 

(This is Todd Manning‘s review of the new album by the SoCal band Swampbeast, which was released in mid-February by Translation Loss Records.)

Outsiders may not realize that there are swamps in Los Angeles, but Death Metal trio Swampbeast have arrived to show us what kind of madness lurks in those fetid waters. Their debut, Seven Evils Spawned from Seven Heads, just issued on Translations Lost Records, is a nightmarish journey of blackened Death Metal that threatens to drown the listener in a miasma of filth.

While not exactly revolutionizing their chosen genre, Swampbeast burst out the gates with a sound of their own, surprisingly well-developed given their lack of history. The hammering assault of opener “Orcs Anvil” echoes the bludgeoning of Entombed’s Left Hand Path, but they also check some Morbid Angel and Black Metal boxes as well. Second track, “The Blind God” adds the subterranean mystique of Portal into the mix to great effect. While the speed of the opener remains, a great deal of evil atmosphere works its way in. Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH: A NIGHT IN THE ABYSS / ANTRE / TRIVAX

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Feb 192021
 

 

(In this article Andy Synn reviews three recent EPs from bands based in the UK.)

Huh… seems like a while now since I last did one of these “Best of British” columns (I’m not sure exactly how long, I haven’t checked).

And while it’s not like I’ve been neglecting my “local” scene – I heaped praise upon Thundering Hooves right at the start of the year, for example – it’s probably about time to catch up with what’s going on in our ever more divided kingdom. Continue reading »

DGR REVIEW ARCHIVES (PART 4): THE AMENTA — “REVELATOR”

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Feb 192021
 

 

(We present the fourth and final installment from an avalanche of reviews that DGR delivered unto us earlier this week, and today’s edition focuses on the newest album by Australia’s The Amenta, which is being released today by Debemur Morti Productions.)

It’s been a good bit of time since we last heard from the Australian amorphous extreme metal genre-hoppers The Amenta. Their sound has expanded widely over the years, with releases that range from a blackened death metal vein, to industrialized monstrosities, and even some straightforward noise and black metal collisions for fun. I’ve even seen them granted the genre-descriptor of ‘terminator metal’ a few times, given their favoring of distorted electronic backings that can often sound like failing machinery.

By the time of 2013’s Flesh Is Heir the group’s sound was firmly planted in a vast maelstrom of industrial noise and blackened death metal, and it is a release that we have yelled about for a long time – largely my fault – at this here site. The eight years since then, though, have been relatively quiet and have seen The Amenta‘s various musicians spread far and wide. It seemed for a little while that the group would be slowly shadowed out – that is, until the announcement of the group’s newest album Revelator. Continue reading »

NAKHARA: “THE PROCESSION”

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Feb 182021
 

 

(On February 7th the French solo project Nakhara released its debut album, and today Andy Synn reviews it.)

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always got at least one eye/ear open for bands, artists, or projects that do things a little… differently.

Of course, different doesn’t always mean good – no matter how clever or crazy or “avant-garde” a band might be, it doesn’t really matter if the songwriting isn’t there – and a lot of what’s advertised as innovative and new often turns out to be just another slightly tweaked iteration of what’s come before with a fancy new coat of paint or a flashy gimmick.

But even if (and it’s a big “if”) most of these artists turn out be a disappointment, on some level, it’s that one in a hundred, one in a thousand, one in a million, chance of discovering something that little bit special which keeps me going.

Which brings us to The Procession, the debut release from solo Prog-Death performer Simon Thevenet, aka Nakhara. Continue reading »

DGR REVIEW ARCHIVES (PART 3): MECHINA — “SIEGE”

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Feb 182021
 

 

(We present the third installment from an avalanche of four reviews that DGR delivered unto us earlier this week, and today’s edition focuses on the newest album by Illinois-based Mechina, which was released on January 1st.)

I did not review Mechina’s 2019 album Telesterion for this here website. This is something that bothered me for a lot longer than I expected. All the way into mid-2020 I was swearing up and down I would do a 2019 archive of stuff I had come to super-late, but truth be told that was always only part of the reason why it never got a deep-dive here, despite my continued insistence of enjoying nearly everything the band have done.

The main driver behind that decision actually came down to the simple fact that Telesterion is a completely different style of album from previous Mechina works, and in some ways that disc served as a foray into newer sounds for them. It’s the first time when the project fully leaned into its conceptual side and you had vocalists playing characters within songs, and thus the characters sang about certain of the events being described. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): QWÄLEN — “UNOHDAN SINUT”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Feb 172021
 

 

Musicologists have spilled millions of words tracing the twisting and twining path of underground and popular music from R&B to rock ‘n’ roll, punk, metal, and elsewhere. Over time, and in different ways, the connections often seem to snap apart, producing music that seems severed from distant roots, even as the overaching ethos of “outsider” music might remain intact. Blast-beats, for example, diverge sharply from back-beats and d-beats, and the blazing or freezing aggression of tremolo’d riffing seems alien to head-nodding three-chord progressions, just as incomprehensible screaming veers dramatically from a voice that carries a melody.

But even with regard to black metal (perhaps the paragon of severed connections such as those mentioned above), punk was deep down in its early roots, and it’s still alive and well in the music of some segments of black metal who are kicking up sonic storms in the here-and-now. The music of the Finnish quintet Qwälen is one such example, as reveled on their debut album Unohdan Sinut, which is set for release by Time To Kill Records on February 19th, and which we’re premiering in full right now. Continue reading »

!T.O.O.H.!: “FREE SPEECH”

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Feb 172021
 

 

(This is Vonlughlio’s review of the newest album by the Czech extreme metal band !T.O.O.H.!, which is out now via Lavadome Productions.)

This time around I will take the chance to write about a project named T.O.O.H. from Czechia that has been around since 1990 as Devastator and changed to their current name in 1993. The responsible parties for this output are brothers Josef (bass, guitars, and vocals) and Jan (drums, vocals).

From 1995 to 1998 they released demos that revealed fantastic musicianship with its raw production which showcased the base of the path this band would take. It was not until the year 2000 that we received their first album From Higher Will, which showed strong song structures with the style of death/grind and bits and pieces of progressive inclinations.  It surely is among my favorite debut albums by a band and has a special place in my heart (along with all their albums). Continue reading »

OMINATION: “NEW GOLGOTHA REPVBLIQ”

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Feb 162021
 

 

(Here is Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by the Tunisian band Omination, which was recently released by Hypnotic Dirge Records.)

Like many of you (including, I would imagine, at least some who discovered the band through our site) I was first introduced to the work of Fedor Kovalevsky via 2019’s astoundingly ambitious Prog-Death opus Back to the Black Marsh, the second album from his semi-solo-project Vielikan.

Having instantly fallen head over heels for that release (which was, and remains, one of my favourite albums of that year) it wasn’t long before I decided to delve further/deeper into his previous work, which quickly led me to his other primary project, the “Post-Apocalyptic” Doom Metal of Omination, whose full-length debut, 2018’s Followers of the Apocalypse is well worth checking out if you’re after a truly gargantuan dose of gloomy grimness.

But we’re not here today to talk about the band’s past, we’re to talk about the present, namely their new album, which was released on February 05 by our old friends at Hypnotic Dirge Records.

So, without further ado, allow me to welcome you, my friends, to the New Golgotha Repvbliq. I hope you packed a change of clothes, because we’re going to be here for a while… Continue reading »

DGR REVIEW ARCHIVES (PART 2): JARI LINDHOLM — “TRAJECTORIES”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Feb 162021
 

 

(We present the second installment from an avalanche of four reviews that DGR delivered unto us yesterday, and this one focuses on a solo album by the Swedish musician Jari Lindholm that was released on February 12.)

Early 2021 did not seem like it would be the sort of release slate that would involve covering a few instrumental releases right out of the gate but here we are, inching our way further into February, and as we slowly hack away at our early-year backlogs and anticipate upcoming downpours we find ourselves at the doorstep of musician Jari Lindholm.

You may recall him from projects like Enshine, Exgenesis, and Atoma – which have received a fair bit of coverage here for their gorgeous takes on a melancholically minded doom genre. So while the initial reveal of a seven-song instrumental journey was unexpected, the combination of international musicians coming along for the ride and the fact that, well, we generally enjoyed most of Jari’s work up to this point, made it a little easier to justify the hard swings from albums chock-full of clean singing despite our site title to something that contains absolutely no singing.

Sometimes, I feel like a parent threatening to pull this car over and make you all walk home when we get to do that. Continue reading »

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