(Andy Synn sinks his teeth into the new album from 200 Stab Wounds, out now)
I’m sure we’re all familiar with the concept of “meat and potatoes” Death Metal.
You know the type – it’s not flashy or fancy, but it’s filling, flavourful, and satisfies your cravings (at least for a while).
Well, what if I told you that the new album from Cleveland crushers 200 Stab Wounds pretty much dispenses with the potatoes entirely and instead aims to load your plate with nothing but raw Death Metal meat?
The origins of the word troglodyte date back to antiquity, where it was used by ancient Greek and Roman geographers and historians to refer to primitive cave-dwellers in different regions. Over time, of course, it has also been used to refer to any people “characterized by reclusive habits or outmoded or reactionary attitudes”.
The New Jersey death metal band TROG probably had their tongues in their cheeks when they chose that name. (When the band originally formed in 2019 the name they used was Troglorot, which obviously incorporated some other connotations too). On its face, the name suggests primitive caveman death metal, the kind that sounds like grunting hulks brutishly banging rocks together.
But even their first EP, Of Vomit Reborn, made clear that this wasn’t really what they were up to. Their debut album Horrors Beyond, which we’re premiering in full today on the eve of its June 28 release, makes that even more apparent, and no one with ears to hear would ever characterize the music as a reflection of “outmoded or reactionary attitudes” — far from it. Continue reading »
The formidable Danish band Crocell released their debut album The God We Drowned in 2008, and then followed that with new full-lengths every two or three years, culminating in their fifth album Relics in 2018. Keeping to that pattern, we might have expected a new album in 2021, but that year they instead brought us a pair of four-song EPs on the same day (reviewed here).
Now, however, three years later, we do have a new Crocell album, and it will be coming out on June 28th via the band’s new label Emanzipation Productions. Its name is Of Frost, Of Flame, Of Flesh, and today we’re presenting it in its entirety. Continue reading »
(Andy Synn is here to tell you to open your minds to the outstanding new album from Orgone)
As I’m sure most of you are aware by now, I consider genre terms to be a useful tool – in the right hands, anyway – to help guide and inform listeners, whether in general or specific terms, about what to expect (or not) when listening to a new band or album.
That being said, I don’t think bands should necessarily be limited or confined by genre traits and tropes if they don’t want to be (even if creativity often thrives within constraints).
After all, bands are just people, and people – in all their infinite diversity and infinity combinations – cannot (and should not) be defined by just a few, simplistic terms.
The human condition, you see, is less of a spectrum and more of an endlessly cascading kaleidoscope, one which looks different to everyone… and so is the art we produce.
Which is why trying to pin down the avant-garde, genre non-binary approach of Pittsburgh experimentalists Orgone would be a mistake (and a disservice to both the band and their audience).
Almost four years ago we premiered Expanse of Hellish Black Mire, the debut EP of a Cleveland-based death metal band named Noxis. In an accompanying review, I attempted to sum up the music by saying that it was “thuggish in its bone-fracturing, organ-rupturing belligerence and disgustingly gruesome in its atmosphere, and yet also mind-boggling in its mad contortions and technical extravagances. Their music is thus thoroughly putrid and punishing but also a big adrenaline kick”.
Having experienced that EP, I wasn’t completely shocked by what Noxis have accomplished on their debut album Violence Inherent In The System, which we’re premiering today in advance of its June 28 release, but it still leaps beyond what Noxis achieved on that very impressive EP. And for those of you who might be encountering Noxis for the first time, you’re in for an enormous surprise, a surprise of genuinely explosive proportions. Continue reading »
(Vizzah Harri wrote what follows below. It’s best that we not spoil it by attempting any further introductory words.)
Nearly 3 months have passed since Black Tides has been released. So many things in life are timebound; news, they say, needs to be relevant, timely and fresh. Nothing refreshes more than a jump into the ocean, or smelling the salty morning breeze, I mean, 3am is morning, right?
If you don’t mind, we’re going to take a trip back in time, because that’s exactly what Kólga’s sound implores us to do. And like the evening news after an emergency, it’s best to wait until the stylus revolts unto the dead wax. Continue reading »
(Andy Synn finds himself haunted by the new album from France’s Blóð)
Let me start by saying that if I hadn’t already decided who I was going to feature for this month’s edition of The Synn Report (which will likely be published at the start of next week) then I very much would have liked to have done a deep-dive into the discography of doomy, devilishly blackened Sludge/Post-Metal duo Blóð.
But since I’m not going to have time/space to fully delve into the depths of their back catalogue here (though you should definitely do so when you get chance) we’ll just have to be satisfied with heaping praise on their recently-released third album, Mara.
Behind every album there is a tale — of course there is. Sometimes the tales are mundane, but in the case of Replacire‘s new album The Center That Cannot Hold, the story brings to mind the travails of Sisyphus, that benighted figure from Greek myth whom the gods punished for cheating death by forcing him to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only for it to roll back down every time it neared the top.
In legend, the fate of Sisyphus is one of eternal toil. but fortunately Replacire did eventually manage to reach the summit and stay there, not only completing this new album but also achieving a new summit in their music.
We’ll give you an excerpt of information about why the completion of the album turned out to be such a struggle, but our main mission today is to present a full stream of the album on the eve before its June 21 release by Season of Mist. Continue reading »
Metaphorically speaking, most metal bands have a core stylistic foundation around which they might then add other embellishments — or not. To switch up the metaphor, they might have a fundamental DNA, then spliced with other genetic strands to create a hybrid of sound — or not.
In the case of the Swiss band Adelon, whose four-song debut EP Resurgence we’re premiering today in advance of its June 21 release, they point to the strong influence on their music of Gojira and Decapitated, suggesting that their own foundations are themselves a multi-faceted structure of death-metal groove and technicality, even before they add additional embellishments and hybridized strands (which indeed they do, in abundance).
By the time all the hybridizing is in place, it becomes considerably more difficult to separate foundation from everything else that goes into the final edifice, which is in fact much less of an edifice than a constantly morphing dreamscape, in which prog-metal and even elements of jazz play significant roles, along with all the obliterating grooves and the tech-death fireworks. Continue reading »
(Andy Synn has some kind, and some unkind, words for the new album from Construct of Lethe, out Friday on Transcending Obscurity)
There’s an argument to be made – in fact, I’m going to make it now – that Construct of Lethe‘s second album, 2018’s Exiler, is one of the best Death Metal albums of the last ten (and probably twenty) years.
But, after releasing such a milestone album (one which you might even be tempted to call a “masterpiece”, at least in the original sense of that word) what exactly was the band to do?
And the answer, it turns out, is to throw caution to the wind and construct an ambitiously flawed, yet absolutely fascinating (not to mention utterly ferocious) autobiographical concept album about the devastating doldrums of depression and suicidal ideation, split into 12 “chapters” (not all of which could be called “songs”), that is intended to be experienced as a singular, uninterrupted sequence.
So, without further interruption or delay… let’s dive in.