EMPTY THRONE: “UNHOLY”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Mar 072025
 

(At the end of February Downfall Records released the debut album from a group of U.S. metal veterans who’ve taken the name Empty Throne, and today we have DGR‘s extensive and enthusiastic review of what they’ve accomplished on this first full-length.)

One of the most appreciable things about Empty Throne and their new album Unholy is that within the first minute of the opening song “Abbey Of Thelema”, you have a pretty good idea of exactly how this album is going to go and what the band sound like. It has been some time since we’ve had a release that has so clearly laid its cards on the table with an opening furnace blast of music quite like Empty Throne do up until the quiet guitar break in that opening song.

You’ll have a sense of just how much of the group’s death metal with a hint of melodicism, blackened thrash, and gnarly razor-sharp guitars you’ll want from the band right about that point. That’s not to say that Empty Throne aren’t happy to provide other things, but that opening minute lays out the core of a very ambitious band who across six songs and forty minutes have a lot to say — and as it turns out, at a very fast and teeth-shattering tempo as well. Continue reading »

SEPTICFLESH: “AMPHIBIANS”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Mar 062025
 

(In advance of their recent North American tour with Vltimas and Ex Deo, the Greek band SepticFlesh released an EP named Amphibians, and our DGR gives it a review here.)

If you’ve been following the news around tours for the past five or so years you’ve likely noticed an increasing trend of groups surprise-releasing singles – sometimes collaborative ones, which are immense fun – or EPs just prior to the tour happening. Aborted did it for their most recent tour; Machine Head did a combo song with the vocalists of Unearth, In Flames, and Lacuna Coil making appearances; and Lamb of God combined forces with Mastodon for their full album playthrough tour not too long ago.

The genesis of these songs can often lay in the cutting room floor from previous album sessions since creativity doesn’t exist in a vacuum and are highly unpredictable, but whereas it felt like groups constantly needed to have something to get them out on the road, now it has morphed into something more akin to revitalizing the current album cycle for a few more rotations around the sun.

Just as equally though, you do get lucky and a band will find time to sneak into the studio for a few and crank out ideas that’ve been haunting them like shadows ever-present in the corner of their vision. Bearing in mind that SepticFlesh‘s newest release crashes ashore a bit over two and a half years after their album, it would be hard to guess what led to which. Continue reading »

SOUL TOMB: “DROWNING”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Mar 052025
 

(After a bit of a lull DGR returns to NCS with a review of a great discovery, the second EP by the Swedish one-person band Soul Tomb.)

After years of doing whatver you might refer to this as, you sort of develop a sense that the year in heavy metal has a flow to it. There are plenty of peaks and valleys and often Summer can feel like a massive deluge of releases as hardcore festival and touring season gets underway, but there is one thing that has proven to be as equally reliable as the end of the year clusterfuck season or the time set aside for the brave souls who defy the odds and attempt a December release: January is a weird month.

January comes to us at the end of a whole year’s closing, partially feeling like the recovery from a hangover rather than the opportunity to appraise things anew and appreciate the potential of upcoming opportunities. The month is not bereft of releases; in fact the reason why January tends to consistently feel strange is the opposite.

There are a ton of releases in January, but truth be told you never know what you’re going to get. Sometimes it’s by big, recognizable names but more often January gets to be a month of gambles and discoveries – which is how the year started on this end. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2024’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: THE DGR ADDENDUMB

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2024  2 Responses »
Feb 032025
 

(Last week Islander finished his month-long list of 2024’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. It included 69 songs in all. Today DGR has provided an addendum. It includes… 70 SONGS! Though there is some small overlap with Islander‘s list.)

At the time this article is being published we’ll have drawn our Most Infectious Songs of 2024 rollout to a close. There are likely a handful of questions surrounding how such a list gets put together or why I am once again exhuming the corpse of 2024 for a few more stick-whackins that are swirling around your mind.

To put it bluntly, the idea of doing an addendum to the 2024 song list was offered to me by the NoCleanSinging head honcho, in part due to a desire for differing opinions from his own but also to highlight, once again, just how wide the spread of music was in the 2024 world of heavy metal and just how much you’re likely to miss no matter how much you try to keep up. It’s fucking impossible.

Originally, this was just going to be an Andy shindig as a sort of quick “here’s a few more that might’ve been overlooked,” but then I was asked to contribute as well so I thought it might be a fun exercise to peel the curtain back a bit and show just how much the internet cabal decides who is going to break through and be famous this year.

The answer is, simply put, “fuck all”. Continue reading »

THE HALO EFFECT: “MARCH OF THE UNHEARD”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jan 222025
 

(Not long ago Nuclear Blast released the second album by the Swedish melodic death metal band The Halo Effect, and today we have DGR‘s review of the record.)

We are now a couple weeks removed from the release of The Halo Effect‘s newest album March Of The Unheard and the one thought that keeps rattling around the ole’ brainpan is a discussion of what exactly you might come to music for.

This can seem repetitive of course because everyone has a chosen purpose that music might fulfill for them, whether it’s simple enjoyment or some deeper resonance with the artist. I am more often part of the second club, which is why you’ll see many screeds penned that spend more time pontificating about why a specific piece of art might have arisen versus the actual general quality of it. Yet in the case of a group like The Halo Effect I’ve found myself firmly in the former camp.

When it comes to The Halo Effect, I’m not seeking anything deeper and I’m present for the simple enjoyment of whatever the band are creating, and it seems that largely, the band feel the same way. There’s nothing deeper here. No inner quest, nothing revealing itself, and no long-lasting message with which we can walk away from March Of The Unheard feeling fulfilled, with our lives changed. March Of The Unheard is musical red-meat at its finest and, for lack of better term, a perfectly fine ‘pop’ album. Continue reading »

TWO MORE FOR 2024: FRONTIERER AND SACRAMENTO

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jan 032025
 

(Though we’ve turned the corner into 2025, DGR has a couple more records from 2024 he wants to recommend, through the reviews below.)

Ah, it’s the most wonderful time of a website’s year. That brief breather where we get to both get started on stuff coming out in 2025 and kick ourselves in the shins over stuff we missed over the course of the previous year – usually in about equal measure.

It is imagined then, that I shall not be the only one with a few demons still resting on my shoulders that I felt compelled to acknowledge before fully launching myself into the inevitable shitshow that will be the new year. This time around, I’ve managed to dig up two more – one which saw very late release at the end of the year and another that I am in awe I did not come across during my many bandcamp and youtube music rabbit hole tumbles.

So, I shall attempt at the very least to see that they get some sort of spotlight here lest the guilt overwhelm me to the point where I become locked in a paralysis unknown to man up to this time. Continue reading »

BECAUSE WITTY YEAR END LIST TITLES ABOUT RUINING THE HOLIDAYS ARE FOR SUCKERS – THE DGR YEAR ENDSTAVAGANZA PART FIVE: 10-1

 LISTMANIA 2024  9 Responses »
Dec 202024
 

 

(We’ve arrived at the final installment of DGR‘s Top 50 list for 2024, which has been unfolding day by day since Monday of this week. Now it’s time for the Top 10.)

Well this is it folks: the big kahuna, the final ten, the end of all ends, the great sandwich in the sky, the pothole to end all potholes, the grandest exercise in feet dragging you have ever seen, the golden egg, the sponsored award, the singularity of all fifty albums that we’ve been talking about over the course of the week, the grand conjuration, the comically oversized rabbit, the final ten…again.

I wish I had prepard a slightly bigger fanfare than this but it is really hard to explain to your local high school that you would like to borrow their marching band for an hour so you can film them playing as they walk by a camera for each album announcement. What I’m getting at here is this is it. After a week long rollout of the fifty albums I’ve enjoyed jamming the hell out of over the course of the year, we’ve accomplished reaching the end.

It’s been a hell of a thrill ride getting up to this point after all the mountains we’ve climbed, epic journeys we have undertaken, the critic-proofing we’ve had to participate in, the general explanations and explorations of gore, the occasional horror show, yet it never occurs to you just how much these things take out of you until you watch Part One of your list run on the website while you’re in the midst of writing up your final few albums for the last part. Needless to say, this fucker is probably coming in hot, so if these final summations (proclamations, conflagrations) of the albums that made my year-end list read like I was in the midst of being eaten alive, it’s probably because they’re a little more panicked than usual. Continue reading »

BECAUSE WITTY YEAR-END LIST TITLES ABOUT RUINING THE HOLIDAYS ARE FOR SUCKERS — THE DGR YEAR ENDSTAVAGANZA PART FOUR: 20-11

 LISTMANIA 2024  8 Responses »
Dec 192024
 

(We’ve made it to the fourth installment of DGR‘s Top 50 year-end list, with another block of 10 releases being ranked, and one more section slated for arrival tomorrow.)

You ever do something constantly even though you’ve known for a while that it is taking a lot out of you and driving other people insane? I have habits that I can’t break and sometimes think that long ago we evolved past yearly ‘tradition’ and into something in the warehouse of yearly ‘ritual’ instead.

This YE list series is my closing act in a way, the final signing off, tying of the bow and boot out rifling out the door of my writing for 2024. The final summation in many ways of everything up to this point even though it’s the one time I allow my writing to really veer off the officious sounding mark and into casual territory, as if we’re sitting across the table from one another, and I – in my incredulously drunk state – have achieved inebriated Buddha status and am ready to guide along my vision of the eight-fold path of heavy metal and wild-eyed lunacy.

The realer reason of course is that it helps break up the daily routine and gives me reason to sit cross-legged in front of the computer and just type endlessly, laughing about how I’ve never learned how to type properly and am of the school of ‘whatever finger is closest, thumb is for space bar and I use my pinky if I’m feeling fancy’ yet am still somehow in the one-hundred words per minute range. It’s stupid, but it helps break up the end of the year when I feel like I’m just running in endless loops. Continue reading »

BECAUSE WITTY YEAR END LIST TITLES ABOUT RUINING THE HOLIDAYS ARE FOR SUCKERS – THE DGR YEAR ENDSTAVAGANZA PART THREE: 30 – 21

 LISTMANIA 2024  No Responses »
Dec 182024
 

(This is the third installment of DGR‘s year-end Top 50 list, counting down the third group of 10, with the next two groups slated for the next two days ahead.)

I’ve been doing these lists long enough that I’ve developed a genuine fear that I might be repeating myself. I console myself with the fact that no one else seems to have noticed so far since every one of these has been a fantastic exercise in breaking out the thesaurus and learning new words every day – or reminding myself that I used to not be so dumb. I have yet to work “lugubrious” into one of these but you better believe I’m going to damned well take a swing at it at some point.

But it’s the fear of repeating myself that drives me to such inanity, because I am worried that it might seem like I’m wasting your time. I don’t want these to be the ‘if you’ve read one, you’ve read them all’ of the year-end lists. I even gut-checked myself by archiving them all together at one point just to make sure that each stood as its own artistic statement – or at the very least the authorial equivalent of changing the food for the dog every once in a while.

But like I said (twice already), repetition is a big fear of mine. Well, that and accidentally putting releases from last year in here or playing my hand early and putting something that comes out next January on here. Luckily I haven’t been at risk of doing that last one yet, as I don’t think I have any promos from that timeframe in hand nor would I likely acknowledge them. At this point I feel like I’ve taken a round off of the reaper just by making it to next week. Continue reading »

BECAUSE WITTY YEAR-END LIST TITLES ABOUT RUINING THE HOLIDAYS ARE FOR SUCKERS — THE DGR YEAR ENDSTAVAGANZA PART TWO: 40-31

 LISTMANIA 2024  3 Responses »
Dec 172024
 

(Here we have the second installment of DGR‘s year-end Top 50 list, counting down the second group of 10, with the next three groups slated for the next three days ahead.)

While we have not achieved critical mass yet in terms of writing for the year-end list, we’re definitely making progress down the line. This is still an area of the list where I often tell people that rankings – useless as they may be since this could be best viewed as ’50 albums DGR liked’ – don’t really start to crystalize in any sense until you start reaching the mid-30’s. So you’re reading the last vestiges of the albums I felt must be spoken about just so I can feel good about saying something about them and also starting to see the ones that I really sunk my teeth into.

They’re not a perfect representation by any means and I guarantee that come January 1st I’ll likely be kicking myself for leaving something off – especially with a late December drop of Frontierer‘s new EP looking like a contender to really fuck things up for me – but at least there’s some confidence in the ten collected before you today.

Tomorrow’s genre-spread will likely be just as silly but you’ll definitely start to see some old favorites popping up there since, much like one of the groups that appears in this collection, I too am a hallmark of consistency. I’m just not nearly as attractive. Continue reading »

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