SHORT BUT SWEET: SUCKING LEECH — “ERRORDYNAMIC”

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Nov 152023
 

(What we have for you here is DGR‘s take on a new EP by the German band Sucking Leech, released in mid-October of this year and still ruining everything in its path.)

There’s a certain amount of filth to be expected from grind as a genre. For as much as we love the ultra-precise, teeth-shredding, and super-fast world wherein songs appear as musical flashpoints before exploding and then disappearing just as quickly, there is always a somewhat grosser side to that world. One wherein the slop of the music is part of the appeal and the plug-and-play aspect is taken quite literally, with recordings sounding like the band legitimately just plugged in their gear, only turned on the volume nob, and then proceeded to go to town for twelve or thirteen minutes bathed entirely in distortion and reverb.

It’s noisy and abrasive but that is also the point; you’re coming to it because the idea of the drums sounding like they’re falling out the back of a moving truck is enjoyable. The bands that comprise that world of grind aren’t just flinging their instruments around, and obviously the music can remain fairly conventional to the grind world, but it’s the barely contained and heavily constrained chaos that keeps things interesting.

It’s why Sucking Leech‘s Errordynamic EP in mid-October caught our eyes. Sounding like a cross-bred catastrophe of Napalm Death, Rotten Sound, and Pig Destroyer mid-fistfight, Sucking Leech don’t stray tremendously far from that chaotic and maddening world of grind, but for a four-piece manage to sound monstrous all the same. Continue reading »

PLAGUESTORM: “EMPTY EYES”

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Nov 132023
 

(This is DGR‘s review of the latest record by the Argentinian melodic death metal band Plaguestorm, out now on the Noble Demon label.)

Heavy metal fantasy draft is always fun and the proliferation of projects with the ability to do so has increased tremendously in recent years. No doubt a combination of musicians using the internet to find each other and the more likely possibility of constantly being trapped inside, you’re now seeing a ton of projects wherein musicians from all over the world are combined into one thing via session work and constant guest appearances.

We have musicians now who’re quickly approaching a point in history where they may have more guest/session appearances and releases to their name than they’ve got material with the band they’re most famous for being in. This has also been a pretty big movement within melodeath circles as we’re now multiple generations removed from the classics and old guard and well into an era of bands that were inspired by the keyboard/groove metal happy early-aughts of the genre that were built around big riffs/big choruses with just enough of ye-olde Gotenburg two-step to keep things ‘dangerous’. Continue reading »

THE LUNA SEQUENCE: “I ONLY REMEMBER FALLING”

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Nov 062023
 

(Oakland-based The Luna Sequence brought us a new album in September, and today DGR brings us his extensive reactions to the new music.)

Those who’ve walked many miles with our site will know that there are a few things we love to do around here. We like some good off the wall cover art that’ll blind people, we love us some patterns and numbers to nerd out on, and we love making the joke about getting around the ‘no clean singing’ rule – because when have we ever broken that before? – by reviewing music that has no singing at all.

Then you get into the more personal enjoyment that specific authors gain a rise out of, and in this case, yours truly absolutely enjoys throwing electronics and industrial projects on the main page, just knowing that it is going to be completely different from the wall-to-wall brutality/banshee-shrieking we enjoy posting on a day-to-day basis.

Luckily, musician Kaia Young has proven to be a bastion and has been able to provide on more than one occasion the opportunity to knock out two birds with one stone, and do both the ‘no clean singing’ joke and the electronics side of thing with their The Luna Sequence project. Continue reading »

GALUNDO TENVULANCE: “LUNAR ECLIPTURE”

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Nov 032023
 

(Here is DGR‘s review of the debut album by the Japanese band Galundo Tenvulance, which was released in August by the Spiritual Beast label.)

In spite of the constant theme of the world being in ever increasingly garbage shape, the year 2021 did give me a gift in the form of Japan’s mouthful of a name melodeath group Galundo Tenvulance.

I’ve never looked up the meaning behind the name nor do I have any interest in doing so — I couldn’t bear to have the magic broken for me. I gain an inordinate amount of joy out of seeing that name placed in large font across our website – no doubt to more than the few raised eyebrows that I could imagine.

Prior to this year the young group had only had two EPs and a single to their name, with the EPs perfectly placed to be written about right around the time there was just enough of a lull in metal releases that I could really dive in and analyze the band as they grew into their own and tried new things.

Galundo Tenvulance‘s year-over-year churn has resulted in us covering both their 2021 EP Tenvulance and their 2022 EP The Disruptor Descends. In the time since, the keyboard-wielding younglings have had their lineup shifted about, a new face joining complete with new voice on the vocal front. All in time for the release of a 2023 full-length via Spiritual Beast entitled Lunar Eclipture. Continue reading »

DISTASTE: “DER ERTRAEGER UND DAS FLEISCH”

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Oct 302023
 

(In this review DGR revisits an old favorite, the German band Distaste and their new album, released a few weeks ago by FDA Records.)

We’ve had a long history with Austria’s Distaste, as we’ve watched them evolve their form of blast-happy grindcore, relentlessly focused on short songs and straightforward hammering, to a blackened death-inspired group with a light sludge flavoring, to the current incarnation of the band obsessed with fury, hellfire, and portmanteaus of their chosen language.

Previously, Distaste had done pretty well for themselves with albums like Of Abyss-Hearts And Falsity and Black Age Of Nihil but they really started to come into their own along about the time of the Rotten Cold/Distaste split and the Todt EP. Adopting a strong guitar-lead segment did the group well, adding another element to the otherwise whirlwind chaos and well-spoken language of grindcore circle-pit throwdowns, and Deibel was a strong culmination of that. Continue reading »

AUTARKH: “EMERGENT”

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Oct 272023
 

(In the following review our writer DGR takes a deep dive — a very deep dive — into the strange musical worlds created by the Dutch band Autarkh on their new album Emergent, which is set for release on November 10th by Season of Mist.)

One would suspect that a band like Autarkh are going to feature on heavy metal websites more due to their ethos of being as experimental and unapproachable as possible than their particular chosen instrument configuration. The wildly artistic group were founded on blurring multiple genre lines, and that includes the world of heavy metal, with large handfuls of other things – difficult to describe as they may be.

The group’s sophomore album Emergent walks further down that pathway, metal not just because the band like themselves a distorted guitar, or their history as being a branch budded off the tree that was Dodecahedron, or the fact that they’ve done a drone/doom set at the more high-minded world of Roadburn under the name Autarkh III – as far as I know, there is no Autarkh II: Autarkh Takes Manhattan out there just yet – but the band will also likely grab ears among metal’s crowd due to their usage of it as a style to further accomplish whatever strange and haunted otherworldly goals they may have had in mind. Continue reading »

TIDES OF KHARON: “ANCIENT SLEEPER”

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Oct 262023
 

(DGR has finally completed a review of the latest EP, released last June, by Tides of Kharon from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.)

Believe it or not we actually do have a history with Canadian group Tides Of Kharon. Up to this point we’ve covered every EP the band have released – no full-length albums as of yet – most recently the 2021 release of Titanomachy alongside British group Ghosts of Atlantis in a two-fer review collective. June saw the Greek-mythology inspired melodeath group unleash a new one in the form of Ancient Sleeper, closing out a two-year gap of silence from the band in exchange for another five songs and near half-hour of music.

Tides Of Kharon‘s chosen release method feels a bit like checking in with the band as they forge and hammer new material, working on their sound and experimenting with the wide vareity of approaches that the genre has available to them. Both expert and continual student, Tides Of Kharon absorb into their sound as much as they issue forth, all in service of the particular tales they have chosen to craft a song around this time. Ancient Sleeper then, could be considered the newest check-in with the band. Continue reading »

INSOMNIUM: “SONGS OF THE DUSK”

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Oct 242023
 

(Our writer DGR tends to wait until after records have been released before reviewing them, even when he’s had them in his clutches long in advance of the release date. Today, however, he’s gotten the jump on Insomnium‘s new EP, which won’t be out (on Century Media) until November 3rd.)

Earlier this year, Insomnium unleashed a great full-length album in the form of Anno 1696. We dove very deep into the album around the time of its release, exploring its concept, guest musicians, and overall execution. We had a pretty good time with it and found that the band do well when they have a concept to dedicate themselves to, after initially seeming a little adrift musically, content to do a standard Insomnium act that didn’t push the band.

Regular, straight-shooting Insomnium is still pretty good but there’s always the worry of diminishing returns. In some ways it seems like the band themselves are aware of the times when they do settle into a groove for too long. They’ve gotten pretty good at evolving in one form or another, and Anno 1696 did well lifting the band back up and recharging them.

If there was one feeling that hung in the air a bit with Anno, it was that the album was surprisingly concise – from a group that just prior had multiple songs stretching into the seven-minute range – and wrapped up rather neatly. If, however, you were able to wrap your grubby mitts around one of the limited editions of Anno 1696 then you had access to the three songs being presented here in an addendum EP, Songs Of The Dusk. Continue reading »

WORMHOLE: “ALMOST HUMAN”

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Oct 232023
 

(This is DGR‘s review of the newest album by Baltimore-based Wormhole, which came out late last month on Season of Mist.)

With a new home on a new label, a new genre-approach, and a sizeable shift in the lineup, the Wormhole that is present on their late-September release Almost Human is an entirely different beast than the Wormhole that existed three years prior.

The guitar and drum positions haven’t changed, remaining solid since the days of 2020’s The Weakest Among Us, but the band are now joined by journeyman death growler Julian Kersey (Aegeaon, a few stints live for The Faceless) and bassist Basil Chiasson for a surprisingly different take on the group’s previous head-spinning hybrid of brutal death and slam. Continue reading »

CANNIBAL CORPSE: “CHAOS HORRIFIC”

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Oct 202023
 

(Here’s DGR‘s review of the new Cannibal Corpse album, which is out now on Metal Blade Records.)

In all the decade-plus I’ve been writing for this site – try not to think about that too much – and metal in general, I don’t think I’ve ever taken the chance to write about a Cannibal Corpse album. With a career that has also spanned multiple decades and with a fair bit of cultural cachet to their name outside of heavy metal in general, Cannibal Corpse were long a cultural pillar before I’d even considered pursuing this as a way to distract from the outside world.

You don’t reach a point like that without having the talent to back it up though, because even if Cannibal Corpse had decided to rest on their laurels after their first few releases, you’d be hard pressed to say whether or not they’d still be as big now. The thing with Cannibal Corpse is that although they’ve been known mostly for gore-soaked lyrics, horrific artwork, and movie cameos, is the band are shockingly consistent with their output. They found a core blueprint that worked for them ages ago and have stuck close to it, guaranteeing an overall discography that is surprisingly solid – even if the actual surprises might come further and further apart nowadays. Continue reading »

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