EXOCRINE: “THE HYBRID SUNS”

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Jun 082022
 

(On June 17th Unique Leader Records will unleash a new album by the French technical death metal band Exocrine, and in advance of that we present DGR‘s extensive review.)

French tech-death group Exocrine‘s 2020 release Maelstrom landed pretty hard with me here at the site. Up to that point the group’s albums had always been a particular highlight of the given year of their release but Maelstrom really felt like the stars aligning for them. Their combination of head-spinning songwriting and sheer musical heft mixed well with the group’s experimentation throughout the album with varying synth lines, clean backing vocals, occasional brass and trumpet section solos for scene-setting, and atmospheric works, which oftentimes was more excessive than necessary.

It all worked for Maelstrom though, and made that album into an adventure, more than just the latest headspinner from a group known for making headspinners. Once you reached “Wall Of Water” on that album, you’d essentially reached the top of the roller-coaster and were now ready to accelerate downhill into whatever Exocrine had in store for you. That’s why the announcement of the group’s newest album, The Hybrid Suns – nearly two years later – was an exciting one. Continue reading »

SOREPTION: “JORD”

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Jun 062022
 

 

(We present DGR‘s review of Jord, the new album by the Swedish death metal band Soreption that’s due out on June 10th via Unique Leader.)

If current trends hold true then in about eight years from now Soreption will be releasing a new album – their second removed from their upcoming, for six total full lengths – and there will be one member left in that band and that person will be me.

It’s strange, considering how I’m not currently a member of the group nor do I – competently – play any instrument, but there has to be some strange magic happening, that for the last few releases Soreption have somehow slimmed down their lineup every time and yet every four years have managed to put out an album. Not only that, but an album of eight songs and about thirty to thirty-five minutes worth of music. Every time.

Clearly, the machine-like nature of the band’s music extends beyond just the Swedes’ songwriting ability and has become part of the overall band operating procedure. That’s how we land at an album like Soreption‘s upcoming Jord, a release that maintains the band’s core as a three-piece and pulls out all the stops in regards to guitarist appearances for one of the most clock-work mechanical riff avalanche style Soreption albums out there. Continue reading »

BLOODHUNTER: “KNOWLEDGE WAS THE PRICE”

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Jun 022022
 

(Here’s DGR‘s review of the new album by the Spanish metal band Bloodhunter, which was released on May 27th by Maldito Records.)

It would’ve been fully understandable if Bloodhunter had chosen to rest on their laurels for their third album Knowledge Was The Price. After a nearly five-year gap and some lineup shifting since their previous release, 2017’s The End Of Faith, the band would’ve been fully justified in playing it safe. They already have a rock-solid – and recognizable – formula in place that works pretty well for them, and yet on the group’s newest release  Bloodhunter don’t quite play into that.

They wrote a ton of music – Knowledge Was The Price is a weighty beast musically – over the timespan between their two albums, but it’s so surprisingly varied that they never fully settle into the bog-standard galloping guitar riff with mighty shriek on the vocal-front style of song. It wouldn’t be such a common trope if it didn’t work so well, which is why Knowledge Was The Price is an unexpectedly interesting album, because for as much as the band do play close enough to that fire and bend it to their will, they also try to differentiate themselves a lot from it. It’s an acrobatic listening experience for sure and one that will be intriguing to gauge people’s excitement for, since each release for them feels like their biggest yet. and it’s highly likely Knowledge Was The Price will once again be placing them in front of a bunch of new people. Continue reading »

SEPTICFLESH: “MODERN PRIMITIVE”

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May 312022
 

 

(We present DGR‘s review of the latest album by SepticFlesh, which was released by Nuclear Blast earlier this month.)

Modern Primitive, the eleventh release from Greek symphonic death metal group SepticFlesh, was quietly waiting to strike just out of our visual periphery. It’s a big, lumbering beast of an album that was patiently waiting for its moment of impact, and like many SepticFlesh releases there’s a lot to unpack here.

Now firmly ensconced in their specific style of symphonic death metal, SepticFlesh have become a band that moves in iterations. They have a solid and recognizable through-line in their music and one that has largely remained unchanged since the early-aughts – the general big, booming void of a SepticFlesh song is hard to mistake for anyone else.

What has become the story of each SepticFlesh album is just how far the band will drift from that line on each album, just how much they will go symphonic or just how death metal the band will be, with each release becoming a differing ratio of each. Continue reading »

DEMONICAL: “MASS DESTROYER”

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May 302022
 

(Here’s DGR‘s review of the new album by the Swedish death metal band Demonical, released earlier this month by Agonia Records.)

Demonical operate like clockwork. They’re one of the least presumptuous bands out there, playing a style of music that requires very little pretense to understand from the get-go. You know what you’re in for with a Demonical album by this point and they’ve stuck rigidly to that formula for some time.

They’ll have eight songs for you, weighing in at a little over half an hour, and the cover art will likely be of the same school of the last few releases from them. Mass Destroyer is the group’s second release with the current lineup; one that saw some minor shifting right around the time bassist Martin Schulman‘s other project Centinex went through lineup changes as well, but you’ll recognize Mass Destroyer as a Demonical release quickly. Continue reading »

GHOST OF MIRACH: “SOL REGEM”

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May 292022
 

 

(This is DGR‘s review of the debut EP by the Dutch death metal band Ghost of Mirach, which was released in April 2022.)

Taken at face value Ghost Of Mirach‘s debut EP Sol Regem is a weird fucking entity. There is no groundwork laid and no explanation provided within the songs of what exactly is happening here. The group just launch you right into the deep end and from there you either pick up what’s happening or it whips right past you, given that Sol Regem is only twenty minutes long.

However, given this website’s tendencies to pull bands from nowhere and place them in front of you, at the very least we should explain what the hell the Ghost Of Mirach project is. Continue reading »

DEMIRICOUS: — “III: CHAOTIC LETHAL”

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May 272022
 

(We present DGR‘s review of the latest album by the Indiana metal extremists Demiricous, which was released a couple weeks ago by Post. Recordings.)

What a wild world we live in when there’s a third Demiricous album out. The group were something of a fixture of the underground in the early-to-mid 2000s, with a combination of relentless touring and albums that skirted around on the death-thrash line/full-blown Slayer worship at a relentless pace.

The band put out two albums and then activity would become increasingly sporadic from about 2010 on. Outside of a demo release, Demiricous even went into full-hibernation mode for a while, which was a bummer for those who saw promise in both the Hellbound and Poverty releases.

However, once you’ve reached the ‘fifteen years between releases’ statistic, that is when you have people going ‘what a world we live in’, because it wasn’t that long ago that Demiricous released their third album Chaotic Lethal. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: GALUNDO TENVULANCE — “TENVULANCY”

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May 272022
 

 

(For his latest review, DGR decided to time-travel back into this time a year ago. What did he find?)

Yes, gaze upon the cool album art and embrace the fact that this EP hit in June of last year when we were all busy trying to brainwipe 2020 from our heads.

At last count my private review archive had 14 releases that were hitting this year that I’ve meant to keep an eye on and look at. I assure you, none of your favorite bands are in there nor is the latest and greatest underground phenom. Don’t panic, we’ll get to it eventually… maybe. But, there are a few that have been sitting here for a very long time and there’s a very mischevious part of me that just wonders ‘well what if we tackle it now in the midst of a lot of high profile releases hitting all at once?’

Japan’s mouthful of a name symphonic melodeath/deathcore project Galundo Tenvulance is one such group. Because their four-song EP Tenvulancy hit in June of last year, it’s highly likely that by the time this review runs on the site this EP could very well be *gasp* a year old. Since we’re known for being the most up to date and recent with everything, you can imagine how much this is going against the grain here. Continue reading »

DARKENED: “BLACK WINTER”

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May 252022
 

 

(We present DGR‘s review of the second album by the international death metal band Darkened, which will be released on May 27th by Edged Circle Productions.)

Truly, death metal knows no bounds and as the swede-death revivalist trend reaches critical mass so too do the bands reach further and further out. The last few years especially have seen more and more projects popping up as musicians found themselves locked inside, and much like many writers have one good book in them, so too does it seem that every musician has one real fuckin’ caveman hitting rock stupid style death metal disc laying in wait.

Darkened already have an impressive collection of music since their founding in 2018 – we ever premiered one! – and four years later are now on their second album after two EPs and a previous full-length. They cover some serious ground among them, uniting musicians out of the UK, Sweden, and Canada in the latest permutation of chainsaw guitar worship, and the group’s newest album – their sophomore release – The Black Winter seeks to add to that body pile. Continue reading »

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