SLAUGHTERDAY: “DREAD EMPEROR”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Feb 202026
 

(Our Norway-based correspondent Chile sent in the following revel of a review for the new album by Germany’s Slaughterday, which was released last week by Testimony Records.)

Some bands are the epitome of working class heroes. You know, somebody who just goes about doing their thing and doing it great, but not really getting the kind of appreciation and attention needed, yet every time the need arises, they come through and become the heroes we both needed and deserved.

German band Slaughterday are exactly that band. Wearing their influences on their proverbial sleeves (they are named after an Autopsy song, after all), they have been doing their own thing for over fifteen years now in a career that has already spawned several great albums.

Last time we met Slaughterday was just a couple of months back when the NCS writer Zoltar did an interview with the band’s bassist/guitarist Jens Finger, with the occasion being them signing to Testimony Records and the first release on the new label being a step away from their usual brand of death metal. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: SLAUGHTERDAY

 Interviews  No Responses »
Nov 182025
 

(The German death metal band Slaughterday signed with a new label, Testimony Records, and their first release for Testimony (which will be out on November 21st) turns out to be something different from what you might expect. We’ll let Zoltar explain, just before he dives into a discussion with Slaughterday bassist/guitarist Jens Finger.)

When former Obscenity guitar player Jens Finger caught up with his old friend Bernd Reiners to go see Autopsy play at the Party San Festival on August 13th 2010, the pair quickly realized that the song title “Slaughterday“ off the classic Mental Funeral album performed that night would make a great band name.

Since then, besides setting a live line-up to play shows around their native Germany, the two have laid out four great albums of doomish old school death metal in between 2013 and 2022. After over a decade on FDA Records, Slaughterday have just signed a brand-new contract with Testimony Records (Deserted Fear, Carnal Tomb, Leper Colony). Yet, as suggested by its cover artwork (a spoof of the mighty Horrified album), the very first result of this new alliance ain’t exactly what you would have expected from those guys.

Instead of their usual downtuned catchy style, Terrified turns out to be a four-tracks, nine minutes, in-your-face grindcore EP, but the kind of grindcore only metalheads raised in the ’80s on a severe diet of thrash metal and hardcore/crust could really muster. We caught up with Jens, who handles guitar and bass in the studio, to see if this was just a spur of the moment thing or an indication of a sudden change of heart… Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2020’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 2): FURNACE, BLACK RABBIT, SLAUGHTERDAY

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2020  No Responses »
Jan 052021
 

 

Today I’m leaning into death metal with Part 2 of this list, beginning with two songs that juxtapose tested veterans with some precocious teenagers (at least they look like teenagers), and then following that by turning to music from a pair of Germans who’ve been playing death metal in various groups since the mid-’90s.

FURNACE

Rogga Johansson has been, and still is, involved in so many projects that you’d have to possess eidetic memory to recite the list. He continues to spawn new ones at an astonishing rate, while also continuing to punch out albums from some of his oldest bands as if they had access to a fountain of youth. It was thus a surprise that out of all the 2020 albums that had his name associated with it, perhaps the one that has drawn the most acclaim is the newest of them all. Continue reading »