reviews

Across Tundras sound like if Sonic Youth lived out in the woods and jammed with Neil Young’s Crazy Horse. Some of the thicker distortion does suggest Hum or Neurosis, as the bio states, but the creaky, folksy feel of this Denver band places it closer to Pelican. Why Decibel and freakin’ Blabbermouth are covering this […]

Intronaut review is now up at Stylus.

Cattle Decapitation has gore-grind roots, but over time the band has added sonic variety and song length to the point that it’s basically playing technical death metal (Cephalic Carnage falls into the same “über technical grind” camp). 2004’s Humanure experimented with varied tempos and ambient bits; Karma. Bloody. Karma (on Metal Blade) takes that three […]

Morbid Saint was a thrash band from Sheboygan, WI that released one album, Spectrum of Death. In 1989, a small Mexican label, Avanzada Metallica, put out the album, which Grind Core reissued in 1991. The band also recorded a set of demos called Destruction System, which Keltic packaged together with Spectrum of Death into one […]

“This is Satanic black metal,” hisses Trondr Nefas to kick off Urgehal‘s new album, Goatcraft Torment (on Agonia Records). Well, no shit, Sherlock. I suppose there’s some Christian black metal out there, but the vast majority of black metal inverts its crosses. But while Urgehal doesn’t break any new ground, the band offers a solid, […]

Mastodon and Iron Maiden reviews are now up at Stylus.

I recently saw Vreid open for Enslaved. They killed it, as did Enslaved. The pairing was apt, as both play black metal but stray from the blueprint – Vreid with rock influences and Enslaved with prog leanings. CD’s are expensive here in Germany (for this album, I paid 15 euro, which is considered cheap), but […]

With Vader, you know exactly what you’re going to get – straight-up death metal. That’s indeed the case with Impressions in Blood (on Regain Records). However, don’t write it off as just another Vader album; it’s perhaps the band’s best ever, for a number of reasons. First is the drumming. “New” guy Daray has actually […]

When I heard that Terrorizer had reformed and would release a new album, I was both surprised and excited. This group was known for two things – a single album, 1989’s World Downfall (which was actually recorded after the band broke up), and its famous alumni. Guitarist Jesse Pintado moved to England and joined Napalm […]

If you order four or more CD’s at a time from Willowtip, they send you free stuff from their “shitbox.” Psychopathological came from said box, and my expectations were pretty low, given the horrible artwork (note to bands: putting fat, bloody people on album covers does NOT make people want to buy them). The logo, […]