I have a love / hate relationship with Black Widow. I appreciate the timeline of the releases and their importance in the gestation of heavy blues into metal, and of course some of the more experimental songs that they performed, but there is also a malaise to their music that I guess is like some sort of stoned stupor or hash haze. III is interesting, at least on the surface, but if I stop and…

Whilst this falls firmly into the “shit dance music for goths” version of industrial music, the beats are banging and the songs are quite catchy in parts. It was fun and enjoyable but I will never listen to this thing ever again as long as I live.

A mixed bag, and a weird note to end on. Some of the contributions are excellent, others are pointless (as the listener, I’m sure it was fun collaborating with these artists even during the COVID end times). A nice project idea but I’m not sure if it stuck the landing. A strange end to a strange discography. RIP Sepultura (as we know it)

Overproduced, plastic metal with lame vocals and the cringiest subject matter. Hey, that might be for you, but it’s not for me.

Great combination of jazz elements, ambient and electronic sounds. The combined result is one of immense relaxation and chill-out vibes, but there is a nagging edge to proceedings that keeps you on the edge of your seat; keeps you wondering what it is that’s coming next. I guess it’s very “Lynchian” in that respect, if I could be so bold. Great stuff.

Somewhat underwhelming but – in all fairness – well constructed and executed ambient dungeon synth. It felt rather promising at first, so I was a bit disappointed by the record’s end, but others may find much more value here than I did.

Very low key, ethereal ambient music with relaxed, chilled out beats and positive vibes. There are melancholic moments but for the most part this thing is very easy going and very uplifting. A great, longform listen to accompany your day. For what it’s worth I had zero fucking clue that this was a compilation album when I first heard it (I thought Underwater Computing was the artist!)

I feel like Quadra goes hard, harder than most of the more recent Sepultura records, which have all been quite progressive. Quadra has its moments, but I find the recipe has been tweaked to include some of that old school brute force too, making for an interesting and potent mix.

I enjoy all eras of Absurd, but the original demos continue to elude my tastes. Honestly, these things are so badly recorded that it because almost impossible to enjoy them. Couple that with the band’s how shall we say, “budding” musical skills, and this is a painful listen.

Who is she? And more importantly, will she pass the blunt? Anyway, cover photo aside, Gendema’s Sassy Things is a very chill workout in all things drum and bass. Don’t expect this to go hard, but otherwise it’s a very nice listen for some afternoon work and coffee.

Steve Earle’s “Feel Alright,” the opening track here, appears in Season 2 of HBO’s critically acclaimed The Wire. I think for that reason, it feels more like a closing track than an opening one, but here it is in its original format, steering us into the smokey world of Steve Earle a la 1996. Steve’s been through some shit. I know nothing about the guy and I’ve only heard this one album, but this guy…

A fresh mix of fuzzy rock and angelic pop. Like Lorde joined one of these several hundred revival blues rock bands that are around right now. It’s an interesting mix, and reminds me of Fleetwood Mac in some regards, and also stuff like Blood Ceremony or Jex Thoth. There is something that really just tells me that Freya’s songs would be better with a piano or even an electronic beat behind them, though. But hey,…

Manifest is far from a fan favourite but there is very little that this band has done wrong over the several decades that they have been spilling their sleazy, thrashy black metal out into the world. Therefore, Manifest should not be underestimated. In fact, I prefer it to the previous few albums; the production on this is just far more satisfying IMO, even if the songs are perhaps not as great. It’s a strange balance….

Perhaps not as endearing – or as well known – as the debut but this sophomore effort would initially be the last album from the fun “trad doom” group Witchfinder General. There are some fantastic songs here, such as opening number “Love On Smack” or later cuts like “Shadowed Images”, and the production is just gorgeous; those riffs ooze out of the speakers in ways that would make the whole Rise Above roster water at…

When I first got into Napalm, this was teh compilation that I bought. I was a bit disappointed that it was not all just raging grindcore, but that’s what I get for doing my research first, huh. Anyway, nowadays with everything being online and available instantly at the click of a button, this isn’t all that useful, but it was a nice intro to all the Earache years stuff from Napalm Death. It also had…

I can’t remember where or how I got this but this one of the few albums I had on CD as a kid. I remember selecting it as one of the few CDs to take into my art GCSE exam, which was like a 3 hour sitting (or felt like it) that I spent working on some bullshit painting that nobody gave a fuck about. But yeah, anyway. My favourite thing about Burn My Eyes…

Sounds promising in many respects. Harkens back to the sounds of old, such as Midian and the Cradle To Enslave EP, but also has that homogenous sound that has permeated the last several records.

All That You Fear is not as good as the albums that proceeded it and started a lull for the next few releases. It’s one of my least favourite Impaled Nazarene records even though in truth I enjoy them all. This one also has the honour of having one of my favourite IN songs, “Armageddon Death Squad” as the second track. Production is nice and balanced too. Things sound great, I’d just prefer other records…

A marked change in the Impaled Nazarene sound happens around this record. There were signs before, with Nihil, in a maturity in the songwriting process. This course continues further with Absence of War… but into a more thrash metal direction. The finished result is then an extra venomous blackened thrash attack, with plenty of blast beats, fast sections and machine gun double bass kicks. Production is a bit crisper, a bit clearer, and it works…

Choppy, messy, yet absolutely satisfying early demo from the wonderfully perverse Impaled Nazarene. Oath Of The Goat, which came the same year as their other demo, Shemhamforash, sees the band experimenting with music that is much closer to their hideous debut album than what we get on that other demo. The death metal is dialled back a bit, and we get the potent mix of grind/crust and black metal (almost like war metal) that Impaled…

Shemhamforash has more of a death metal influence than anything else from Impaled Nazarene that I’ve heard. As always the crusty punk elements are also highly visible, but the black / war styles are in very short supply on this interesting cassette demo. Almost to reinforce my point, there are Extreme Noise Terror and Deicide covers at the end. Production wise, thing are pretty raw (this is a cassette demo after all) but Shemhamforash is…

Nihil displays a maturity to Impaled Nazarene’s sound that I must admit I did not see coming. The punk / black / war metal blend is still there, but some tracks have a morose melody to them; a more developed and dare I say grown up sound to them. The production isn’t as laser sharp as Rapture, but the balance is still great (the bass sounds fantastic) and the songs hit home as you would…

Rapture, despite it’s unassuming artwork, feels like a return to form and focus. It’s not that previous LP Latex Cult was bad, but it definitely leant to the cheeky, silly, perverted d-beat punk stylings more than the previous records (of which there were only elements, rather than a full theme of). Rapture feels almost uncompromising in comparison, with a fuller production and a much more urgent style of songwriting. I’ll refrain from comparing it to…

Move over Jim Kirkwood! LOL for real though, this a very fun and slightly pompous (in musical terms of course) journey through a D&D campaign that never was… the Elder Scrolls II sequel that never came… the Knightmare feature film that never got made… you get the idea. Throw in some brilliant artwork and you’ve got the full package.

Pornography goes hand in hand with terrifying synthesizers and power electronics and whilst the compositions here are thoroughly unsettling (great job!) the porno samples just seem to completely sit apart from everything else and randomly show up every now and then. Granted, there are some very choice uses of audio that have been selected, where no doubt all manner of grotesque pleasures are unfolding, but if anything it is distraction here. I’m not sure if…

A curiosity of an EP, worth it for the early version (off a M. Gira CD from the past) as well as the acoustic version (which is just harrowing. All are worth hearing, especially if you love the version on To Be Kind. The edit and the live version are pretty pointless, though.

A great live album, and one of the few that I personally own. There are some great takes here, and the sound is fairly clear, but the additional demos are lacking somewhat. In regards to the album itself, it stands in the shadow of We Rose… which came before it and was much more prominant with a full pressing release (not just limited), and it also stands in the shadow of the monumental The Gate…

I am beyond shocked that after 13 years of writing about music mostly full time I have yet to touch on the epic that is Swans’ Time Is Money (Bastard) single. One of my favourite songs ever, if only for it’s intense and unforgiving drum attack. The title track is all drums, reverb, snarling vocals and not much else. Truly uncompromising and terrifying music. They don’t make ’em like this no more!

Beautiful compositions of meandering riffs and excellent accompaniments in the forms of various keyboard sounds and other traditional instrumentation (whether virtual or otherwise). The easiest comparison I could make would be early Winterfylleth, but the vocals here are much more harrowing, and the guitars are little bit more “evil”, if I could be so trite as to use that as a descriptor. Production is fantastic; clear and vivid, with the drums in particular sounding absolutely…

In a word: punishing. I suppose you could say that Cop is more focussed than Filth, and I also suppose that this kind of “focus” on sheer brutality would continue into the Young God EP and the more precise mixed-electronic works of Greed, Holy Money and the singles associated with those albums. Cop however, is like a bunch of New York’s most experimental and uncompromising musicians accidentally stumbled upon sludge / doom metal. The cuts…

Yes, I was one of those clowns that fell for this one. I thought indeed that it was a legit live recording, and it was only when I actually took the time to delve into “Type O Lore” that I realised I had been fooled. The wool had well and truly been pulled over my eyes. The trouble with Origin though, is that, well, it’s not very good. On the surface of it, as a…

Lush, infinitely-unfolding atmospheric black metal is the order of the day. This is a project that is highly regarded and it is not difficult to understand why after a listen to De Svarta Riterna. It’s one of those albums where you can just stare at the record sleeve and get lost in the trees as the seemingly endless music unfolds. Good stuff.

Does exactly what it says on the tin. What we got here is the Electro Hippies side of the 1986 split with Generic (top band name) reissued with phresh Jeff Walker art a la scum and spread to the far corners of this disgusting world by Jeff and Bill’s Earache records imprint / sublabel, Necrotic Records. As for the music, Electro Hippies are pure crust punk chaos; far past the realm of d-beat and into…

Excellently fuzzy yet majestic black metal from Geheimnisvoll. So far, the project has been incredibly consistent with the quality of its releases, and this first demo from 2019 is of no exception. Expect 20 minutes of excellent lo fi black metal. Highly recommended, for what my fucking opinion is worth.

Compiles the 2019 demo and the tracks from the split with Borda’s Rope into one disk. Honestly, as good as this is, you’re better off just hunting down the originals because the split with Borda’s rope is fucking fantastic (including the other band too).

Beautiful split, if I could be so bold as to say so. Geheimnisvoll remind me a little of Satanic Warmaster, but the riffs are a bit more morose and with that trademark “2nd wave repetition”. Vocals are barely decipherable and sound like whispers from a deep and unfathomable tomb or cave. Borda’s Rope are very lo-fi but the guitar work on this thing is second to none. A bit more bare bones all in all…

One of the first records I ever owned, this triple LP set on Southern Lord (it was a really cool dark laquered brown colour) is awesome and I have a soft spot for it even to this day, even though I got rid of the record itself many years ago. Altar is a puzzling mix of crushing drones and odd soundscapes combined with gentler tracks, of which “Sinking Belle” is probably the best one, by…

This was my first CD purchase when it came to Swans, and I played this thing to death. It was a great introduction, I think, to the worlds of both Swans and World Of Skin (even though the Skin tracks are credited to Swans here, confusingly). I don’t like some of the Young God reissue covers, but the Children Of God one is pretty simplistic and effective, IMO.

When I saw this thing on the shelf at the local Woolworths, I mistook it for new Stones stuff and immediately bought it and took it to my dad at his place of work. He seemed very confused, even annoyed that I had shown up at his place of work to give him a CD, and he quickly ushered me the fuck outta there not giving a second look at the fucking CD, which hurt…

In a word: confused. Satarial have always been messy, but Blessed Bright lacks the charm which acts as the glue that holds all the disparate parts together. On Blessed Bright, unfortunately that magical charm seems to be in short supply. However, “Horned God”, for how awful it’s lyrics are, is a fun listen, but generally the better tracks are the “Pagan”-heavy instrumental synth/folk/tribal pieces, such as the closing title track.

This CD stayed in our family car for about a decade, and we listened the absolute death out of this thing. CD1 is essential Stones, IMO – as are a few of the classics at the start of CD2, but it starts to fall off after that as the later decades material is shoehorned in. I mean, I get it; they wanted this to be a retrospective of all the eras (but there’s plenty missing).

In isolation, this single is a confused mess of a song. The vocals and guitars are fantastic, everything else is just falling over itself in a competition to be heard.

Hooooooly fucksi this shit is absolutely deplorably bad. By far, easily, the worst Slipknot record to date. All hope is gone amirite?

Don’t you love it when your biting political (or societal) message is wrapped up in totally fuckin’ moshable hardcore punk? Here, the flavour is metallic d-beat; straight up 80s Discharge worship and variations on that admittedly narrow theme, but with an extra chunk of heaviness for good measure. Don’t expect to have the wheel reinvented, but do expect to jump around.

Production? Don’t make me laugh! Where does grindcore end and noisecore begin? Sete Star Sept are probably somewhere right on the cusp with their super prolific blasts of absurd grinding noise. The absence of guitar is felt not so much in the sonic force of the record (which is enough to blow you off your chair) but in the dynamic range of the sound: expect low end, and lots of it. She’s a noisy one,…

And with WANYK (ya friggin wanykah m8!) we are back to the muddy, middling, mediocre Slipknot that I thought I would find on on 5 – The Gray Chapter. There’s a few standouts here, but I find that they are usually the super fast “death metal” parts that are the intro to some of the songs, and then the rest just falls off into boringville. “My Pain” was the only song that genuinely held my…

Another album I got the day of release (well, the day after in this case; my friend Ross skipped school to catch the train into town to buy the album, and we gathered round to see it when he arrived back for the afternoon’s science lesson). Mezmerize, at the time, felt significantly different to me that the SOAD that had came before. The guitars seem to have a jangly thinness to them; the bass and…

Well then. I have been ignoring the “later” Slipknot records for what seems like forever. I didn’t expect to be rating this better than both the two previous albums, especially Vol. 3, which despite its lack of favour with me, is regarded as one of their better albums by the wider consensus of fans. I think the main that saves 5 from being just another Slipknot record is that they finally sorted out the production….

A compilation of the Bad Seed and Mutiny EPs, but worth your time for the inclusion of additional tracks from the Mutiny sessions. Some of these are incredible, like “Pleasure Avalanche”.

This shit goes harder than an erect goat penis attached to the mega sado Satan fuck goat incarnation, who has been beamed to earth realm to fuck you, via your stereo of course. Everything is dialled up to 666 out of 10 here.

Solid third album from legendary Finnish “black metal” outfit Impaled Nazarene. It shows more… dare I say, progression than the first two albums, but still retains all of the core ingredients that make IN so fucking entertaining. The production is surprisingly good; the bass sounds fucking incredible and the drumming here is really impressive. A really great album all round.

Mutiny leaves off where The Bad Seed EP finished. Descending further into madness, there aren’t as many stand out songs IMO (“Sonny’s Burning” and “Wildworld” are timeless but the sheer carnage here leaves most “post” punk bands in the dust.

I remember when this came out. After the seemingly massive event that was Disasterpieces, this seemed utterly and completely fucking pointless. I guess it was a slightly different era of the band, but still, it stood in the shadow of that slightly earlier live album / DVD and still does to this day.

It’s hard to convey how I felt as a 13 year old, upon first hearing this on release. I’d been in love with Slipknot since Iowa, and had worked backwards through the self titled and MFKR, and through all the various online lore, demos etc. – my disappointment upon hearing Vol 3 wasn’t immediate, though. I knew something wasn’t the same… I just didn’t really have the capacity to explain what. At that age, I…

Undeath are on their third album already. That’s crazy. Well, I guess what’s crazy is how fast time has gone, rather than anything else. Anyway, on to the album. The unfortunate first reaction is that More Insane is actually just More Of The Same but on repeat listens I’ve come to realise that this feels much more polished that the earlier efforts. On top of that, the drumming on this one is particularly of note….

Heralded as one of the best war metal / grindcore crossovers in existence, and for good reason, I guess. I tell you what though, it’s weird having spent a life time listening to shit like this to just find some random project one day that is praised to all manner of high fuck for doing exactly what a bazillion goregrind/noise/digigrind bands already do, but hey, it doesn’t matter really, Konflikt is fucking great. Proper hard…

The best thing about X Ray Spex is super cool frontwoman Poly Styrene. There is nothing wrong with XRS musically – the brass is actually a refreshing touch on the regular early punk template – but her voice is what keeps me coming back to this record. I love the way it like, I dunno, breaks (I’m shit at describing vocals, sorry). I first heard this group when Casey Chaos from Amen put them on…

What a strange release. Personally, if I’d known it was all covers before I’d pressed play (go me for researching!) I probably wouldn’t have bothered, but sunk cost fallacy and all that… Musically, things are a mixed bag here. The sessions seem all over the place, especially on the Nachtmystium front, but the fact that this is a compilation of different sessions explains all that. The quality of each cover song varies wildly. Oddly, the…

Quite possibly a contender for my favourite St. Vincent album, even though Daddy’s Home is really good too. The acoustic versions of songs like “Savior”, “Smoking Section”, “Fear The Future” and “Young Lover” are absolutely stellar. The piano truly brings out the emotion in these songs and also allows St Vincent’s vocals to really, truly shine. Brilliant stuff!

I am one of those people who heard MassEducation before this original album, so I can’t confirm whether or not that gives me some sort of bias when it comes to this decision, but after multiple listens and relistens I genuinely believe that these songs are much better in their stripped down forms. Here, if anything, I feel like the nuances of St. Vincent’s incredible voice are lost somewhat in all that electro-pop madness.

I’ve developed quite a taste for NV’s grinding bass attack over the last decade or so. Their material here is some of their good shit; decent groove and progression in the underlying bass melodies (not sure if melody is the best way of putting it! Ha!) ensures that the songs are more memorable than the usual noisecore fare. Speaking of which, Sloth are an incredibly unique band for one that peddle such utter nonsense as…

Some of the best d-beat I’ve heard in ages. Fast as fuck, furious as fuck. 9 tracks of blood pumping hardcore carnage. Love it!

LDOH stuff is a treatise on how to perform blasting, stomach churning goregrind in the live environment. Featuring the lineup from the Putrefaction In Progress era (I believe), some LDOH classics are here turned to an indecipherable smear of gory grinding goodness. Lovely! Warscars have less of the gore and more of the grind, if one could be so bold as to break it down in such simple terms. Sometimes though, life really is that…

How fantastic is that cover photo? Simple, yet extremely effective. It’s what drew me in. Unfortunately, I found this album, which is in the “atmospheric black metal” vein to be something a little too one-note for me. Production is very polished, all things considered, and I don’t think that helps in this regard. But hey, if you’re massively into the atmospheric side of things, this could be for you.

Great dark and interesting folk music with intense tribal rythyms and deep, ritualistic vocals. Really interesting, fluid and dynamic songwriting that successfully presents a series of variation on this theme, helped along by a clear yet organic sounding production. Really cool!

I never really gelled as well with the second Iron Monkey album as I did the first, but time has proven if nothing else that this is a proper fucking solid – not to mention legendary – sludge metal release. Not sure what I make of that art work though, I won’t lie to you.

People seem to absolutely fucking love this thing and I can see why, it has a lot of endearing qualities for what is essentially the most cheesy form of metal. Some of the tracks are very strong, “Rats in the Attic”, “Jonathan’s Diary” and “Stronger Than Heaven” as a start, yet others are a bit lacking. The version I’ve heard also has a bunch of shite live tracks at the end which kills the pacing….

Stardust contains everything that you could want from a Grausamkeit or BSOD-adjacent project of any kind (well, except maybe the noisecore stuff maybe). Shaky yet endearing “dungeon synth” (it always feels weird referring to stuff that predates this genre name as such) gives way to barely audible black metal lost in a thousand layers of distortion and tape hiss. Audio fidelity you shall not find here, but atmosphere is instead brought to you by the…

I have infinite respect for Joan Wasser’s songwriting but I’ve always felt that The Classic was a swing and a miss, with its stronger soul themes not really landing for me. But hey, this is entirely subjective, and there is no way I could argue that this album is bad; the production is fantastic and the songs sound amazing, I am not just not able to personally connect with any of them.

Please pardon my lack of useful terminology around this type of music but fuck, this is class. I love how the smoothness of the jazz elements work so well with the more repetitive, almost-ritualistic throb of the more afro beat parts. The 40 minutes positively flies by and repeat listens are mandatory (often in the same session!).

Inside you are two wolves… lmao sorry I couldn’t resist. Seriously though, this Aufnorden project is absolutely fantastic. This record is no exception. The Bathory cover(s) in the middle of the album’s run time is a weird inclusion, but in all fairness the song choice blends in rather nicely with what Aufnorden is trying to achieve here. If you take the complexities of acts like the covered act Bathory, or even the scope of the…

Fucking great shit. An epic mix of more “trad” metal styles like thrash / power metal but dosed up with some savage hold overs from the more heathenistic pagan black metal world. Both songs on this thing really surprised me by how great they are. To top it off, the production is pretty solid too. Highly recommended.

Manowar’s second record is a logical continuation of their first (even if the artwork is infinitely crummier). You can thank Into Glory Ride for such powerful gems as “Gloves Of Metal”, “Gates Of Valhalla” and the epic closing track, “March For Revenge”. Production is still a bit shite, but fuck if it just adds to the overall charm of this thing. It has such a glowing analogue warmth, it makes me want to go back…

Solid bit of skinhead/oi music from the 80s. Production is a bit muffled but its not too much of a hindrance to these otherwise energetic and engaging songs. These guys know how to write a catchy tune and how to drive it home.

Unfolds with much more subtly and nuance than one would expect from a band named Anal Blasphemy. There are some interesting ideas / motifs present throughout the runtime which are varying degrees of experimental but all sufficiently sound evil as fuck. The best track(s?) are the ones with t the female guest vocals – those are genuinely haunting and bordering on terrifying.

There’s like this wailing feedback effect that happens every time the sampling stops and the music kicks in, which totally overpowers the rest of the music. For as cool as this release looks, it’s purely unlistenable, even for goregrind / gorenoise.

Having only previously been familiar with the early Goatpenis demo era I was therefore totally unprepared for the sound of the latter day releases such as Biochemterrorism. This album fuckin’ rules. It’s war metal / bestial black (whatever) and of course comes with all of the carnage that those genres promise, but also has this innate catchiness to the songs that a lot of artists in that world can’t seem to achieve. Production is a…

Messy yet incredibly enjoyable black metal with a rough and ready production. This does genuinely sound like a war machine that’s seen its fair share of battles, grinding on to the next confrontation.

Heard all (most?) of these Insect Warfare tracks before but that’s absolutely fucking fine with me. Holy shit this band were the fucking goddamn shit. Dobber is an absolute ANIMAL. Super happy to have caught these guys live twice. This shit is seriously, seriously fucking good grindcore. Carcass Grinder appears in my collection several times by proxy of being on splits with bands that I love. They are a fucking great band in their own…

Cool little EP from Doom in the Corrupt Fucking System era. I prefer this to the album even, as it’s short, sharp and hits you right in the fucking face. “Financial Coup” is as good as any classic-era shit. Fucking outstanding.

Intense shit, but would you expect any less? It feels like the bass strings are gonna come out of the stereo and strangle me. Shit is on fire. This thing does not stop. They don’t make ‘em like this anymore that’s for sure.

This is probably one of the coolest Lymphatic Phlegm things that I’ve come across. This gorgeous transparent red 7” (like blood, innit) features 11 tracks (yes!) from Limpy Flem on one side. It is a compilation of sorts; all their shortest songs together in one place. However, the songs here that have already appeared elsewhere are completely re recorded for this split. The other tracks are unreleased ones. Fucking cool as shit, brah brah. I…

The flexi is a flimsy piece of shit that has slipped or skipped on every record player I’ve ever had (I probably need to weight it down) but damn this cover fucking rules. Super fucking dense and heavy sound from Godflesh, as you can imagine, and the drum machine is really great here. Wish they’d used this sound a little more.

Side A of the 7” version has “Saved”, which if you’ve heard The Burning World then you are no doubt already in love with. Side B has “No Cruel Angel” which to be honest I don’t think I’ve ever heard before. It’s very morose and beautiful at the same time, as was a lot of the stuff released around this time. Jarboe does very little here, a few backing vocals here or there but that’s…

Where Cockgun Blast (lol) ends and the ever-prolific RxAxPxEx begins is beyond my comprehension. This 7”, spinning at 45rpm should feel like it should be over in a flash but due to the earscraping noise it feels like it’s going on and on and on arrrgghhhhh! Pretty fucking brutal for noise, though.

Black metal side project from Mick Kenney of Anaal Nathrakh (which featured his brother on vocals and some other vocalist who I’m not entirely sure about). Good mix of styles. Not too much industrial influence like the more punishing parts of Anaal. Frost has, if you’d forgive me, more cold riffs. I’ve had this 7” for years and I keep forgetting about it.

“Mom, I want a new Graveland CD!” “No, son, we have Graveland at home.” Graveland at home: Undeniably wonky, especially in the drumming department, but if anything this oddly adds to the atmosphere. The production is also fairly terrible. As you can imagine from my opening remarks, Feel the Anger of the Wind (please resist the temptation to make fart jokes) is far from perfect, but those who are inclined to find enjoyment in long…

Somewhat underwhelming entry from Electric Wizard, at least in regards to the great heights that this project can achieve. The Reverend Bizarre side however, is a masterpiece (or it is until it starts to drag on for far too long). Before we get to several minutes of pointless noise and effects over the top of the track, we have a fucking incredible cover of the Beherit classic, “The Gate Of Nanna”. I’m not sure how…

An interesting entry into the Candlemass discography. Chapter XI is noticeably different from the series of Messiah-led albums that preceded it. Yes, even outside of that evolving sound, Chapter XI is a huge leap forwards (or perhaps sideways) into a more “modern” sound, at least for the time. I’m reminded of some of the more straight forward efforts of Tony Martin’s Sabbath days, such as Cross Purposes. I’m not sure if this has held up…

Another seriously fucking killer early release from Fukpig. The vocals are a lot different than the later stuff, and the guitar has more of a Misery Index / early Brutal Truth kind of feel rather than a HM2 pedal in a beehive sound that came later. Also the drums here are spot on. Ticketyboo, you could say.

The name and the art tells me that this is leftovers or additional tracks from the Bastard sessions. Whether or not that’s true, the songs are a little rougher around the edges both in production and also in delivery. Still, there’s a handful of fucking great tunes here.

Bastards is the 4th album from UK crust/grind project Fukpig (5th if you count 3 and The World Is Weakening as individual records). The first noticeable thing about Bastards is that the production is fucking huuuuuuge. As for the tunes, the rabid, hate-filled bile is still in full effect, but there’s more crust here than grind, with those elements pared right back. It still kicks hard as fuck, though.

I’m going for it – I’m gonna give Now, Diabolical a 4. This is probably because of nostalgia reasons, I can clearly see that. Objectively, it is easy to see why long-term fans of the band do not enjoy this one. But, for me, this is where I came in to Satyricon’s world, at least in terms of full-length albums. I remember this coming out, and I saw them on this tour. So I guess…

Super low effort, not very interesting, very one dimensional. Truly uninspired.

My initial thoughts after returning to this record 14 years later was that it had not aged well. However, I firmly believe this is due to the production, rather than the songs. By the time the middle instrumental part of “The Madness and the Damage Done” had rolled around, I remembered entirely why I fell so much in love with this record in the first place. I’m not sure if the mix of jazz and…

The fucking samples on this thing lmao – they really lower the tone. Musically, this shit goes hard as fuck. The riffs are sinister as hell. The production is great and the drums sound fantastic. The fills and interesting variations around the blasts send these songs from good to great, but the whacky sampling pulls things back down a little. A strange one. Also, NS as fuck, if that wasn’t obvious.

As I said about the follow up to this album, Aktion T4 has the good when it comes to raw, uncompromising black metal. Super fucking evil as fuck riffing is the main ingredient, with savage vocals over the top. The whole vibe is a bit edgy, but musically the project heavily delivers on the goods.

Really fucking great raw guitar playing and harsh, rabid vocals that had me hooked even if the drum machine had me scratching my head. These drum patterns just do not fit black metal, but after a while, it all started to click into place and I really enjoyed this weird, off-kilter approach. Super cool off the beaten track kinda shit. I am all about it.

Initial reaction was not great, but I sat with this for a while and it really started to grow on me. The mix of acoustic folk and black metal is stranger than it reads on paper. There is something endearing about the tracks, especially the closing title track, which has a really nice vocal melody. Leave your production expectations at the door, however.

I don’t think it would be unfair to say that David Tibet is a bit up his own arse. Respectfully, Current 93 meanders rather spectacularily through many styles and phases over the years. I Have A Special Plan For This World is far from anything you’d get on Thunder Perfect Mind or Dog’s Blood Rising. Instead, it is a 20 minute ramble over some ambient sound effects. I mean, if you’re into that, then fine….