Archive for 2023

I’ve never been a huge fan of Mastadon but I have always had a lot of respect for what they do. They lose me a bit when they go-off on their proggier elements (a sound that I never thought worked all that well with what they cemented into place here and on Remission). Anyway, I was but a wee lad when Leviathan came out. I remember checking out a few tracks on compilation CDs at…

Exciting project (going off the name and the artwork) but one that unfortunately does not live up to its expectations. Nothing particularly wrong here, but falls a bit flat and isn’t very inspired. A shame.

Ah fuck I just absolutely love Nick Barker. I won’t say that he is hideously under-rated, because the people who like him love his work but generally, in the wider metal world, he is definitely snoozed on. This man can drum! Anyways, what do you get if you mix Nick with the string section of Napalm Death (RIP Jesse) and put Peter Tagtgren on vocals (he did some Bloodbath stuff but otherwise I am unawares…

Violent Reprisal is the first CD I got from Lock Up, and is a compilation of their first two albums. Personally, I prefer the albums in their original incarnations, as well as with the original art, but if you are looking for a marathon of Lock Up stuff in once place, you can’t really go wrong with this CD.

Brutal as all hell (those vocals just cutting through the mix are some of the sickest, most twisted pitch shifter groans ever!), but good gravy the quality on this is shambolic. I mean, what did I expect? Haha – but some of the studio LDOH stuff can be enough of a challenge in its own right, I don’t need to struggle through live versions too. Would be 1000% better if I was actually there, but…

Holy fuck shit Batman, this is a noisy one! By the 2000s, LDOH were a full-on gorenoise outfit, creating some of the most outlandishly disgusting audible sounds known to mankind. Their material on this split is in the same (severed) vein as their Putrefaction In Progress album or In Advanced Haemorrhaging Conditions EP. The general quality seems a bit lower here, with the bass farting out of the speakers and the treble albsolutely melting my…

Winterfylleth are one of the UK’s most well-regarded and consistent black metal acts. For that reason, The Thrennody Of Triumph also suffers. There is not much of a fault in this per se, but for music that is so grandiose and epic and extremely well-crafted, it’s a bit of a shame that when listening, you feel like you can always guess its next move. I prefer The Ghost Of Heritage album, which was their debut…

This is a project that involves Andrea Meyer who performed mainly as Nebelhexe and also appeared on the first Cradle Of Filth record. Unfortunately, as I was really looking forward to this one, this is pretty boring to me. It kinda goes nowhere, and whilst there are a few moments of pizazz in this evil atmospheric pieces, most of the record’s run time does nothing for me. It works as cool spooky background music, but…

Devil Master’s Ecstasies Of Never Ending Night was recommended to me as black metal with a little hardcore twist to it. I’d say that was a pretty fair assumption of the sound, for sure. The production is big and solid, which is refreshing for a band of this nature. Every now and then things slow down and devolve into a nice stomping riff. Tidy!

Never been the biggest fan of these guys but Trevor has always been a bastion in the world of death metal, so spun this in his honour. Its pretty cool, and it pulls from all corners of metal, with I guess death metal being the main course. The production is enormous and this sounds very well made. It’s not my favourite thing in the world but I’m glad I listened. RIP Trevor Strnad.

Hyper mental fuckin’ electronics? Why not. Wlfgrl has seen a re-release that I’ve been meaning to look at for a long time, with an extended run time. Personally, I prefer the shorter, sharp jolt of the original but fans of this carnage will no doubt be happy with the extra material here.

I gotta be honest, this is a massively irritating recording from the otherwise legendary Masonna. If you’re looking for irritating noise loops through delay pedals with distorted vocals over the top, then look no further. Otherwise, put this in the bin.

I’ve been doing a bit of looking at NSBM recently. It’s something I’ve always totally avoided, give or take a band on a split or something that’s cropped up like that. Recently, I did a review for a Clandestine Blaze album and I’ve been looking into the controversy around Graveland a lot, so maybe thats why, but YouTube is nothing but insistent with suggesting me this album. I guess the same instincts that led me…

The Sepultura Bestial Devastation session is amazing. In fact, I would even perhaps go out on a limb and say that I prefer the sound here to that on offer on Morbid Visions. As far as proto-Sepultura goes, it doesn’t get any better than this. Old school evil thrash in all of it’s glory. As far as Overdose goes… I tried, I really tried. I didn’t want to be another one of those people who…

7 H.Target are quickly becoming one of my favourite slam acts. The other records I’ve heard of theirs are very impressive so the logical step would be to go back to the first full length and see what that’s about. And what do we have? More razor-sharp slam with inssssaaane riffs and incredible drumming. Oh boy. The production is massive, crystal-clear and really gives the slams the absolute brute force that they need, without compromising…

Probably my least favourite Maiden experience yet. There’s just something a bit “meh” about the whole thing, which I think is more to do with the greatness that has come before than to do with any genuine complaint about the sound itself. Oh well. On to the next Maiden entry.

Winterfylleth are a British black metal band that I constantly snooze on. I don’t know why, because I’ve seen them live and I love their record sleeves. I also love their brand of fairly grandiose black metal, which is displayed perfectly here on The Ghost Of Heritage. You could easily put a grim black and white photograph up front to represent this band, but the beauty of the sleeve is reflected in these songs. Awesome…

There are few bands in life that hit as hard as Revenge, even in the murky and unforgiving world of war metal / bestial black metal this shit slaps at a whole other level. If black metal itself is akin to freezing your enemies with a deep penetrating fatal frost, then war metal is then the fire that comes to cook them alive and what we get here in this shambling, chaotic metal is the…

Isn’t that art just lovely? You can always count on Windows96 to bring the vibes. Coming on like a cross between a video game soundtrack, an infomercial and a walk through a mall after a few edibles, Enchanted Instrumentals and Whispers showcases just about everything that is wonderful about the vaporwave movement. I’d love to know what drum samples this guy is using, they are really fantastic. Probably not good listening for first thing in…

Ugh! Someone is blowing chunks of gore through my speakers! Crusm come at you with a different kind of gore. It’s always cool to see variations on the theme of goregrind and Stench Of Decompose delivers in that regard.

Invoking otherworldly trance-like dreamstates that fans of prison-era Burzum will be chomping at the bit for, Hädanfärden does not disappoint when it comes to taking you away to another place. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Lustre, a more well known project by the same artist, but Eitr is perfect dreamy dungeon synth.

This was sold to me by Bandcamp as grindcore, and – impressively – the album which brought Hydra Head back from the dead. Endon’s music here is far from grindcore, in my opinion. Yes, there are intense passages of absolute carnage, which I suppose could come close to something like Cloud Rat, but Through The Mirror dreams far, far bigger than such a restricting genre tag. Endon is more or less post- everything and everywhere….

Underwhelming listen of the day goes to… Cold Steel! First off, that album name is terrible. Secondly, so is the record sleeve. Unfortunately, the contents aren’t up to much either, with the entire album lost in a sea of overcompressed wasp-like fuzz. I get it, you wanna sound kvlt as fuck, but this isn’t the way to do it. I even broke out the IEMs to try and squeeze some clarity out of this, but…

So there’s a little story to this. At the end of “Gravedancer” on Pig Destroyer’s epic Terrifyer record, there is a minute or so of bizarre, troubling dialogue between what seems to be several people. The main core of the audio is of a man and a woman arguing. The argument seems to get quite heated, and the woman screams out several times, as if being attacked or thrown about. They also seem to both…

An interesting selection of tunes and vibes, copy and pasted together with samples and other assorted aural bric-a-brac. Falling comfortably into the vaporwave genre, Yes! We’re Open also owes a lot to the found sound and plunderphonics movements.

When you wake up in a empty house and the weather outside stops you from going anywhere, and you’re trapped staring at the dull light of your work-issued laptop… its time for a listen of something as heavy and as involving as William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops. Or in this case, part 1 of the 4 part series. Getting stuck into this is a massive undertaking, but not as massive as say, The Caretaker and his…

I listened to this album countless times back in the day when I would stay up all hours playing World Of Warcraft (yeah I’m one of those kids). Beer-swilling mega-hit “Trollhameren”(sp) aside, Nattfödd should be noted for its crisp production and superb instrumentation. More often than not, folk instruments are used as a gimmick to prop up bad metal, but not here. This is a really well made record.

Torchlight is one of those projects that falls loosely under the dungeon synth banner, but is not trying to emulate a sound from a point in time or aesthetically clone the goodness of the early 90s. No, Torchlight is so much more, instead delivering full-blown compositions with excellent clarity and depth of musical scale and talent. This is more in line with the soundtrack to an RPG computer game, using traditional instruments (or virtual copies…

For black metal as ridiculously good as the album title, please look no further. A swirling maelstrom of intense noise awaits, carried along on the blessed black wings of decent production, thankfully! Tidy darts.

This is probably the crappiest Abruptum record that I’ve come across thusfar. When dealing with a band whose entire shtick is being crappy (albeit in a dark and evil way lol), then that can be really disappointing. Like getting an Agathocles 7″ where the recording is just so fucking bad you wanna throw the thing against a wall. Anyway, this release offers nothing to me. There’s no atmosphere, no savagery or seemingly any point to…

There is a lot of controversy around Graveland. I’ve recently been doing a bit of snooping around NSBM, so this is all fairly new to me. As a sworn lefty do-gooder, bands like Graveland have always been somewhat blacklisted, give or take. So during my dives, I decided to take a look at what this Wotan metal was all about. I can only hope for all of the fans on the internet that take Graveland…

I’ve always viewed Thergothon as something as a test of patience. I don’t recall what it was that had me coming back to this album after all these years but it finally clicked for me. I’m not stranger to slow, strangled and horrible music, but there’s always been something different about Thergothon’s cosmic glacial affront. All in all, a solid album.

Heard a lot of praise for Deathspell Omega over the years so figured it was finally time to check them out. I’m not gonna lose my shit over this but I can agree it’s a very well made record with a lot going on. I don’t mean like, in a Dillenger Escape Plan way (lol), I mean that the songs are lengthy, epic and have a lot of thought and dexterity to the composition. The…

Despite having grind in the title there is absolutely nothing grind about this. Fat, crystal clear digital production leads technical death metal with hints of thrash. It doesn’t blow me away, but if this kinda music is your bag, then it’s worth checking these guys out.

Interesting modern black metal with a melodic twist. Very clean and full production, excellent riffs and vocals in particular. I love the artwork too. Ones to watch.

Well then, what a terrible album title. Also, unfortunately on this release Machine Girl fluctuates between sounding like the Ridge Racer OST on acid or just generally being super fucking irritating. Won’t be back. Sorry lol.

Bizarre electronic album from the mid nineties, with a mixed bag of vibes. It’s easy to be put off by that horrendous cover art, but this is a deep and unusual journey through the medium of electronic music.

Legion is a dense and difficult listen, especially for old school death metal. Just take a look at the release date on this thing and you can truly see that Deicide were forging ahead with new levels of brutality. These days brutal death has been done a million times, but this must have taken heads off back in the day. Another cool thing about this is the unassuming artwork, which hints in no way shape…

Music that will put you into a waking dream state. A lot of this kinda stuff ends up in movies, of which I have definitely not seen, but isolated alone like this, makes for some beautiful and relaxing synthesizer music.

I didn’t realise until today that it was Mick Harris of Napalm Death / Scorn etc. who produced this album. It’s got a lovely sound, one that is admittedly a little bit raw but it works really well. The drumming is outstanding (that snare sound is out of this world). Barney is on point in the vocal department and there’s some really cool sections where his trademark roars are backed up by absolutely disgusting pitchshifted…

After a few listens I gotta just admit to myself that I prefer Morbid Visions. However, Schizophrenia is notable for the decent step up in production, and the incredible progress that Igor Cavalera makes as a drummer is outstanding. Couple this two things together and you’ve got a backbone for an amazing metal record (the drum fills are to die for). I just prefer the songs on other records. No shade though, this is really…

Pretty boring track to be honest. This is probably the most pointless review I’ve ever written.

I’ve listened to this many times over the years where instead perhaps I should have branched out a bit more into other Psychic TV stuff (there’s so much of it!). This is a fantastic piece of work, though; a very thorough exercise in sinister and brooding atmospheric music. Not quite on the knife-edge of noise, Cathedral Engine definitely uses a “less is more” approach compared to some of the other projects by those involved, but…

My proclamation is that more black metal bands should consider using the pitch shifter vocal style borrowed from goregrind, mincecore etc.; it really gives your record that really fucking sinister vibe that a lot of black metal bands are no doubt looking for. Couple this sewage-drenched vocal attack with pummelling drums and (good lord!) stomach churning bass, and it can be hard to think for a second that I am describing a black metal record….

You gotta love Sepultura, especially looking back now at how far they have come and how much they have changed. From 2023, this release sees them as almost unrecognisable. The trademark thrash of the earlier days began in earnest with their second record, Schizophrenia; the looser metallic grind of Morbid Visions is more in-line with something like Bathory and Venom. There’s just something so pure and blazing about the way Sepultura perform metal however, and…

Ildjarn is definitely off the beaten path a bit more than most of the Norwegian artists that found their muse in black metal throughout the 90s. After listening to a few tracks on Forest Poetry, it is easy to hear why. At first, Ildjarn’s super lo-fi sound is a welcomed distorted blast to the face, but soon loses its impact as the record goes on. As a fan of black metal as well as stuff…

The forbidden knowledge has to be, that mixing dungeon synth and raw black metal in this way is a winning combination. Sometimes the brightest truths are the ones that are there in plain sight, waiting to be grasped. LOL Anyway – Gate Master is the project centralising around founding Cradle Of Filth member Paul Ryan (who’s been out of the band since the debut record). The black metal is raw, disgusting and frenetic, which is…

Roots is a strange one. I can understand why people would be pissed off at Sepultura for steering away from thrash and going into this super down-tuned, groovy territory. But, you gotta give it to Max for getting a hold of a musical vision and just completely committing to it. It is easy to dismiss Roots as “MaX hEaRd KoRn AnD WAs liKe – lEt’S jUsT Do ThiS LOL”, because after his time in Sepultura,…

I’ll be completely honest with you: I was totally drawn into this by the art alone. That kind of chosen artistic representation for your sound almost guarantees you a select number of sounds, and power electronics is high on that list. That is, of course, what we have here. The trouble is, is that this is one of the cringiest things I have ever heard. Let’s get it out of the way: there is nothing…

I can’t remember where | picked this up or how this record entered my sphere of vision as it were, but I’ve had this thing knocking about and have been meaning to write about it since 2014. Being a droney, ambient affair, my listens of it usually accompany some sort of other activity such as working or writing and I never get around to writing about the record itself. Until today, finally, let’s address the…

Burzum’s ambient stuff gets a lot of undeserved shit, in both the prison and post-prison eras. Sôl austan, Mâni vestan is of course, no different. Admittedly, there is little variance between this, The Ways Of Yore, and even Thulean Mysteries to be honest, but if hypnotic – cosmic even – synth work is your bag, then I genuinely feel you can do no wrong in checking this out. Varg (Louie?) does invoke a consistent atmosphere…

Japanese radioactive-meltdown-themed vaporwave? Oh yes please, oh yes please indeed. This reminds me of the Windows 96 album News At 11 in the way it mixes real life samples from the time with snippets of various music vibes. Really cool stuff. FYI this band/project translate as Radioactive Hi5.

Altars is the Kroh comeback record, released a few years after the original self-titled. This time, the band have a new vocalist in tow, in the form of Oliwia, giving a more occult rock feel than the original vocalist , who brought a more Goatsnake / Kyuss level of vibe to proceedings. The production is great and Oliwia is a brilliant addition, but the stand out element here has to be Mick Kenny’s (sp) crunching…

I’ve seen Abigor’s name bandied about many a time but finally checking them out (via this awesomely-titled record, might I add), I can’t help but feel something is lacking. It’s black metal of the wasps-in-a-jar variety but seemingly lacks variation or dynamic. It’s not awful, it just does nothing for me.

Strength And Honour is the first record by the awesomely-named yet terribly dodgy Satanic Warmaster. This shit fucking slaps though, I gotta be honest. I’ve never really been that impressed with these guy(s?) in the past but I finally checked out an album and damn this shit is sinister as fuck. The production is a good mix between raw and clear and the sound in general is really cool. The vocals are awesome. Shame they…

My brief journey into NSBM comes to an end with Graveland’s third album. Seemingly more just a bit of a sketchy pillock than a genuinely frightening criminal, Rob Darken and cronies are an easy gateway I would say, into the seedier side of black metal. Whilst I found Graveland appallingly bad in the first instance, the second record improved on their sound and the third is actually genuinely good and worth listening to. It’s a…

I’ve always really liked Fear Factory but for some reason have never really bothered digging that far into their discography. Outside of “Edgecrusher” and the frankly fucking excellent cover of Gary Numan’s “Cars” (which features the man himself), I’ve never really heard anything else off this album until now. I was familiar with the snare drum sound however, as a sample of it is a default in the 2000s-era drum machine program for Windows, called…

The turning point for Muse, I think. It was when they stopped being a rock band and became a whole corporate entity. That’s not to say I dislike Black Holes… some of my favourite Muse songs are on this. It is however, the point where I checked out. Anything past this I lost interest in.

Silly slamming death metal mixed with elements of grindcore. Expect a bit of groove to throw down to whilst enjoying the most ridiculous vocals and intense pinging drums. The song titles alone are worth a look at for a laugh, but musically you can squarely and safely file this under ‘party slam’ and the like. Great fun, but there’s a time and a place.

I think Necro Deathmort are super underrated. Volume 2.5 is a shorter release, an EP of sorts, comprising more of their spacier, explorative material as opposed to the earlier heaviness they were into. Volume 2.5 is still a dark record however, with subtle menace dripping from every song.

A later-day effort from the legendary and enigmatic project that is Di6. Honestly, whatever weirdness the band is going for here completely misses the mark. Operation Hummingbird comes across more like a pointless collection of sound collages than it does a tangible album. Which is a bit of a shame, as the live album for this era is really good.

Skeletal Remains play old school death metal in the Obituary vein. The vocalist in particular owes a lot to John Tardy. Skeletal Remains however have a much more modern and cleaner production. Don’t expect the wheel to be reinvented, but if you like to bang your head, it’s hard to find any faults with this at all. Tidy!

Are ICP done with the second run of joker’s cards yet? Honestly I’ve lost track. Anyways, it barely seems five minutes since Furious Fred Fury hit the grown running but of course it’s been ages now and I’m just out of the loop. Yum Yum Bedlam does absolutely nothing for me. Working primarily with another guy called Shaggy on production, rather than some of the older cats, this thing has a totally different vibe than…

How in the actual fuck was this released in 2005? I could have sworn to you it was put out in 2007 but alas I am old and time is slipping away from me at an alarming pace. It’s slippery in here. Anyways. This marked a transitional period for Korn, where they entered into a much, dare I say, tamer direction of sound. This culminates with Korn II / Untitled being the absolute low point,…

I learned about this record whilst listening to one of Christopher Dunn’s talks on the great pyramid being a power plant. I can’t recall the exact point he was making, but it was about the resonant properties of the granite within the pyramid’s King’s Chamber. Now, I’m not really in-tune with these new age types, but the pyramids fascinate me, so I gave this ago. It’s a good idea. Live recordings from inside one of…

2-Bulah-Bell 2: Bak 2 Da Belle was an unexpected drop from Mike Oldfield. And by unexpected, I mean, it was not expected for me when I found there was a sequel, a third, and a bunch of crappy remix albums all riding off the success of the first record in this series. Now, I love Mike Oldfield, anyone who can play that many different guitars is good in my book, but 2-Bulah-Bell 2 gets way…

Ah, Carcass. How everytime I hear thee, I pine for thoust earlier daze of grinding gore. Carcass at this point is an unrecognisable band, consisting of Steer and Walker and a bunch of other randomers (no disrespect to them – congrats on getting the Carcass gig). Torn Arteries offers me no more than what Surgical Steel already did, and with the reformation hooplah and fanfare having worn off somewhat, I am less than enthused for…

Quite a beautiful album, and one that I have admittedly often neglected. I’m not really sure why, because I enjoy the shit out of Serenades, Pentacost III and the other doomier stuff by this ever-evolving band. As I said though, there a larger beauteous element to this one. It perhaps holds back a bit in true, impactful metallic force; the harrowing sonic battlefield of Serenades is perhaps now grown over with various flowers and fauna….

I enjoyed this mid 90s effort from ENT but couldn’t shake that disappointed feeling that every song sounds the same, which makes the album kinda nondescript in some ways. But then, it took me a minute to realise, half of these fucking songs appeared on Holocaust In Your Head. No wonder I thought them familiar! They have been updated and given a polished metallic sound here, for some reason.

Frost has always been the Enslaved album that I keep coming back to. Having listened to it back to back with Vikingligr Veldi for the purposes of this review, I am surprised by how fast this record is in comparison to the former. Considering they are both released in the same year, there is a surprising difference between them. Whereas Vikingligr… had its own mid-pace, unique viking-meets-black metal vibe, Frost has a much more tried-and-true…

Stunning, hypnotic, trance-inducing riffery is the order of the day, on this early release from long-running proggy madmen Enslaved. I’ve never been a huge fan of later Enslaved stuff, but then again I’ve never really given it a proper chance. I have however, always had a soft spot for stuff like Frost. It is of no surprise then, that I really enjoyed Vikingligr Veldi. I’m not super fussed on the vocals, which are a bit…

Blood remain one of the most criminally underrated bands in the grindcore world. You really have to peel back the surface layers to find appreciation for them. It’s weird, because they have been around since the genre’s heyday, and as another writer so well put, they are like an amalgamation of both early Carcass and early Napalm Death. O Agios Pethane proves however that Blood are so much more than the sum of their parts….

I would be lying if I said that I got into this on the first listen. In fact, it has taken me several years to even consider writing about it. In that time I have done countless relistens, and not once has this record landed with me. I’m not even really sure what it is about it that doesn’t gel with me, but there you have it. A pointless review but one I’ve been wrestling…

Today I noticed that the word “spoil” is in both album titles from Guttural Secrete. A pointless fact there for you.  Anyway, this is, much like its predecessor, a razor-sharp execution of the brutalest (is that even a word?) form of death metal. The speed and dexterity here is rather overwhelming; the songs are slick and polished, yet are delivered with the bludgeoning force of a spiked sledgehammer to the back of the skull.  Mike…

I’ve been down a rabbit hole recently in regards to the inner-workings of the great pyramid of Giza. Not in a wacky “WaS iT a NuClEaR PowErPlanT1?!?!” kinda way, just generally trying to understand one of the oldest wonders of our world. When it hit me – I wonder if there is any like, Egyptian-themed dungeon synth or ambient music. Remembering the interludes from Nile albums, I set to searching the internet, and was immediately…

I was drawn in by the absurd logo and I stayed for the technical aspects filtered through an old-school death metal production. First off, I just want to say that the bass playing on this thing by Jonas Grønborg is exemplary. Top marks and a “brr brr ding” award for you, good sir.  It is however, perhaps difficult to win awards for originality in this genre but I found Effigies Of Obsolescence refreshing and engaging…

Short, sharp and messy! Think something like Pharmacist crossed with Impetigo. If that doesn’t get you excited for this band then I don’t know what will! There’s only three tracks here, so its difficult to go into any sort of depraved depths, but the demo is a brilliant example of what the band is about, and I’m really looking forward to their album dropping for more old school gory grind sickness.  Standout track: “Posthumously Penetrated”

Savage, punishing, unforgiving – the (un)holy trinity of war metal. Not that I want to pigeon hole this fantastic band, but their mix of blasting death and black styles does fall into the “bestial” camp.  The drumming on this thing is absolutely outstanding – you can really feel the power behind it. The vocals sound like a sick mix of FX and clean screams, all curdled together into some disgusting cauldron of spew.  Stoked to…

Pickled stuff here from the long-running Venetian Snares project. Think breakbeat but with strings and mental vocals, to break it down to its most basic level. This one has perplexed me since it came out, and I find it quite impenetrable, but enjoyable nonetheless.

Laika Come Home is a stunning remix album that accompanies the band’s equally stunning debut selftitled record. Everything here is done in a dub reggae style, which permeated the selftitled in its own way. So, it is super cool to have guest mixers Spacemonkeyz come in and really push that vibe further. I can’t really pick individual favourites (well, I could), but this thing works best as a whole. Chuck it on, sit back, and…

Danny Brown has always been an interesting rapper but Atrocity Exhibition goes off the deep end, I won’t lie. In a good way, of course. This is very abstract, at least in production, which shambles and drags along as much as it pummels with hard-hitting beats. Lyrically, this is a dark record, with all sorts of mental health issues appearing at the forefront. This is great shit.

Not a very good effort from Death In June, although it has its moments. Expect lots of sound collages and other pointless shit, let’s be honest here. The art is pretty iconic though, and there are appearances from regular collaborators such as Rose McDowall and Boyd Rice. Oh, and this album has “Fall Apart”, which is one of the best Di6 songs in my opinion.

With Devil’s Night, D12 gave the world their first full length. Production-wise, you can easily consider this a sister album to Eminem’s original Marshal Mathers LP from the year before. Dre is back in the seat, and the beatwork is more or less the same; heavy, snapping metallic instrumentation and Dre’s super surround sound production that carries over from Chronic 2001. Flow wise, the quality of rappers in D12 varies, as does the ability to…

I love a good gimmick, me. This goes far beyond the initial reaction however, and actually delivers on the goods. If you ever wondered what classic Sabbath tunes sounded like through a 50s/60s jazz band sound, then look now further. To top it off, the record is expertly produced and some of the interpretations are truly sublime.

The pinnacle of Death’s evolution. Oddly enough, this was the first Death album I ever heard, when I was 16 or 17, and I couldn’t understand why everyone thought this band was so brutal. What’s brutal about this? Haha Anyways, I enjoyed it a lot and used to jam this when up late playing WoW. Nowadays I’m a bit more mature and can enjoy it even more. I get that Fenriz from Darkthrone thinks this…

Not as dreadful as the band’s ridiculously corny debut, nor as unique and perplexing as its follow-up, Thousand Swords stands alone in a weird no man’s land. I honestly don’t understand the hype for this thing. Outside of the cool cover art and the cooler logo, this is pretty bog standard stuff. Oh, and whilst we’re at it, fuck NSBM.

Ridiculous, pointless, absurd CD single from the gods of narco goregrind. I picked this up at a festival for next to nothing and its worth owning just because its so bizarre, but hey – this shit happened! The version of “Matando Gueros” as the b-side is also pretty cool.

Remix albums are always a dark art, purely by the nature of their individual component parts usually being submitted by multiple different artists. It is hard to make it work, at least as an enjoyable coherent listen. Telegram is all over the place and doesn’t flow very well at all, but there are some excellent stand outs. First up, it is worth mentioning the stand-alone original track “My Spine”, which is an out-take or a…

When I first heard Life Is Peachy I couldn’t believe how disgusting, drab and downtuned it was. Everyone seems to have this reaction to the Korn debut, but personally, for me, the band took their sound even further south with this sophomore effort. This stands up today still, as something that is astronomically heavy. Some of the tracks are a bit pants (the one with the guy from Deftones rapping is an abomination), and the…

Defaction is a short-lived side project of Mick and Mitch Harris (no relation), both of course of Napalm Death fame. I believe the purpose was to be a bit grindier than the rigid death metal that Napalm was peddling at the time, but honestly, this is still fairly far into the death metal camp. It’s got a cracking sound to it and of course we are listening to two of the greats here. It’s a…

Mystifier do not fuck around. Expect dense, tight metal with a huge drum sound (the snare is out of this world). Balancing somewhere between the production on classic war metal releases and that of early 90s gothic metal, Mystifier use this sound to maximise their long-winded, complex tales of occult and / or generally evil o ongoings. Genuinely brutal shit without being derivative. A great underground gem.

This has to be one of the most out-there things that I have ever heard, which is really saying something. I first came across a few of the “MCs” on this thing back in 2006/2007 in the MySpace days. Colour me surprised to not only find that MC Bushpig and MC Slurry and all these other horrible aliases are not only still listened to all these years later, but they actually did a full length…

Random YouTube album listens, let’s go! Sharing a name with the elusive sophomore Throatplunger record, Almoranaz’s beautifully-titled Weapons Of Ass Destruction is actually a very enjoyable exercise in brutal death metal. The ridiculousness is dialled up to 11, as of course you would expect, and this also reflects in the unpredictable and chaotic nature of the songs. Messy, but holds together nicely – grand!

The temptation to refer to this record as Gwar Party is never ending. Anyways, this is as solid as a Gwar record can get. After the 90s the band adopted this long-form storytelling thrash metal angle that ran more or less until the demise of Brockie. This thing is seriously sharp, if you can look past the gimmick.

Holy fucking mother of Kazan, what in the great creeping shit is this!? The cover art screams of an upset boomer wanted to piss off the “normies” by uploading a baiting profile pic. The messages in both the pink triangle whiphand and the slogan printed onto the COVID mask might be subversive and purposefully contradictory in that good ol’ Di6 way, but this cover selection proves that Douglas is definitely losing his subtly when it…

Slightly rocky third release/album (I think) from Blasphemy, where the carnage of the band seems to fall over itself rather than unfold in constant reels of barbarity. Hey, it’s still great, and it’s a fun listen, but it ain’t no Fallen Angel Of Doom. That being said, this is better than most low effort bestial / war metal that gets released these days, and is still well worth checking out.

Blood Incantation are really starting to grow on me, and I can see why this 4 track banger is bolded on RYM. Perhaps its the slightly smaller scope here that makes this less intimidating, but I chained this thing back-to-back twice, and loved every second of it. If you are reading this review then you probably have some idea of what Blood Incantation are all about, but on Interdimensional Extinction the band mix technical death…

Haircuts For Men’s discography can be quite intimidating, and I went into this, which has been on my to-do list for some time, believing it was a fairly recent offering, but it’s actually quite old. This is the problem when all of the album covers are fairly abstract in the same style, all in Japanese, and all, more or less, of the same consistent quality. Even if every record of his was a banger, telling…

Yeah this is exactly what I’m fucking looking for out of vaporwave; chill, dense atmospheres, big 80s beats pitched-down to oblivion, and a bizarre mix of relaxation and impending doom. Appealing to both my love of cool beats and love of ominous soundscapes, Dematerialize helps you slip into the backrooms, in particular the recesses of an abandoned mall where the lights are always on and it’s always 3am. Grand stuff.

Nasty, disgusting blasting goregrind. It gets to a point where describing such a thing leads you round and around the same paths, in a literary sense, of course. Aurally however, the sickening musical delights of Bodily Stew will no doubt please any goregrind fan with an appetite for the macabre festering away in their hearts.