Posts by SeanO)))

Planet Of The Pigs is the final (2020 edit: nope!) album from long-running Czech grindcore band, Pigsty. I think to still call Pigsty a grindcore band by this point is pushing it a bit; Planet Of The Pigs has a whole world of other influences building on the grinding template, from thrash to death metal, to the kooky ongoing concept (“Inspection Report” kicks this thing off with GWAR-grade sci-fi storytelling) and even the insane djent…

Henker are absolutely lightening fast! Imagine Meshuggah-meets-Braindrill in the same studio Cattle Decapitation recorded their last few albums in. Maddening drumming performances meet technical yet brutal guitar playing and dexterous bass movements that completely fuck with your head. I mean, those drums….Jesus Christ. I know they are triggered into oblivion, but you gotta be impressed by this shit. Honestly though, due to the sheer speed and technicality of this thing, all the songs do kinda…

I’m not entirely sure what it was that struck me, but I randomly went out of my way to finally listen to a Meshuggah record, and what suprised me more than anything was that I was able to make it all the way to the end without turning it off. I have nothing personal against Meshuggah, except for inspiring a worldwide fucking legion of brocore brown-nosers and carbon copy chug and/or “djent” bands that believe…

Another thing that slipped unrecognised under my nose in 2016 was the new Burial EP. It appears that the urbanism-as-sound mastermind continues to favor the EP format over releasing another full length for us, although there is something beautiful about one of these EPs dropping every so often, offering us a glimpse into the modern, concrete existence of Burial’s world through a drizzly, fractured lens. It may sound a bit frightful if I tell you…

Wadge is a long-running grindcore project from Canada, which has fallen into its very own self-styled “surf” grind. It sounds like a ridiculous gimmick, and I guess, to be honest, it probably is. What separates this however, from “bands” like Caninus or the fucking Grindmother is that this shit is actually fucking decent, and not just a stupid fucking meme set up to make money from people who don’t actually listen to grindcore anyway (okay,…

I was actually lucky enough to be in the room when this performance was recorded, and it was a fascinating hour spent staring at the intense visuals the band had prepared to play alongside their live show. It was one of the more memorable experiences from Roadburn 2012, so I’m very grateful indeed that the entire thing was recorded and released later on as a double 12″ package. Equally delicate as it is at moments…

Hour Of Penance are an intensely fast and technical brutal death metal band from Italy. They have been going since 1999, and whilst their style has changed somewhat over the years (there are also, quite unusually, no remaining original members in the group) they have retained a relevance in the worldwide death metal scene. With regards to the sound on Regicide, think razor-sharp riffery but with a refreshing melodic edge, savage guttural vocals and lightening…

It is quite a bizarre feat to see the sprawling works of Om confined to the time restraints of a 7″ record. Nevertheless, the duo manage to pull it off without it having any negative impact on proceedings. I seem to keep forgetting (I know, right?) that Om are one of my favourite bands, and this obscure 7″ does not disappoint in any way shape or form. However, if you are new to Om, I…

Ahhhh oh my God, where has this been all my life? Have I been living under a rock? Quite fucking possibly! For those who are as stupid and ignorant as I am, Deltron 3030 is a hip hop “supergroup” (much in the vein of Madvillian or Run The Jewels) consisting of Dan The Automator, Del The Funky Homosapien, Kid Koala as well as a few select special guests, who all take on futuristic personas to…

Heinous are a goregrind band from Arizona, and when I say goregrind, I mean the blasting, frenetic style, not the slow, polka style. Imagine if Last Days Of Humanity recorded Reek Of Putrefaction but on the west coast of America, after spending the summer listening to Archagathus and drinking cheap beer. There may be a million bands out there called Heinous, but the name is truly deserved this time around. Wicked stuff!

Pyophagia is a Red Stripe fueled goregrind project that is based out of both Nicosia in Cypress and Bristol in the UK. The title is a combination of the names of the three quick tracks; the run time on this thing being less than 2 minutes (that’s what I’m talking about!). Expect pummeling, sloppy old school goregrind with distorted, frantic blasts, downtuned guitars and vomit inducing shifted vocals. All in all, a vile concoction that…

Corpseater is a one man grindcore project from Germany, and Unholy Massacre is the second EP release, following 2015’s Start To Mutilate. On first impressions I get a mix of Regurgitate meets the dirgy tones of Hymen Holocaust (without the pornogrind vibe, of course); Unholy Massacre is an undead-inspired, old school gory mess, with blasting drum machine work, filthy guitars and possibly pitchshifted, Mortician-style guttural vocals. Stand out tracks on this short EP include “Seven…

Man, this is fucking awful, even for Obie Trice. This is some Lil’ Wayne level shit right here. Seriously, how is it possible for someone to fall off so hard? Granted, the relentless pursuit of the $$$ leads some artists by the nose through the trends of the month / year / decade, and that is the only explanation I have for this absolute farce of a single. Ten years ago this guy was sharing…

So I just found out that WTC split up, which is a shame, but IMO they have never been able to ever top their first album, Perverse Recollections Of A Necromangler. This final “goodbye” CD is quite misleading, as the title and the high quality cover art suggests a new record, however all we have here is a bunch of demos cobbled together onto one CD. Now, if you are a massive WTC fan, I…

I saw these guys live and thought they were shit. I mean, fucking plank solo much? This album, unfortunately, does not do much to change my mind on them. Even by black metal standards, the production on this is terrible. It sounds like a seriously crappy mp3 compression, if crappy mp3 compression could somehow have been attained in the early 90s on some shitty recording equipment. The guitars failover into nothing but pure fuzz, offering…

I stumbled across this on a 3am YouTube sesh recently. There really isn’t anything quite like closely examining all the different types of cheese in the reduced aisle at Tesco with underground deep house filling up your skull; that one Filipino shelf-stacker eyeing you suspiciously from behind the Anchor Spreadable. The bass on this is absolutely incredible, as is the gentle progression of the beat; retaining that old-school house feel without dedicating too much time…

Ghost (or is that Ghost B.C.?) have easily become one of the most over-rated bands in modern rock and metal, and it is sometimes easy for me to forget about their fairly awesome beginnings. It would possibly be super-hipster of me to consider them to have entered the realm of plebs and rocker dads (I played this for my Dad in 2011 and he didn’t like it, FYI) but I’m gonna be unprofessional as fuck…

Downwards! I had a strange feeling to go and listen to all the oft-forgotten mid-career “groovy” Napalm records recently. In one day I chained this along with the three that followed it, and out of all the “non-grind” records the band put out, I can still confirm that Fear Emptiness Despair is my favorite. Perhaps that is just a subconscious thing though, as four tracks from this record appeared on the “best of” record that…

Run The Jewels 3 is the hotly anticipated return of – and third full length release from – the legendary hip hop duo Run The Jewels. First off, I just want to comment on how awesome that cover art is. I’ve seen a lot of people on various online mediums posting about how shit it is but I think it is the best RTJ cover yet (even better than Meow The Jewels haha). Anyways, this…

Baltra is a deep house artist from New York, and an オメガ (appears) to be a single-tracked EP with very little information available about it (it is even missing from the artist’s Bandcamp page, as well as having no listing on Discogs, whose users are usually on the ball with this type of shit). (2020 edit: appears to have been eventually released as part of this a year later: https://www.discogs.com/Baltra-Cant-Explain-It/release/12586745) オメガ (translating simply to Omega) offers…

(Mad apologies for snatching this cover art from Demo Archives, but there is literally not a decent scan of this anywhere else. Anyways Demo Archives is a really cool site that you should consider checking out) Panaramic Twilight is the second demo from shamefully short-lived death metal act Timeghoul. The brutality and the distorted, nightmarish sounds of the band’s first offering, Tumultuous Travelings, is distilled and refined into a more streamlined and cleaner yet fantastically…

Before I Self Destruct starts off promising as hell before falling off in the second half, gradually getting worse and worse until it closes with one of the worst songs ever written; “Could’ve Been You” parades out R Kelly like a secret ace card, but when the dickhead is literally crooning about smelling his own shit (no joke) in the chorus, all credibility goes out the fucking window. Shame he couldn’t smell the shit coming…

Landfill are a grindcore / powerviolence band from Lima, Ohio and asides from a three minute demo in 2016 and a 30-second track on a compilation, this self-titled EP is the world’s first proper taste of the filth that they have to offer. The longest song (by far) is the opening track “Zen And The Art Of Shitting Teeth”, with its sludgy beginning and descent into grinding chaos. The majority of the remaining tracks are…

(I don’t have a cover with my copy, but here’s a cover anyway, because I’m too good to you. Happy new year!)As ridiculous as this sounds, this 7″ will always hold a special place in my record collection. I’ve been putting off writing this post for years, mainly due to Lines In Wax evolving away from just speaking about my physical vinyl records, but also due to not really being able to face writing about…

Pissgrave are one of the few bands out there these days that actually fucking scare me; what a crazy explosion of disgusting sound! And I mean, what in the holy hell is going on with the sleeve art? Granted, I’ve seen the world’s innards on many a goregrind sleeve but there’s something entirely menacing about the unknown fate of whoever’s bones are on the cover. Is that weird? Fuck it. The murky mystery of the…

This is a super-kvlt-as-fvvk bootleg release of two sound desk recordings from the Day Of Darkness Festifall in Finland, all the way back in 1991, although it wasn’t released until 1994. It was originally released on 1000 copies of red wax, but has since been re-released and repackaged on several formats under different titles – such is the world of bootleggers! To be honest, I stumbled across this without even realising that it was a…

I might be a bit late to the Blank Banshee party, but that doesn’t stop me from chaining the entire discography a few times on a night shift or two. It definitely got the ol’ chair reclining; it was actually quite pleasant working away to the busy-yet-lucid tunes in a 2am caffeine haze. What stood out to me the most out of the Blank Banshee records was this one, the first one. There’s just something…

Bulldozer are a ridiculous thrash band from Italy. They have been broken up for quite a while, but they played Obscene Extreme a few years ago and this turned me on to them. They keep parading that some dickhead Kerrang! journalist labelled them as the worst band in the world (like anyone ever gave a fuck what Kerrang! thinks anyway) and with a history of songs about pornstars and terrible experimental techno records, I can…

For some godforsaken reason I’ve spent the last decade or so defending this album. I’ve even claimed on social media (and also in public, after too many beers) that St. Anger is my favourite Metallica record. After a while, I realized that I wasn’t actually trolling, and that I was being deadly serious. First things first though – that snare drum definitely explains my love for goregrind and the somewhat dubious genre production values held…

City Of The Sleazehounds is the second and final studio album to date by American groovy goregrind band Splatter Whore. It marks a departure from the riff-focused gory groove of the first album / EP into a more lo-fi rock and roll with goregrind vocals kinda deal. This is pretty unusual in itself, but I find that the debut was also pretty accessible for a goregrind record. City Of The Sleazehounds, despite (I think) not…

CxBxFxIxHxFxLxFxRxE are a gorenoise band from the south west of England, emerging from the foggy West Country marshes with a sound that is drowning in bog water and nastier than a putrefying amputation wound. Unlike most “bands” of this nature, CxBxFxIxHxFxLxFxRxE contain more than one member and function as a touring band, deafening audiences on what is soon to be a worldwide scale. The band are currently playing frequently in the UK and are set…

Perhaps it is because I find myself more and more nocturnal, with my life seemingly spent basking in the constant glow of some sort of screen or interface, but I find myself becoming one with the [ v a p o r ] ((( a  e  s  t  h  e  t  i  c ))). Yes, this is the only logical reason I can think for my sudden interested in what is referred to as vaporwave….

I love Björk, I really do, but a lot of her later output leaves a lot to be desired, in my opinion. Case in point: this entire album. Despite the lead single “Crystalline” being one of my favourite Björk tracks, and “Mutual Core” being a fantastic, brooding ballad-meets-speedcore headfuck, the remainder of Biophilia is unfortunately a lazy wasteland of ploinky ploinky quirkiness that goes absolutely nowhere, which in a bizarre twist of fate is simultaneously…

Man, this shit is dank – it sounds just like Paucities smashed into early Regurgitate; dirgy, muddy, demo-quality grinding mush with bottomfeeder sludgy shifted vokills. I love all this “new” American-wave goregrind shit that has all this mincecore edge to it – it’s fucking class, and Couple Skate is easily one of the best of the bunch (gotta give props to Haggus and Hyperemesis for coming joint first too). The demo / EP is only…

Depravity is a colossal release in the discography of the one and only Intestinal Disgorge. The wackiness of Sociopath takes on a more brutal, darkened edge on this 60 track beast. I remember picking this album up at a “distro” in Obscene Extreme 2013, where this guy under a gazibo had like, 15 CDs for sale and three or four t-shirts. In the same year, this album was banned in Germany, despite being an obscure…

IMPLΛNT, more commonly known I’m sure as the full project name Infected Manipulation Parasite Last Λbstract Noise Terror is a fairly prolific speedcore artist. Most of his (?) stuff has been released through the Bulgarian netlabel Глисти, but some releases (like this one) have been put out by Legs Akimbo Records, amongst others. Forgive me if I’m a little off here, as I’m still kinda finding my way with this type of stuff, but I…

Blacklands is the second album from female-fronted occult metallers, Castle (who have, quite possibly, one of the simplest yet coolest band names ever). Blacklands is more towards the rockier side of doom, rather than falling off the edge into the void of sludge. The cover art here is very striking, and I find myself drawn to it. Despite its quasi-surrealism, it is fairly simplistic, however every time I study it, I pick out little extra…

The Amazing Jeckel Brothers is easily the weakest of the original set of joker’s cards. In fact, I really don’t have that much to say about this album at all. It has a few stand out tracks, but for the most part it is just irritating filler and a bunch of shit that just goes on way, waaayyy too long (“I Want My Shit” being a prime example). There’s a terrible selection of “metal” songs…

Spermanys Most Wanted (surely there should be an apostrophe on Spermany’s?) is the first 7″ EP / demo from now-legendary groovy grindcore band Gut. Technically, Drowning In Female Excrements came first as a hand-made cassette released by the band, but this 1992 EP was the first from the band on a label. Gut are credited with inventing the pornogrind sound, which is in its most primitive and infantile form here. Due to the production on…

Clitorape are a groovy goregrind band from France. Gynaecological Apocalypse is the group’s very sexy debut release, boasting a super-downtuned sound and dual-headed pitchshifted vocal approach, because y’know, one pitchshifter is never enough. Expect styles perfected by Rompeprop, GUT et al plunged to new depths; new lows, new brutality and most importantly, new grooves. Stand out tracks include the smooth jazz and nu-metal tomfoolery of the hilariously-titled “Bubble Butt Blues”, the blast happy “Natural Porn…

Hymns was the final album by Godflesh before they originally broke up in 2002. It seems to apply the no-nonsense aesthetic from records such as Pure and Slavestate to the band’s later, more “nu metal” kinda sound as found on Songs Of Love And Hate and even parts of Us & Them. What’s also quite nice to note is that Ted Parsons, who drummed for Swans on a fair number of their seminal recordings, is…

Big Grams is an extremely refreshing mash up of synth-drenched electronica pop and hip hop. Initially, I had a reaction of “holy shit, this sounds like Lorde collaborating with Run The Jewels!”, and rather ironically, considering how ridiculous that comparison is, Run The Jewels pop up on track six here. Anyway, Big Grams is actually New York dream pop duo Phantogram but fronted by Outkast nutter Big Boi. And, not to mince words, its fucking…

This has to be one of my favourite releases ever, and the best thing is that it is completely out of the ballpark in regards to the music I usually find myself listening to. Despite my best efforts to listen to everything, and as much as I love dub reggae, it isn’t something I find myself listening to all that often, anymore at least. This insanely legendary collaboration between a few greats of the genre;…

When Blues Pills first came about it was a refreshing, very accessible take on the done-to-death blues rock template. With the resurgence of both stoner and occult rock, Blues Pills offered a simpler route without any of the ridiculous satanic pomp and edgy marijuana references. When Bliss was released in 2012, I fell in love with the band’s dusty, authentic rock and roll music. Blues Pills inevitably got signed to a big label, and it…

(2021 edit: there have been some very sketchy accusations that have come out against the guy in this project. Instead of deleting my review because of someone else’s actions, please find the original 2016 piece below unedited. Consider it a historical document, or whatever. To be absolutely clear: LIW unequivocally condemns any acts of sexual abuse, violence or manipulation.) Anal Floss Is Boss is an hilariously-titled goregrind project from Carmarthen of all places (although currently…

Voices is the really, really, reaaalllly long-awaited return of Malaysian grindcore machine, Wormrot. When you think that the last thing we heard from these guys was the Noise EP, that is surely a crime against extreme music in itself. This hiatus has spanned for longer than most grindcore band’s careers, but nevertheless, they are finally back, and most people would probably agree that it has been worth the wait. Voices marks a massive departure from the usual…

Fantastic heavy stoner rock from Italy. Think Samsara Blues Experiment but heading off in a more straight-forward, Kyuss-themed direction, rather than becoming lost in endless songs. The psych here is well controlled and reigned in, but do not fret – there is plenty of “woah!”, “man!,” and “duuuude!” moments here to keep perpetuating the frrrreakah enough to space these bluesy numbers out into the stoner territory. Hey, there’s even a Peter Frampton-style wah part towards…

Lahar is a thrashy, hardcore-tinged band from the Czech Republic (I believe thrashcore is the preferred term) and Umění Strachu is their second album (third if you count the original demo, which has a fair amount of songs on it). It kinda has a skate-punk feel to it, which mixes oddly with soaring melodies and more traditional metal parts to form an unique brew of styles. Considering I saw these guys as Obscene Extreme, this record isn’t…

Everyone knows World Downfall, right? Right!? To be honest, getting onto World Downfall was one of the last things I did in familiarising myself with the history of grind, purely because every other Terrorizer record is so…well….not weak, but just….bland as fuck. World Downfall however, sounds like Morbid Angel on methamphetamine, and this 87′ demo sounds like the same thing but fed through a fucking meat grinder first. Whilst I do appreciate the analogue warmth…

Holy shit this is intense! Whoever imagined the murky worlds of goregrind and “dark hardcore” meeting? This is the closest thing to mixing powerviolence savagery with nasty, nasty goregrind since I heard the excellent UxDxSx a few years ago. I mean, this isn’t to say that Vermin Womb are a goregrind band, but you need to press play on this beast and get your head around those vocals. There is something Lovecraftian about the sheer…

This thing has been in Spotify “to do” list for absolutely fucking aeons, and every time I open it I am reminded why. It is if my brain, in some mad coping mechanism, blacks out all memory of ever hearing this album. Usually the human mind reserves this sort of thing for deeply traumatic events in life, like for instance, a car accident or a horrifying sexual assault. But, Reduced To A Limbless Sex Slave…

I’ve been meaning to write about this since it came out but I’m a useless moron. Even seeing the band live twice in the summer kinda booted me up the arse to get it done, but then I let it slide. Anyways, there’s no time like the present! Cattle Decapitation have come such a long way and it’s both a pleasure and a shame to see them fall into their own entirely unique sound. I…

(I found this review after salvaging a HDD from an old laptop. It was originally written in 2013) Ahh, the simpler things in life…the laptop open browsing the world wide web, a beer next to my right hand (and several more chilling in a washing up bowl full of ice), and my latest Agathocles LP purchase spinning on the platter. I’ve said it before, but you really don’t need to fix what is broken. Agathocles…

Drowned are so metal that I could only dream as being as metal as this level of metal. Metal!!!!!!!!!! Think melo-death, but the raspier, nastier side, married with messy blasts and the odd wiggly riff for good measure. To be honest, I spun Butchery Age on the strength of the cover alone, and to be completely honest, whilst it’s easy for me to take the piss out of just how metal this is, there really…

Eastern Front play an interesting, modern brand of grim and cold blackened metal. As claustrophobic yet desolate as a Siberian no-man’s land, perpetuated entirely by a contradictory boxy and compressed drum sound as a foundation for expansive, frosty riffery. It is, quite honestly, a bit of a clusterfuck, sonically. It’s like the album can’t decide if it wants to be dissonant and mysterious, or tight and precise. Therefore it sits somewhere in the middle, not…

Future Of The Left are one of those rare bands that my friends are into that I can also get into. I’m a stubborn fucking dickhead, so when someone tells me to listen to something, I usually don’t. So, the fact that I love this album is nothing short of a total miracle, but the love comes in heaps, and for good reason. I initially gave the whole thing a chance on the strength of…

Excellent noisecore-meets-harsh noise project (I’m sorry if you are unaware of these subgenres, that sentence must look ridiculous) from the USA. Definitely something that will push the boundaries of my listening patience if all mushed together into one big cube, simply due to the frequency of the distortions used, however once broken up into grinding chunks of noisecore I find it much more humanly consumable, which is just great, folks. This is one of those…

Nuclear Vomit proclaim themselves as “Anal Fisting Scum Grind Core”, which to be honest does a pretty good job of describing the band’s dirgy, sluggish metal-with-porno-grind-vocals approach. Bludgeoning, mid-paced death is the order of the day, complemented by mainly piggy vocals and back ‘n’ forth dancey dancey bits that are so prominent with shit from this part of the world. Hey kids, death metal can be fun! The Czech Republic is almost like a breeding…

Esoteric Warfare is (at the time of writing) the most recent offering by the current incarnation of legendary black metal icons, Mayhem. For a band that has always been knee-deep in, well, mayhem, it is perhaps of no surprise that their back-catalogue has been somewhat inconsistent; often strikingly different music styles counteract each other as the band continues to unfurl it’s unholy magic on the unsuspecting metal world. Contrary to this, Esoteric Warfare, despite it’s…

The Gorillaz self-titled record was the first album that I ever owned. Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory (unfortunately) holds the title for first record ever bought, but Gorillaz was the first thing that I seriously jammed, and it was instrumental in developing my interest in music as a serious hobby. Back in the day I had this terrible transparent blue Aiwa tape walkman / radio combo, and I played the livin’ fuckin’ guts out of my…

Shackles play chunky, crusty powerviolence with energetic flair and manic vocal displays dripping in palpable rabidity. Maunder re-animates the bloated, festering corpse of punk with the spastic electricity of grindcore and the meaty (yet vegan friendly!) deliverance of modern metal. Imagine Nails meets Repulsion, only on a limited 7″, rather than 5000 copies on Relapse in a variety of fucking colours. Bleak, miserable and powerfully heavy stuff. Maunder was the band’s debut release, back in…

Before I start this review proper I just need to get something off my chest: just look at that motherfucker above; easily the derpiest looking cover for a brutal death metal record… Anyway… Nauseate is a 2011 album by the one man death metal project Splattered Entrails, showcasing a more polished, almost sci-fi approach to the sickening death metal that the name is known for. The opening track “Rewriting Human Genetics” is fucking epic –…

One of my biggest gig regrets of the last few years has been missing Xiu Xiu’s tour in anticipation of this record, as this is one of the best covers albums I’ve ever heard. Covering a song is one thing, covering an entire soundtrack is something else. I’ve been meaning to review this since it came out but I’ve been back and forth to it for quite some time not really sure on how to…

Computers And Blues was, sadly, the final record by The Streets (2020 edit: they’ve dropped a few singles recently but no full length for nearly a decade). For me, Streets records tend to follow a fairly defined pattern of progression. After the almost ethereal chill out of Everything Is Borrowed, Computers And Blues seems like a bit of a step backwards (only in the order of how things unfolded, not in quality). This final release…

High Tech Wreck is an electronic explosion of sound conducted in the grimmest and trve-est of ways possible for electronic music – in 8 bit sound blips, of course! All four tracks here have been painfully synthesized using the primitive sound forms, and actually make for some seriously interesting listening. It would possibly be a primitive and ham-fisted reviewing technique to make comparisons to Aphex Twin whilst talking about electronic music, but High Tech Wreck…

Every year or so I come back to this project and record something new. I’m currently working on the 4th release for this project, and that got me thinking – I need to do another post about this shit. I can’t review it, as it’s mine, but I can tell you a bit about it. Flesh World is the second Fire Walk With Me record, and is by far my favourite; even out of the…

Holy shit! What a grinding explosion of noise! Intense hardcore meets the savagery of grind on this 5-track / 4-minute EP from American female-fronted mentalists Death Vacation. This really is short and sweet, hitting the “grind” button right on the spot; a no-nonsense approach of getting in, fucking you up, having a little mosh too, and then getting the fuck out. Everything is on point here, and the production is totally solid, but what really…

Demonoir is a ferocious, blasting beast with enough venom to put most of the black metal scene to shame. Mixing volatile, confusing, almost mathematic song structures with endless battery attacks and monolithic, pensive vocal contributions, Demonoir is surely the calling card for the black metal pure bloods. Marrying brutality with subtly, dissonance with solidarity, grimm with the khold (sorry haha), 1349 are on top form as ever. There is simply no way I can ever…

Sardonic Wrath is one of those mid-career Darkthrone records I always seem to look past, so I made the decision to add it to my Spotify in order to get a bit more circulation out of it. I seem to fall into the terrible habit of writing off everything released in between the flurry of early 90s black metal masterpieces and the massive return to form with the crust punk style in the mid 2000s. And yes,…

The Ringmaster has gotta be a contender for one of my favorite ICP records. It marks the point where the group really start to find their feet. As much as I love Carnival of Carnage, it is a bit sketchy and the quality of tracks here far surpasses anything off that album, not to mention the Beverly Kills EP. I also think it’s one of the more under-rated jokers cards, if not the most under-rated…

Heartless is the most recent offering from bizarre, dark and menacing electronica group Bestial Mouths. Expect “darkwave” (the YouTube comments section just had a triple bypass with the use of this word) meeting ethereal pop in a world of decay, pain and seemingly endless reverb. The tracks do sound kinda similar however in a bizarre twist this only seems to cement the record together as a solid whole, rather than drive boredom into the heart…

Vulvulator are (or were) a pornogrind band from the incredibly-metal-as-f sounding Uzhgorod, which is in Ukraine. One of the greatest tragedies of the 21st century is that they only ever released one album and a couple of splits. Obscenario is a bizarre blast through the usual pastures fermenting in these particular genres (slam / pornogrind / brutal death metal), but the production style chosen by the band (or maybe the studio producer?) really adds an…

I guess this is probably one thing you wouldn’t have expected me to cover, but I was chatting recently with LIW regular contributor Burra on many things musical, and somehow, somewhere along the highway HIM came up. Burra raised the quite valid point that Razorblade Romance was a solid album in any respect, and I had to agree with him, regardless of the band that released it, or what they would become. It is eternally…

Ahh, Burning Witch – what a terrifying band. Crippled Lucifer was one of those albums I got when I was younger simply because I thought the cover art was fucking mint. It therefore coincidentally opened up the drab underbelly of doom metal for me; not only was it slow, the absence of groove and most melody made it a painful first listen. I had no idea that doom could be so twisted, evil and harrowing….

Brutality Will Prevail are a long-running Welsh hardcore band that have, over the years, gone through several styles and line ups. Forgotten Soul is the band’s 2009 debut album (they self-released a few things before this, but this was the proper debut) and it catches the band when they were playing a really down-tempo, super-chuggy style of hardcore. I guess it is almost like slam death metal, but with the endless double kicks taken out….

I avoided Genitorturers for a very long time simply because I was aware of the fact that Vincent from Morbid Angel played in some sort of badly-named industrial side project. I was also acutely aware of his penchant for bad leather / pvc shit so on those reasons alone I gave this band a very wide berth. I know that this band doesn’t begin and end with Ol’ Vince, but when all those crapulent dance/gabba/industrial…

Black Sun are (or possibly were) a three piece from Scotland. I think (from lending CDs off the Doomfinder General) that they pretty much started out as a one man industrial/noise project before evolving into a full band. They self-released a bunch of stuff before this final full length dropped on Future Noise and Head Of Crom. Twilight Of The Gods is a solid album through and through. The best way I can quickly describe…

Pothead are a bunch of a masked crusaders from Prague (Praha!), Czech Republic, who play down-tuned death metal / goregrind infused with the wondrous sounds of hip hop and also a bit of techno. It all seems a bit ridiculous, and quite frankly it is. On the first initial listen it sounds a bit like GUT jamming with Ahumado Granujo at a Cypress Hill gig (I know, right). I caught these guys live recently, and…

Wow this shit is brutal. Probably one of the best bits of death metal I’ve heard in a while, Prenatal Massacre is the third full length album from Welsh sickos Necrocest. I remember seeing these guys supporting The Berzerker in Newport many moons ago (2008 methinks) and I had forgotten all about them until I came across them on Youtube recently, because y’know, I’m an idiot, but there you go. All that matters is that…

Gets Worse’s latest EP literally gets worse (I’m so sorry). Nah, I’m kidding – every single time I hear something from these guys they raise the bar. The sound here is absolutely fucking spot on; so crunchy and heavy but with clarity and definition. And the music? Well, it’s Gets Worse, but a little bit more grown up and defined. The fast bits are there; the powerviolence vocals, the cheesegrinder bass, and that interesting snare…

Presenting you with haunting digital soundscapes from one of the masters of the genre, the Excavation record is a true trip in ethereal ambiance and beatwork. I first spun this at about 4am on a nightshift; it was that eerie time of night when everything literally stops dead, even though I was in a room full of people. There is something about “the witching hour” – that unique stillness – that is just so palpable….

Anaal Nathrakh have been at the forefront of British black metal for years and years. I however, was fairly late to the party. The first album of theirs I heard properly was Passion, and Vanitas, their eighth, is what I consider to be their best record. From start to finish it’s a relentless, punishing affair, which is nothing out of the ordinary for this band, but Vanitas seems to squeeze more amazing songs in than…

Flux Information Sciences are one of those bands that have got me wondering – “where the hell have you been all of my life!”. It genuinely annoys me when such gems go undetected on my musical radar for so long, especially since they can attribute a sizeable portion of their success to one Michael Gira (who? Never heard of him) after being signed to Young God in the early 2000s. Hell, even Chris Pravdica, the…

Something tells me that the members of Haggus may possibly be vegetarians, or even vegans. I’m not sure what it is; I really can’t put my finger on it… Anyways, sarcasm aside, this is some top notch mincecore. Like, seriously good shit. Like, better than 95% of the shit out there. Better than 95% of Agathocles splits. I love the new wave of gory mincecore/grind/whatever coming from America and Canada, and this fits perfectly into…

Yo dawg, we heard you liked Korn so we made you a Korn to release after your Korn (but not before the other Korn). Who’s putting out all this Korn you ask? Well, fucking Korn, of course. I mean, how much Korn could a Korn fan konsume, if a Korn fan could konsume Korn? Korn obviously don’t think that kontinuing to kall albums Korn, even though they already have records kalled Korn – now totalling…

Masonna (not to be confused of course, with Madonna) is a staple and legend in the noise world. He is “famed” for his intense live performances, where his body is seemingly nothing more than a channel for pure chaos; as if some invisible higher power is playing the poor guy like a marionette and pouring the result out as harsh noise. These performances can be seen on YouTube, thanks to the wonders of modern technology….

Well, first things first, this is something that I never, ever thought I would end up hearing. This was one of the painful parts of the early Cradle Of Filth lore; a massive causality of the ever-shifting line ups and legal battles. Personally, in my mind, probably due to always being disillusioned by the production styles on both Dusk… and it’s follow up, Cruelty And The Beast, I concocted the thought that this original shelved…

Holy Shit! The French are coming! Armed with turbo goregrind! Fukk! It might be daftly grandiose to label Gronibard as legendary, but these guys were stalwarts of the 90s/00s silly goregrind scene. A lot of party grind to follow simply does not possess the speed and carnage that these guys pack, especially on this particular album – the fantastically-titled Satanic Tuning Club Turbo! I mean, think about it, tupa tupa shit is becoming the death…

There are a lot of bands that have been called Necrosis. This particular Necrosis (the second Necrosis that I know personally, although that first Necrosis was spelt Nekkrosis, not Necrosis) are listed as the 15th registered instance of the name Necrosis on Discogs. They hail from the Bristol area and play straight up brutal death metal. Their guitarist Jason also plays in Kraanium, so there is an inevitable slam feel to the groovier riffs when…

A while ago I was on some mad quest for black metal mixed with harsh noise. I was given a whole bunch of recommendations, one of which included Abruptum, who are apparently the most evil band in the world ever. Like, ever ever. I’m serious (well, they are, or were, at least). They even had a member called Evil, and if that doesn’t prove anything then I don’t know what will. Earlier material was even…

Pár Teček A Otazník, almost always abbreviated to PTAO, were a noisecore band that were initially active through the nineties up to the early 2000s (although there has been a full length released last year, and a series of CDrs a few years back). On this release they mix bizarre classical background music with very high studio-quality noisecore blur attacks, topped with goregrind style pitched vocals, which is a nice change for this type of…

At The Heart Of Winter is an essential black metal record – if you can even call it that. I mean, this is Immortal, so it’s obviously black metal, but I get so much more from this than the standard blackened metal vibes. The songs are huge and grandiose, almost with a “power” feel to them; a hidden, storming melody within the clusterfuck of blasts and gurgled grimness. Drums drenched in reverb. Riffs cut across…

I’ll admit, it took me repeated listens to get into this. Folk-influenced black metal is hardly my strong point, but there’s always been something about this Agolloch record that keeps dragging me back to try and listen through it again. Now, I identify with a subtlety to the music, something which took me a while to understand whilst deciphering the three-part epic “She Painted Fire Across The Skyline”; an incredibly ambitious piece to open up…

This is classic Dead Infection shit right here. I’ve heard this before on one of the collection / compilation CDs, and I absolutely love the mix of growls and pitchshifters – usually when vocals contrast to shifted stuff it’s gonna be yelled, screeched, shouted or screamed, but not here. Growls not brutal enough? Well, top that off with some pitchshifted gurgles! Lo-Fi blasting grinding madness, but with enough finger-wagging classic riffs for the crusties to…

If I wanted to hear freaky English kids talking about fucking potatoes over a meltdown of electronics, up until now I’d have said that I’d have to either a.) knock up my ex a few times (aayyy lmao) or b.) hit a shitload of acid. But now, thanks to the Aphex Twin side-project / spin off AFX, I can just wap Spotify on, and away we go! Wow, technology has come so far, I think…

Nowhere is one of the latest releases from long running Brazilian grindcore mentalists Rot. Released 25 years after their formation, it shows that the band have absolutely no intention of slowing down their pace – blasting your face with 12 grinding hymns, which isn’t exactly bad going for a 7″ release. Rot take elements of mincecore and hardcore punk and mash it head on into the classic style of blasting grindcore. There’s honestly not a…

This is my first experience with Umigliazione – who play hardcore punk style stuff mashed up with super noisy freak-outs. They play 3 songs here, in 4 minutes or so, and it’s definitely not what I expect to hear. I’ll have to check these guys out more, as this is very brief. On the flipside, 2 Minuta Dreka offer up a massive contrast. This is far from the band’s later, groovy material. On this 7″…

This is a short, limited edition EP that Jesu released towards the arse end of 2012 on some ridiculously limited quantity (I can’t remember what number it was exactly but it sold out and I missed out on a copy, but to be honest, I probably wasn’t paying enough attention and let it slide). It contains an unreleased Jesu track in the form of “Veiled” and a beautiful cover of The Stranglers’ “Duchess”, redesigned in…

I love this 7″, simply because it is so far removed from what Cattle Decapitation would become, and also because most people have absolutely no idea that it exists. I saw Cattle Decap recently and the thought of them breaking into anything off of this amused me greatly, although I would be super stoked to see how Travis would handle doing vocals on this material. This is a relic from the past, and a super…

This was a totally random listen for me, and holy shit, did it pay off. I’ve recently started playing Elder Scrolls Online in the days I’m off as I’m on a shift pattern now, and the best thing to accompany games like that is old dungeon music, dark ambient, and a smattering of black metal. This was a random YouTube pick of an old demo from a band that has a name suspiciously similar to…