Some of the earlier Autophagia stuff can leave you wanting, what with a production that is so clogged with dust it’s impossible to really make anything out. On Postmortem Human Offal however, there is no such problem. The gruesome grindcore is bared for all to see in all of it’s sickening detail: guitar blurs and sharp riffs, shambling corpse drums, and my Brother in Christ, these are some of the most insane pitch shifter gurgles…

What an abominable down-tuned soup of hideous death metal! It took me a few goes to get used to the sordid display of metal oozing out of my stereo. The drums… wow. It’s like a corpse has risen from the grave. They shamble and shift, sometimes staggering. But for some reason, that works really well. The vocals fart and bubble out of the speakers. Some nefarious shit, y’all.

Busy, infectious jazz that still has a bit of that big band vibe, even with what sounds like a smaller group perhaps. I’ve listened to Ah Um a few times, but none of the songs really jump out at me. I’ve always enjoyed it as a suite, as a whole, and often to be honest as background music whilst doing something else. I find it heavily over rated, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy…

I love Neptune Towers. Part of me wants Fenriz to resuscitate the project, but another wants it to remain dead so we just have these two perfect gems. I’ve written about the other album some time ago, so it’s time to talk about this one. I love how Tangerine Dream had this low-key influence on the black metal guys, with Mortiis doing Fata Morgana and Fenriz doing this. This is far dreamier and stretched out…

Considering how “brutal” a band like Blasphemy are, it’s surprising how clear and powerful this early demo sounds. Usually these things are covered in layers of dust and tape hiss that not even the best remaster can remove. Granted, there is some of that charm here but for the most part this is a solid professional recording. Blood Upon The Altar contains everything that there is to love about music like Blasphemy: crazy downtuned riffing,…

Dune-inspired remix record for the first Fear Factory album. Probably a stretch to call this an album too, it’s more of an EP. Either way, it shows the techno and / or industrial elements have been there since the start, even when the group were more in line with death metal than anything else.

Manhunt play blistering fast grindcore that will rip your face off. Perhaps it is the perfect soundtrack to playing the super controversial and violent video game of the same name, if I could be so bold. Internal Rot are shaping up to be one of the greatest grindcore bands of the recent decade(s), and this split is no different in demonstrating their intense aural outpourings.

What always surprised me about this record, I think because of the name of the band more than anything, was that it wasn’t some hideous porn and / or goregrind, and was more in the straight-up grindcore camp (with a whole bunch of death metal influences, of course). Some pig squeals sneak in here or there, but these are used for comic effect more than anything. The production is clear and powerful, if a little…

Heavy, well-produced and chunky grindcore. They only ever did one album to my knowledge, but it’s a good one and it’s well worth checking out. There’s definitely a hardcore punk undercurrent, which along with the clear production carries this album along nicely (and at a ferocious pace too).

Gateways is some brutal shit. Like Formulas… but turned up to 11. The groove on Domination? My brother in Christ, it is long gone (well, almost). Steve Tucker’s second record with the group saw the guys doubling down on the heaviness, and on the speed. Pete The Feet’s blasts here are ridiculously good. Despite how good his technique is, the drums feel a little quiet, but I think it’s due to the insane technical nature…

Very interesting harsh noise with plenty of atmospheric passages. Harrowing walls of distortion are permeated with – and often built up from – loops of peculiar noises; scrapes and clanking, metallic abrasions and explained emissions. This is the kind of thing I would like to see more of in noise. Ligature are not afraid to set a scene or built an atmosphere before getting to the heavy shit.

Maddeningly lo-fi but also somewhat endearing, this muffled journey through introspective black metal is a bit rough around the edges. However, there’s enough charm here to keep me interested to completion. Not the best thing I’ve ever heard, but it isn’t trying to be.

Dense, scouring (what appears to be) analog noise from Werewolf Jerusalem, to whose credit, their 15 minutes sails by as if I am being carried along on a haze of audible wire. Culver is more restrained, offering a similar length piece but of the atmospheric, ambient variety. Dark, menacing ambience of course, but not the kind that will knock you out of your seat. More the kind of menancing ambience that would be the soundtrack…

Whereas the group’s debut was all “go”, Buried Secrets – which was a quick follow-up in the next year – hits the ground running but takes a moment to breathe every now and then, slowing sometimes to a Filth-era Swans style crawl, which allows for some real nastiness to show through. Buried Secrets is still very challenging, and still very much consists of incomprehensible jazz-meets-grind blurs, but the varied pace brings more interesting arrangements.

I know Zorn did Naked City but this kind of “high art” vibe experimental jazz seems a million miles away from the basement gigs and punk ethos of grindcore. Nevertheless, Napalm Death whirlwind Mick Harris is on this thing. An odd choice in 1991 it may have seemed perhaps, but Mick has done some very experimental stuff with his career, from Scorn to Lull to the bazillion other projects. The man is so much more…

Proper meaty, long-player split from two amazing grindcore legends. Agathocles don’t require any introduction, but their session here is solid and well-played. The high-end frequencies are a bit harsh but AGx aren’t known for production quality and this is far from the worst of their stuff. Suppository are brilliant. I fear I’ll sound a bit dense describing them this way but I love how the music is a mix of straight-up ravenous grindcore in the…

Embalming Theatre are so, so good. I’m the murky worlds of both grindcore and death metal they still stand unique, churning out their own brand of sickness. The two tracks here are par for the course, but hugely enjoyable. The vocals on track two are noticeably different than usual, though.  Jigsore are a messy blur, but that’s why we are here, right? I listened to this only yesterday but already can’t remember what the third…

I was pretty excited when I heard Bobby Maggard (aka the gore master) had another new project, this time a more “musical” death metal style form of sickness called Clumps Of Flesh. For all the endless forms of gorenoise Bobby has made, I do miss his more listenable exploits from the past such as Corpseinthecrawlspace and Dehydrated Tissues. (On that note I am forever and to infinite shame still sleeping on Gangrene Discharge as of…

Sometimes it feels like 1349 don’t half churn out albums but it’s actually been several years since this came out (at the time of writing). I’m sad to say, after a bit of a streak (MCoC and Demonoir were insane!), The Infernal Pathway didn’t immediately knock me out of my seat like other 1349 records have (yes even Revelations…). It’s not bad by any stretch of the imagination but it just seems to lack a…

I remember walking through my hometown once, many moons ago, Sony Discman rammed awkwardly into a hoodie pocket, the earphones lodged firmly into my skull. A fellow metalhead who walked by too close stopped and turned. I took out a earpiece. “You’re listening to Nihility by Decapitated” he said, all matter of fact. “I can tell by the bass drums.” I’ve never forgotten that moment and I think about it every time I play this…

Where does jazz fusion end and prog rock begin? Endless instrumental noodling is afoot in that imitable, super-glossy big 80s production style. Only, this is from 1998 (lol). Ham-factor aside, these guys can seriously play, and Vital Tech Tones does kinda live up to its album / project name.

I first heard of Lafeyette Gilchrist when someone from David Simon’s crew (or perhaps the man himself) snuck a snippet of “Assume The Position” into a scene from The Wire. Later, the same song would go on to be used in much more dazzling effect as the closing theme to David Simon’s The Deuce, and that’s when I fell in love with this swaggering, jazzy monster of a song. Compendium is a compilation record that…

I’ve never been the biggest fan of King Diamond nor of Mercyful Fate to be honest but there’s something about a couple of their records that keeps drawing me back. Don’t Break The Oath is the main one that does this. I’m not sure if it is the most spectacular and hellish album sleeve, or the music itself, or perhaps a combination of both, but return I do. It’s hard to talk about the sound…

Awesome three way split with some amazing goregrind bands. Pulmonary Fibrosis kick things off with the most well produced session on this entire thing. Intense, blasting gore is the name of the game, with bludgeoning down-tuned riffs and sick gore vocals. There’s a live session too that extends the band’s runtime, but it’s fairly redundant. Haggus are up second, with that razor-sharp guitar tone and unique spin on the gore shifter vokills. In a (radioactive)…

Nonsensical, pointless, ridiculous noisecore – just as the genre should be. Footjob kick this 19 minute demo off with nearly 5 minutes of the same redundant porn sample, before hitting some early days 2 Minuta Dreka style noisecore bursts (basically like 7MON with gore vocals). Listening to this demo felt like the longest 19 minutes of my life. You could have halved the run time, left the porno sample in, and it would still feel…

This little remix EP proved a rather difficult task to hunt down online, so I bought a physical copy. Yes, this idiot is buying CDs in 2022! Roll up roll up! Anyways, this is a completists item most definitely, featuring six remixes – and the original – of the title track. And that’s it. The art is cool as fuck, and the remixes from Kid 606, I Am Spoonbender and Bastard Noise are worthy of…

A dusty, reverb heavy full length of cataclysmic heaviness from Scotland’s Black Sun. I’m unsure whether these guys are still going or not but I consider myself lucky to have caught them live (a very long time ago admittedly). Industrial hellscapes are the order of the day, with guitars and drums being the vehicle, upon which a very tormented passenger (the vocalist) sits.

I’ve been on a bit of a Lamp Of Murmuur kick recently, so checking out their split with everyone’s favourite black metal project that they can’t actually hear was definitely on the cards. Das Revenant once again bring some of the worst production in the black metal world (no small feat) but coming with it is that endearing melodic carnage beneath all of the grime. Lamp Of Murmuur are a similar beast, perhaps if RM…

To describe Climax… as an impenetrable wall of guitars and blasting drums would not be excessive. This dense chunk of metal (encapsulating both death metal and the nastier side of black/war) is not to be approached lightly. A cathedral of fornication indeed.

Feastem continue to be a massively under-rated grindcore band outside of Europe, which is shocking to me considering just how fucking fast these guys are. Like, this is some serious Insect Warfare level territory here, so I don’t understand why the USA grinders aren’t lapping this up. Maybe they are, and I’m just not privy to the conversations. Anyway, this falls into the well-produced end of grindcore populated by bands such as the previously mentioned,…

Melissa have been getting a lot of hype recently, and I do wonder how much of that is because of the striking appearance of vocalist Jane Pain who is an outspoken and absolutely fascinating character in all of herself. Anyway, this EP is awesome, so the hype is deserved. It’s as much rock and roll as it is black metal, but wholly unique too, which is super refreshing. I guess this falls squarely into the…

Crazy blasting gore – no groove, no compromise, just goregrind headcrash carnage. Insane vocal effort and FX, dustbin drums and a mechanical, deafening bass attack. Catastrophic stuff!

The first thing to notice about this second Rx remix offering from ANB is how insanely ferocious it is out of the gate. There was some harsh sounds on the first volume, but also a ton of moody offerings. Here, the entire ship is steered by none other than Delta 9, and only using (I believe) material from Altered States. So, taking both those things on board, it is hardly surprising that this thing rips…

I was very happy to see that Waking The Cadaver were back with a new album. I was under the impression that they had broken up. Authority Through Intimidation is a return to the brutality of old. That’s not to say stuff like Real Life Death isn’t brutal, but that super chunky, boxy slam on there is different from this record. Authority Through Intimidation (a very old title, those words were emblazoned on the back…

Onwards through the Analord universe! The opening track to this one always lights me up with energy, it’s like something out of an old Sonic The Hedgehog game but in an acid techno style. Track 3 has always stuck with me, with its haunting, warbling synth lead.

Hellripper are fucking class. Taking from the uhh, Midnight / Abigail / Naked Whipper school of thrashy, punky black metal, imagine Darkthrone’s late 2000s crust output pushed up to 11. A compilation, but a good section of material to get your jowls dripping for more. The record’s title gives you all the info you need on whether to press play or not. Personally, I think you should.

Silly yet fun little EP from death meets grind British metallers Foetal Juice. If you like puns in your metal, you’ll love this slice of insanity. Really good production too.

As much as I love Legion I find the production so dense and impenetrable I can’t help but prefer both the self-titled and Once Upon The Cross to it. Legion is arguably more brutal, but there is more nuance here, and I think the record works better for it. The band are firing on all cylinders here. Thick and chunky with a dry, unforgiving production. Not as viscerally decimating as Legion, but still an infinitely…

Solid later-career effort here from everyone’s favourite Third Reich fetishising grandpa. Even after my own in-depth analysis, I still have no idea where Di6 stands politically, at least not in regards to the music that the project creates, but thankfully the overt and endless Nazi references are somewhat subdued here on The Rule Of Thirds (unless of course I’m just too stupid to notice the dog whistles). Honestly though, after an experimental period it was…

Intense, dusty and archaic black metal from one of the guys involved in Morgue Tar (which is excellent by the way). I love how this thing juxtaposes between lengthy keyboard pieces (not in the Cradle Of Filth way, these compositions feel more in line with horror movies and are buried behind a million layers of dust) and intense, raw black metal. Things aren’t “raw” to the point of being unlistenable or becoming the dreaded wasps-in-a-jar…

Haggus, despite being a fairly new band in the lifespan of “mincecore” have gotta be the ones who are holding that gold standard up high (along with Archagathus and Hyperemesis (RIP)). This split with Fentanyl Surprise is no different: intense, super bassy and chunky production underpins the sickening toilet bowl vokills and insane dustbin drums. It’s just so gooey and disgusting! I love it.  Fentanyl Surprise have a bit more of an old-school grindcore sound…

As much as I want to be a grown-up music reviewer and as much as I want bands and artists to naturally grow and evolve, I simply gotta say: goddamn I miss it when 40 Watt Sun was heavy. Distortion-filled 40 Watt, both live and on-record, is some of the best stuff that I have ever witnessed.  Not that I do not appreciate what Patrick Walker is doing here, of course. I saw 40 Watt…

The earlier Berzerker stuff just got harder and harder the closer we got to the “band” Self-Titled (although, to be fair, Luke has always gone hard). Broken (or Untitled EP, depending on your source), is a harsh and head-pounding listen, where all the speedcore craziness gets dialled up every further.  It’s worth checking out if you’re a fan of the earlier full-band stuff but don’t expect any grindcore or death metal here. It’s straight up…

Malad are great. I had a cassette of theirs once, but I’ve lost it or traded it away. Useless!  Anyway, I love the rumbling noisecore carnage here. Not much that can be said, but if you love warm, distorted, horrible old school noisecore on cassette then look no further.  Inopexia have (dare I say) a slightly cleaner sound, and more of a goregrind vibe, but it’s still car crash noise craziness.

Excellent production, but one that is kinda typical for this 10s era hipster hip hop stuff. Like I said though, excellently done, especially in the beats department. For all the vibes here the beats are consistently great.  Lyrically, things are quite clever, but there are some stinkers (like the forced reference to MBV’s Loveless). Likewise the guest spots are equally so-so, with some excellent verses from Danny Brown, El-P and Despot. I’d never heard Despot…

15 traXXX in four minutes? Sounds about right to me, guvnor. Expect the wateriest, most ridiculous shifter vocals, and y’know what, some actually really well programmed drums. And that’s it. No guitars or bass or anything like that. Just drum programmed blasts and toilet vocals. This is gore (porn?) noise as God intende

Raw, fearless and endlessly unfolding live and free jazz! Everything about that sentence sounds amazing, but in practice, between a third and a half way through this two hour twenty minute chungus of a set, I threw in the towel. There’s free jazz, and then there’s FrEe jAZz. The absolute mental breakdown that is “Desert Dance” had me going spongebob_ima_head_out.gif – like, I’m into some wild shit but who wants to hear a twenty minute…

Interesting take on some of the self-titled stuff, with a completely different running order and some omissions / changes. The funniest thing about this for me is that the original working title for “Ignorance” is “Black Metal”.  This little disc is definitely one for the die-hards to hunt down though, and everyone else should go straight to the excellent self-titled release from 2000.

Inextricable Zenith is a notable entry into the evolution of the Berzerker because it was on this EP that the cover version or remix of Deicide’s “Once Upon The Cross” first appeared. It starts to make more sense, upon hearing this, and the EP in general, which is super aggressive, as to how the Berzerker migrated from being a gabba project into a grindcore band. If I had one complaint about this EP though is…

I’ve always loved the production on this record and that super chunky yet warm sound works when the band are playing rousing party-doom or even the slowest, bleakest musical creation that they can conjure up. Speaking of both of these styles, II: Crush The Insects is comprised of both of them. Be fooled not by opening trio of “Doom Over The World”, “The Devil Rides Out” and “Cromwell” (watch out for the bass chords in…

I may be something of a novice when it comes to the Handsome Family, getting into them through them being featured as the theme song to the first season of True Detective, but damn, this stuff is unsettling. I’ve enjoyed the band’s misty, unnerving country music immensely, so I was shocked to fire up Odessa and find a brand of music more in line with the grunge. The guitar work hits incredibly hard though, and…

What a dingy composition! I was expecting early black metal but instead got something a bit more, idk, Possessed? Is that a correct comparison? I’m not sure. That’s what listening to random shit at 2am will do to you! I guess this thing predates most black metal anyway so I should have realised. Visio Dei Beatifica has that early tape demo feel about it which is just beautiful. Oh, and I will say, the drummer…

Solo album from ex Mushroomhead frontman, although this was put out when he was still in the group. This starts off a bit like, how are you still making nu metal in 2011 but then it opens up around the half way point into some absolutely fantastic tunes. Well worth a listen and I am massively late to the party on this one. It’s a treat for MRH fans too, as even though the majority…

One of the best bits of grind / powerviolence records I’ve heard in quite some time. I find this channels Gets Worse kinda energy, with incredibly crisp and clear production but without sounding overworked. It really allows the carnage to breathe, and you can feel every blast, every blurry riff and every shredding vocal with equal intensity. Super recommended.

Super turgid, lo-fi grindcore from the faraway land of Japan. Great shit, with a pinging snare, rancid bass and the front woman is on absolute fire with her range of disgusting offerings. One for the crustier side of grind.

Fathomless death metal with a doom influence, all the way from Brazil. Sporting one of the coolest cover artwork pieces of the last few years, Fossilization channel both Disembowelment and Morbid Angel at the same time, but with the aesthetic of Carcass (or the nastier end of the metal stick – just look at that logo!). A promising start and a tidy EP.

Bizarre, almost progressive piece of death metal with jagged, rough edges. When I say “almost” progressive, I mean that Coffin Dust are still chunky and muddy as fuck, living up to their name for sure. But there’s a spark running through this that separates it from most death metal, which starts in the artwork and permeates the whole recording.

Hiss is to grindcore what Cattle Decapitation’s Harvest Floor is to death metal. I appreciate what the guys are doing here, pushing the boundaries of grind in the way that many greats have before them (Nasum, Pig Destroyer, Antigama, Assuck, Discordance Axis and so on). There’s a lot of dissonant guitar playing here, which is lovely. The drums are absolutely bonkers yet very precise, I forgot how good this guy was, and it’s been a…

When you look past Meat Shit’s ultra misogynistic and homophobic subject matter (if you can actually look past it, as some of it has aged like milk), there’s actually a really dank grindcore / death metal band underneath. Definitely these guys have influenced everyone from Gut to Lividity and plenty in between. This is a compilation of old demos and tons of splits, which I’ll cover separately in order to catch the other bands contributions….

Ah, Crypt Of The Wizard. It is of course probably typical for something as nerdy as “Dark Dungeon Music” or dungeon synth to have such a complicated history. Folk will often mistake this for an album, but Crypt Of The Wizard is a compilation of a series of 12″s released by Mortiis over 1996 and 1997. Despite the LP format, these 12″s contained much more short-form style tracks than what Mortiis was known for at…

File under the more dreamy, spacey end of vaporwave. Expect treacle-like synths and dense atmospheres, as if experiencing an acid trip through a 56kbs dial up connection modem. Stunning stuff.

Ah, wow. Now this is just a glorious fucking mess. I mean, the cover art kinda tells you that before you even press play. Morgue Tar mix the bottom of the sewer style goregrind with d-beat , which is just glorious. I’m not talking about a bit of mince here that’s leant a little heavily into it’s punkier roots, I’m talking 100% d-beat crossed with gore. They should have called this Dismorgue.

Massgrav are fast as fuck. I first came across them on a split 5” with Yacopsae but then I forgot about them until I saw them live and was blown away by the speed of things. This War… is the first full length I’ve checked out and damn it’s amazing. Super fast hardcore punk on steroids. Fastcore is a genre I have neglected for some reason, in my life. It’s brilliant.

I did a lot of digging into Death In June’s politics recently and a lot of people pointed me at Current 93’s “Hitler As Kalki”, which is on this album. It contains a lot of wishy washy references to Kalki and places Hitler in there as the one who will come to destroy the world (or whatever), but for the most part this stuff is so esoteric and dare I say rambling I see no…

Relapse is probably the most “modern” Eminem record that I look on fondly. A lot of the songs are recorded in this weird accent (just check out the first track “3AM”) but that aside, this is pretty solid. The misogyny and homophobia is enormously high as per usual. The bonus disk, Refill, isn’t really up to much (as soon as I heard Lil Wayne my expectations plummeted). Also, for all the years I’ve listened to…

Macabre have a strange and twisted genius to them. On the surface, it seems like silly, childish takes on the disgusting and horrifying works of serial killers, much like Pungent Stench and their comedic view of sex and violence. However, listen just a little closer, and you can appreciate the true genius of Macabre. True – if you don’t like grindcore or death metal you’re fucked out of luck before you start, but this stuff…

Absolutely banging thrash that doesn’t let up from the start to the finish. Really lovely production too, where everything is clear and day and the drums pop through nicely. Disgusted to say that after 20+ years of being a metalhead this is the first time I’ve heard Tankard.

Rainbow’s Rising perfects the formula (or should I say recipe) that was put down in the 1975 self-titled, and builds and expands on the excellent song writing that we saw there. Adding the legendary Cozy Powell on drums, Rising is more ambitious, and is wrapped in a warm analogue production that really signs, seals and delivers this thing across the line.

Festerdecay’s demo was amazing old school gore, so I was pretty stoked to get around to listening to this split, which has more of that gooey sickness. Blasting away with a better production job, it’s still easy to get lost in the primordial soup that is Festerdecay’s riffing. What a glorious, dusty mess! Really great stuff. Crash Syndrom I’ve come across before (one of their EPs, I think), and are noticeably sharper and more dynamic…

In 2007 locust released what would be their final studio album to date. It’s actually incredible how much time has passed since this final studio album and it still even now feels kinda weird to be talking about the band in the past tense. Even from the first few notes, you can tell that New Erections is a different beast to what has come before. The record is full of the bleeping blooping batshit crazy…

I’ve never been too hot on Guineapig, as at first listen it seemed like a much more polished and easily digestible version of what CBT has been doing for years. But this was narrow minded and stupid. Bacteria is a very chunky album, slow and chuggy, but with a few blasting passages too. What makes this thing pop for me though is the insane pitchshifter vokills, which are some of the best I’ve heard in…

Dirty, drab, rehearsal room feel hybrid of death metal and grindcore, with an amateurish edge that actually lends a lot of fun to proceedings. Despite the production quality, everything is audible here, but the drums do get drowned out now and then by the guitar. I don’t think Organ Grinder (at least, this particular French band with the name Organ Grinder – its a popular name it seems) went on to do all that much,…

This is one of those cases where the record sounds like it was recorded in the early 90s, rather than in 2020, year of the ‘VID. Sunken Grove then, obviously have the classic DS vibe pinned down. In a similar vein, the compositions are not intricately involved, instead forming and morphing from simple yet pure satisfying melodic progressions, lapping over in a meditative state. There is a layer of darkness here too, but it is…

Arguably the definitive Impetigo record? It’s hard to say. I’ve struggled to get into Impetigo in the past but with Horror Of The Zombies, that all changed. This has to be one of my favourite sounds in all of metal, punk and grind. It’s just so dirty, grimy and dusty. I just want a million cassettes of this thing, so you can bury them with me once I die. Impetigo perhaps need no introduction, but…

Trust Sikfuk to further devolve an already disgusting death metal reference into something even more puerile and gross. Do not be put off by the childish album title however, as Sikfuk do not fuck (or is that fuk?) around. It may take you a short while to adjust to the hollowness of the production, but once that little bit of trouble is aside, the sheer brilliance of this technical yet messy brutal death metal album…

I was well into ICP when I was in my teens but I don’t actually recall buying this. I think it was from Play.com or some such archaic method of acquiring physical media. For the most part, these songs are ICP cutting room floor grade of hip hop / horrorcore cheese. I use horrorcore in the lightest sense also, despite this being one half of one of the genre’s most defining acts, the link here…

This is probably the best live album I’ve heard from this project so far. It seems to offer something interesting aside from the usual 1 man acoustic renditions of all the hits. The recently deceased Albin Julius is a part of the live show, providing a layer of electronic sounds. This live document was taken around the Operation Hummingbird era, so that makes sense. But yeah, a lot of classics from various eras of Di6’s…

I believe the name of this group more less translates to Path, and the record is called Death Songs, which is very fitting with the excellent cover art. I find the metal styles on display a collaborative form between black metal and progressive. The songs are often long and weighty, and the vocals and production are excellent. It’s not really my cup of tea and I went in on the strength of the sleeve alone,…

I was a huge fan of others works by this project but Vid Himinsenda fell to the side somewhat. I listened to them both for the first time in the summer of the 2020 lockdown, but whilst Fjällets Gyllene Slott stayed with me, this was lost on me a bit. Everything sounds great, but its a bit derivative and plodding in parts, playing into the safe area of dungeon synth that basically just rips off…

Short, fragmented visions into a static-filled future (or past). Each track acts as a snippet into a different world, each world punctuated by its own version of a dreamy or somewhat haunting synthesizer mood or melody (I use melody in the loosest sense of the word). It’s kinda like channel hopping, or band hopping on the radio, and finding nothing but floating synthesizer soundscapes on every channel. One for the small hours. (Also, if that’s…

I was thinking recently on the mystery of Revenant Marquis and I went over to Spotify to see if any of the records were there and what do you know, turns out the project has a new(ish) release that I haven’t heard yet! Eagerly excited for more muffled kvlt metal that I can’t make head or tail of due to the extra rubbish production, I instead was met with a very invocative series of atmospheric…

I’ve always preferred electronic/experimental Ulver to the black metal era of the band but you cannot argue with the sheer genius that is Bergtatt. Easily my favourite of the 3 original “metal” (or folk) records, this is up there with the other classics of the genre in the early 90s. Do not expect intense harshness; the mix is fairly balanced, but the record is all the greater for it.

These guys catch a lot of shit for their association with Mikko Aspa, having all of their records so far released on his label, Northern Heritage. But anyway, I’d downloaded and listened to this thing before I knew that so – how does Mgła sound? These guys are intensely hyped in the scene, and to be honest, I can kinda see why. Exercises In Futility is an intricately woven blanket of sound. Broken into six…

A random suggestion (cheers Ifan!) was one I couldn’t turn down once I’d checked out that cover art. Some solid death metal is afoot, played in the “new” old school style, but with the clarity of a modern production. There’s a ton of this stuff around at the moment and its becoming increasingly difficult to stand out in the bog. Thankfully however Sarcoughagus do just that, with a tidy delivery of disgusting death, released (of…

Mashing slam and death metal with the boisterousness of the UK hardcore scene, AOAA exploded onto the underground circuit with this EP. I remember being a little pissed off at all the core and emo kids all of a sudden being into heavy shit (I was a battle-jacket wearing dickhead back then), but I was also low-key super into the slams, bro. Especially after seeing these guys live. Some of the lyrics have aged like…

Probably high time I reviewed this as today I got the news that Betty Davis had passed on. RIP. (This review was written in February 2022 – Ed). Her voice is something else, really pushing that cracked, strained and from-the-soul delivery, even if most of her songs are about getting dicked down instead of having a broken heart (perhaps both? Haha). Honestly though this thing is absolutely dripping with style, funk and passion. I bet…

I enjoyed the previous King Dude record heavily (if you mean Love then that was several albums back – Ed). It seemed to blend the mystique of the neofolk world with that of a more Type O Negative sensibility, if you get what I mean. Sadly, on Sex, King’s stripped down occult swagger is replaced instead with fairly basic rock and roll. There is still a Satanic feel to it, and your Dude here still…

Updated June 2024: In September 2022, I wrote the following about Realm Of Chaos: “I’ve never been the biggest fan of Bolt Thrower. I think that’s entirely because I never really bought into the hype, more than out of any dislike for what I’ve heard. My knowledge of this band however, begins and ends with this album. I’ve never heard any others. That may change however, as I’ve spun this a few times recently and…

This ambient piece seems to be revered online, and I suppose with good reason. Towers presents 4 enormous atmospheric chunks, where the sounds of life and – I guess – the city, are mangled and distorted into surreal passages of relaxing noise. It is as equally daunting in parts as it is uplifting. Words can only do so much for this kind of cerebral recording; it’s best to just listen to it.

We’re about to drop a new Sanguelia album on our label Two Man Tape Co, so it was cool to look back several years to this debut. Inspired by the music present in Italian horrors and giallos, and driven thematically by a similar horror aesthetic, Sanguelia combine synthesizers with real live drumming for a performance that reminds of Goblin or Zombi, if I could make such bold comparisons.

Starting things off with a Twin Peaks sample is always gonna get my attention. To be honest, it’s not needed, because Brother’s self titled is punishing powerviolence from the word go. It’s got that buzzsaw modern PV production but with an old school hardcore punk feel to some of the tunes. All in all, this is a nifty EP.

A pillar of the sludge world, both as a band in Eyehategod and as an album. This record is a pure classic. There is few things that can touch it for pure sleaze and alcohol / narcotic fuelled depression. Opening track “Blank” sets the pace and really, if you are only ever gonna listen to one Eyehategod song, make it this one. The remaining tracks are filled out with such ditties as “30$ Bag”, and…

I got this 12″ free with a Discogs order probably about a decade ago, and I finally listened to it. Featuring a few cuts and extras from his 7 Deadly Sins album sessions, Valuable Game is actually a pretty fun listen. My favourite song has to be “Always Wanted To Be A Ho”, which is tongue in cheek but actually heavily calls out those who prey on vulnerable women, which is nice considering how misogynistic…

Pulse Demon takes the crown – or should I say the spotlight – when it comes to Merzbow’s most famous release. As the man transitions from the worlds of analogue into digital noise, we saw a bit of a shift in the sounds in general. This mid-90s period was specifically harsh. Venereology, which quickly followed that very famous Pulse Demon album, seems to step up the harshness, if you’ll forgive me for my lack of…

The Yacopsae stuff opening up this is clearly pushed to the front due to the underground weight that this act brings. However, it sounds like complete shit, if I can be so bold as to declare that in such an environment. LOL. But yeah, the Gdorks stuff that follows (RIP Katz) I’m pretty sure is the stuff from our failed split, which was also released on its own through Grindcore Karaoke. Here it is again,…

I got into a bit of a shit-slinging incident with a bunch of randos on the internet when Mortiis of all people, posted a picture of himself on his Instagram with who I could only assume from comments was the dude from Blood Axis. The guy had a shaved head, a t-shirt sporting the crutch cross, boots and a belt sporting the reichsadler eagle. Now, wearing boots doesn’t make you a Neo Nazi, but they…

I remember hearing this when it came out and struggling to really get my head around what they were trying to do. Personally, I’ve had a go at this several times over the year but have always failed to make it through to completion. Why am I still trying? Well, the concept of it is right up my street. Longform, intense songs covering a gamut of extreme metal genres, including other stuff like noise and…

I think I prefer the songs on the earlier classic releases but this thing sounds absolutely enormous. Mortician’s intense fuzz hits you in the face like 10,000 dirty hypodermic needles. The production is huge, allowing those buzzsaw riffs to fully be appreciated. What more can I say? It’s Mortician. I bought a Darkest Day Of Horror shirt back in 2006/2007 and I still have and wear it to this day. LOL.

I got given this tape by someone at Leeds Deathfest in either 2009 or 2010. I can’t remember who it was, which is really annoying – it may have been someone from Lazarus Blackstar. But anyway, it was one of the dudes who played in this band too. I never really played it all that much, always losing interest after a few songs. I decided this week to finally play through the whole thing and…

Following on from my recent foray back into Oxygen (a classic), I followed up with Chronology, which is perfect music for keeping your mind sharp whilst reading or engaging in some other task of concentration. To say Chronology is not “spacey” would be a lie, there is just a different vibe here.