The 2021 remaster of this cold classic is admittedly my first brush with Borknagar. I’ve known the name for seemingly aeons, but as is the way with this game (as with many others), time is my greatest enemy. The production was a little too crisp for me, if I could be so bold in announcing such; I had to turn down the treble a bit on my stereo to stop the harshness of the cymbals…

As I covered in the review of the band’s demo, Verletzen are a local black metal band to me here in South Wales. The demo was great, with a very traditional yet clean approach to weaving tunes of blackest misery and grimness. Evil Will Triumph continues this trend much in the same vein as the debut demo, but with a bigger studio sound. For the most part, this works quite well, and it is nice…

Quite possibly the stupidest thing in my record collection, which is definitely the whole point of this thing. I remember, in the early 2010s, a race amongst the noisecore / experimental projects and labels to release the smallest record possible. Technically, RxTx’s Bleached Anus takes the win, being fully playable (if only for a few seconds) at 1.5″ in size. Esion’s 1.5″ however, is actually not playable at all, and is in fact, designed to…

VRV are one of those projects that is fairly awful on record but absolutely amazing live. Unless you have a particular penchant for drum machine fuelled noisecore with no direction or purpose, then please do not let me stop you. This 2008 CDr (I believe, from the man himself when I bought the VRV split with Agathocles) contains 2 sessions of improv madness, followed by an unlistenable live final session.

I had this when I was a kid but I don’t know what the fuck I was listening to because that was some 2 x CD set I pirated off a Russian website that had tons of bad demos and crappy synth passages. Satanica, not to be confused with The Satanist by the same band (way to go for original album titles, Nergal my guy hahaha), is none of the above, instead it is, of…

Low key, posthumous release from Godflesh during their initial break up, or just before. I think it was recorded in the early 90s originally. Anyway, here are 4 tracks of stunning introspective industrial metal, followed by 4 dub remixes of those same tracks. It gives Messiah a circular feel, as themes you hear at the start are reprised in the dubs at the end. It’s a great mix of stuff.

Stunning recent outing from Darkthrone, with a robust yet natural production and the usual predilection for slaying riffs. Expect slightly longer songs, I suppose Eternal Hails is not a million miles from Old Star, but the vibe is much different. The closing track here in particular is a tidy slice of epic metal. Long live Darkthrone.

Where do I begin with Tomb Of The Mutilated? I mean, just look at that art work! Just when you thought music couldn’t get heavier, couldn’t get more brutal, couldn’t get more disgusting, the 90s brought the wave of death metal full on and with it came Cannibal Corpse. This is a beast of an album.

This “album”, at just over quarter of an hour long, marks – for me – the point where The Locust “became” The Locust we all know and love. Granted, the line-up which made some of the greatest records of all time didn’t solidify until 2001, but this self-titled record is an absolute explosion of grinding synthesizer madness. It is hard to explain really, but there’s just something about the frantic energy of The Locust that…

This is the first of two self-titled releases the band did. The first is called, technically I guess, just Locust rather than The Locust. As a historical listener, the most striking thing for me about this 7″ is how the band’s sound develops from the more rudimentary powerviolence approach of the 1996 splits into what we could consider the more recognisable Locust sound. Hydra-headed jackal-like vocal attacks punctuate intense stabs of grinding noise. Most importantly,…

I’ve been meaning to check this out for a while, and to be honest it wasn’t bad, give or take the fairly weak story line. Musically, I think the soundtrack manages to strike a good balance between modern and nostalgic, with more callbacks to the original run of 90s games happening in the gameplay rather than in the audio. On the downside however no particular artist here stands out, especially as I pored over the…

A beautifully composed album from the mid-90s, led by Satyricon’s Satyr Wongraven (I guess this dude loves naming bands after himself, huh?). Discogs credits Norwegian percussionist Hans-Kristian Kjos Sørensen as having contributed to this record, as well as Ihsahn from Emperor, but for the most part, this is a solo outing. What we get is a solid 30 minutes or so of excellent ambient / dungeon synth music (before the term really existed, remember) that…

I was recommended this off the back of finding Lunar Womb’s Planets record. There I was in awe of the vaporwave-decades-before-vaporwave sound mixed with dark ambient (or dungeon synth to you modern kids). Watering A Flower is however, a different creature. There is a similarity in floating synthesisers and dreamlike pacing, but otherwise Haruomi Hosono invokes an entirely different listening experience. One I admittedly enjoyed in all its minimal, trance-inducing goodness, and I will seek…

The World That Summer is the third album from Death In June. It still retains a lot of the dance / drum machine elements of Nada! but Douglas’ experimental and acoustic sides are starting to flourish more. The album as a whole has a treacle-like pace, despite a few popping beats here or there. The music doesn’t match the pitch black cover art. It’s super chill, though.

Godless Savage Garden seems like something of a stop-gap after Enthrone Darkness Triumphant. I see it as more of an EP than an album, but its not a million miles away from CoF’s From The Cradle… EP or stop-gap Bitter Suites record. It would perhaps be callous to call these songs leftovers from the Enthrone… sessions but they do have the similar excellent, spoopy vibe with plenty of reverb. The band in this time dealt…

I feel dirty because a few of the black metal related things I’ve touched recently have leaned more towards the unsavoury (both Clandestine Blaze and Deathspell Omega which I’ve covered contain the unsavoury Mikko Aspa), so it was almost with a sigh of relief that I remembered I had a Feminazgul record to check out. I can’t decide if the name is pure genius or just downright awful, but either way, it certainly turns heads…

A 7” I’ve had for about 15 years and have listened to multiple times with a purpose to review it, yet I can never remember what the thing sounds like. It’s not bad, but the fact it’s so forgettable hardly looks good, does it?

I downloaded a bunch of Nargaroth records 7 years ago when they were coming to my town so it’s probably a good idea if I actually listen to them. Spectral Visions… is as much introspective electronic music as it is dingy black metal. When the metal does flow, the songs are slow and atmospheric. Personally, I prefer the electronic passages here, which come across like a techno version of Tangerine Dream drowning in dusty dungeon…

This was originally recorded and released digitally in 2018 but the tape eventually came from Haunted Hotel Records in 2020. Sulsa are at the absolute peak of what decent goregrind should sound like. There’s a little mince stomp (only just), but otherwise this is punishing gore with a fat, disgusting bass leading the way. The vocals are putrid as all hell, and I cannot recommend this band heavily enough. Cystoblastosis have some good old school…

Lurker Of Chalice is a strange concoction of vibes. The over-arching plot is black metal, but many different fathomless depths are plumbed to bring you this record. Atmospheric electronics interwine dissonant, almost DSBM tracks in their purest form. Towards the latter end of the record, the metallic structure falls away and the more drone-like tracks swarm forth to suffocate your brain. A mixed bag, but some dark shit. A side project of the dude behind…

This is one of those things where the title should give you an adequate clue as to what to expect. Purile, nonsensical drum-machine grindcore is, of course, the order of the day, so I hope you’re down with that or I’m afraid you’re fucked out of luck. Where do I start with this? The subject matter is prime 2000s MySpace-era “grind is offensive” fare, but the songs are actually pretty savage, with intense bashings from…

Someone in Marduk must have been deep into some shady porn at the time this was put out. Its a bit outside of their wheelhouse in terms of artwork and vibe, at least visually. This was released on a variety of formats with a variety of different front covers, some perhaps complete reworkings that include no nudity or BDSM. Musically, this is OK, the cover track is the best thing on here IMO. Here’s a…

I’ve probably heard this AxCx session a thousand times as I had a download pack of all the old AxCx shit (I think from Agz’ (is that name right?) Crustorrents blog). Its abrasive, nasty and an absolute mess. Everything you want then, from a noisecore band – one of the genre’s founders, no less. It really says something about 7MON, when back to back to classic AxCx, you can truly appreciate just how noisy and…

Haggus are still the undisputed kings of vegan mince carnage. I feel like I say this about a lot of goregrind-based bands, but they truly do have one of the best shifted vokill attaxxx in the whole game. Just spin this up and find out. Of all places, the voxxx really shine on the Mob 47 cover (lol) that closes this thing out. Hardcore punk in a goregrind style? Yes please, drive. Glob offer a…

I got into Gorguts through the more technical explosions of Obscura, so it was great fun to go back and unearth loved classics like this one, which are more in the traditional vein of death metal. Personally, I can’t think of anything more that I could want from old school death metal. Everything about this is just amazing, from the art to the production, the instrumentation and the vocals (which are a bit in the…

I love earlier Exhumed, and their stuff on this split 7″ is no different. Bark n growl, Carcass-baiting, thrashing death metal is the order of the day. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. The jewel on this 7″ however is my discovery of Pantalones Abajo Marinero. Shit, these guys are fucking awesome. Really fast, savage grindcore. Which is, of course, forever in my wheelhouse. Stunning.

It’s time! I recently did a video review of my cassette of this which you can see at this link. Undeath keep their momentum up with their second record. The production is slightly different, but the riffs are chonky as fuck and the band are clearly on a roll so hey, let’s let them keep rollin’ rollin’ rollin’ (I’m sorry). “Necrobionics” is probably my favourite song, if I’m honest. I love the Doom video that…

I opened this review to start writing before the 5″ started, and it will no doubt end before I am finished. You gotta love 5″ records. They are ultimately pointless, but are so perfect – never has a format been more fitting to an individual genre, in this case grindcore. I’m not sure if this was recorded before or after the stuff on the MITB split, but this, whilst a lo-fi affair, is much more…

(Excuse the crappy thumbnail on this one. This release seems to have fallen through the cracks of time into perma-obscurity. I can’t find my copy of this CDr anywhere, so the shitty thumb it is (oo er), apologies folks) I got sent this CDr by the dudes in the band, because we worked together briefly when I ran a label. They appeared on a compilation 7″ I did (where does a multiple split end and…

Cold, harrowing black metal from the UK. This one has been on the to-do list for a while (I wonder how many times I’ve written than exact sentence out?), but I’m glad I finally got around to it because its everything that the cover art promised and much more. The production is a little hollow, leaning heavily into treble territory with buzzsaw guitars and percussion that is drenched in reverb, but the songwriting is superb….

For all the farmyard variety in death metal and grindcore vocals from around the globe and across modern history (lol), few are as animalistic and primal and disgusting as John Tardy. Your man here sounds like Taz on bath salts with one leg stuck in a bear trap. The art is a bit pants, but it is a classic after all so that can be forgiven (no shade at the artist, I’m just not sure…

The final release from the seemingly defunct Intrepid Corpse. More intense mincecore stomping goodness, in the vein of Haggus, Hyperemesis or earlier Agathocles. I remember the first release from this project and how it had that mince element underpinning it, but here, this is all-out stomp. Love it! The perfect soundtrack to blasting heads off on Doom. 2022 edit: This, along with Intrepid Corpse in general, appears to have disappeared off the internet without trace.

Honestly, I don’t know why I do it to myself. With the absolute meltdown that is I No She Hot She No I’m Rich 5, I believe my time with Viper has come to an end. I just cannot invest any more time in listening to this absolute dreck. It was fun when it lasted. Like… this is so fucking bad, with absolutely zero endearing qualities. Plus it’s 1 hour and 40 minutes long. The…

Clandestine Blaze is the one man (I believe) black metal project of Mikko Aspa. If that name doesn’t ring a bell, then its probably a good thing. Mikko is linked to all sorts of unsavoury right wing garbage, and Clandestine Blaze is also linked to this kind of ideology. Its something I usually avoid and don’t tend to cover all that often, as it’s not something I agree with or like to shine a light…

I got this tape from Roel back when it came out, and I have absolutely fucking no idea what I’ve done with it over the years. Thankfully, some kind soul has uploaded this to YouTube so I can remind myself of how it sounds. I can’t decide if the best thing about Anal Penetration (what a sentence) is the drum programming or the guitar work. Both are intensely good. Like, seriously, seriously good. For such…

Serenades is another one of those records that I have heard probably hundreds of times. In my teens it quickly became one of my favourite doom metal records, and I remember going to watch Anathema in 2007 at a festival without having any idea they had changed into the whole indie / post-rock thing. What a shock I had haha Anyways, I love this. I’ve made the point on several other record blogs now, that…

I loved Sikfuk when I was a teenager. It’s death metal, but silly as fuck and also technical as shit! What a duality! Much in the same vein here does the carnage continue, but with a whole slew of additional sounds added to the one man’s already chock-full barnyard of vocal styles. There are now punk rock / powerviolence shouts and grunts to go alongside the usual gurgles and gargles. There is also a catchiness…

Ah, Oxygène, one of the greats of the chill-out electronic genre, no? Before everything chilled out became house hi hats and moody loops, the genre was more attributed to “Mike Oldfield shit” – by which I mean huge 4 or 5 CD box sets of wishy washy hippy synthesizer music. You could guarantee a radio edit of Oxygène would be included on any one of those compilations worth its salt. I am of course doing…

Dahmer are a fuckin’ great grindcore act. I snoozed on this band for years think I only really checked them out for the first time in 2016. Anyways, the two tracks here are slightly longer than the usual grindcore fare, but suffer not in terms of pacing or ferocity. Throat shredding vocals, razor sharp yet dense riffs and bonkers drums – it’s all here.

This is a lengthy split from 20 years ago (damn, son) (23 years for the original cassette before this CD version). If you know what Ahumado Granujo are about then this will not disappoint. There are less techno passages and more groovy finger-pointy goregrind, but hey, I’m not complaining about that. Production is good as always, and a few Gut covers towards the end (and a cover of Impetigo’s “Boneyard” but much faster!) are the…

Vulnus play intense, well-produced death metal. Despite this, there is a quality remaining of the feel of an underground demo, but the band’s overall tightness and professional sound does wonders for their crisp, precise carnage. As I listened to the split for ISOYF, discovering Vulnus was a pleasant surprise. ISOYF have thusfar failed to ever disappoint me. One could say that the band are not very adventurous with their sound, whilst another could then counteract…

I’d like to think, that back in 1993, it was almost unimaginable that a band like Anal Cunt would do a full-length album. I mean, they crammed 5000+ “songs” onto a 7″ in one way or another, so who could comprehend a full-length? Similarly, with such an abrasive and intense sound, the formats of short, sharp shocks to the head worked perfectly. Who in their right mind would want to endure that in a full…

This has to be one of, if not the most, random thing in my entire CD collection. I got it off the Relapse webstore back in the late 00s when it always seemed to be filled with the most random shit. This is a CD full of Duncan’s stand up, which is, to be fair, not that great. The material’s link to heavy metal is also tenuous at best. There is absolutely no merit to…

This is what I’m talking about. Forced Expression do not fuck around. This 7″ of blistering hardcore intensity takes us firmly into classic powerviolence territory. Bouncy riffs meet pummelling drums and intense vocals, just what the doctor ordered in regards to total sonic annihilation. Tidy!

Oh fuck, this is great. I’ve always avoided later Morbid Angel because I wrongly assumed it would be total rubbish. I had this in mp3 format when I was a teenager and it had all the “lavas” with it (like a bonus disc of guitar solos or something), and that along with the multiple ambient/intermission tracks here really distracted me away from the meat of the project. Thankfully, all these years later I decided to…

Noise noise noise noise! All Dutch and Belgian bands here (or just Belgian maybe – I could be wrong). Permanent Death have always eluded me. I’ve always wanted to check them out because they have had both Tony from AGx (RIP) and Isaac from Fromtheashes and Leng T’che (and a bloody good bloke) on drums. Nonsensical noisecore is the order of the day here, as is much the case for LSD Mossel and De Madeliefjes….

I love Bastard Noise (or anything Eric Wood) but my experiences with his discography are few and far between. This is a fairly haunting session, where each band on the split sound fairly similar, but there’s a bit more dreadful atmosphere to the Bastard Noise stuff. L’Idiot Du Village (lol) is a bit more abrupt with the “song” lengths, but offers as equally pleasing a contribution of horrible noise. Tidy split!

Totes brutes death metal is the order of the day, with a chunky digital production holding everything in a surprising state of clarity. The drums pierce the mix brilliantly, whilst the riffs are fully distuishable underneath the vocals, despite their technical complexity. All in all, sounds good, and doesn’t fuck around on the savagery scale.

Another one of those dusty old 80s gems that I have absolutely no idea where I got the recommendation from. There is no way I would have stumbled upon this on my own, but here it is. A mystery! Anyway, this thing fuckin’ rules, if I could be so direct. I love the warm, analog production, and really wish that more stuff was recorded this way. That being said Medieval Kills! does sound pretty ancient…

I just love how confusing the Man Is The Bastard (Noise) AKA Charred Remains discography is. So… is this Man Is The Bastard? Or is it Bastard Noise? Discogs has Man Is The Bastard Noise looping back to Man Is The Bastard, but this record is clearly a noise release. Perhaps I’m just thinking too much into it. LOL. Either way, it is the crushing power electronics headfuck you can expect from these guys, with…

It’s crazy to think how long this band have been going and how many eras they have had to their sound. These days, with the huge popularity and of course, striking appearance of Alissa White-Gluz, its hard to imagine Arch Enemy being fronted by anyone else. Angela Gossow abso kills it on this thing, however. Its an album I’ve heard many times in my youth, but I never really fell in love with the band….

I have absolutely zero clue where I picked this recommendation up, but its been on the to-do list for a few years. Viscous Attack is an excercise in mid-80s thrash, I guess where the genre was finally coming into its own away from the speed metal tag. I’m no metal scholar, but that’s where I place this stuff anyway. Honestly, I figured this was out of Brazil or something (it really gives me that vibe)…

The Stiffs Are Looking Lively (what a name!) is a colossal compilation record of all (I believe ‘all’ at least) the Savage Man Savage Beast demo stuff and unreleased tracks. The runtime is massive, but if you’re down for 60+ tracks of one man drum machine grindcore (leaning towards the gore), then by all means pull up a chair, you’re gonna be here a while. Despite being culled from I think 5 or 6 different…

What an absolute beauty of an EP. I first marked this down for LIW’ing in 2020, so it was a pleasure to come back and check it out for this review. I absolutely love the mix of jazz, noise and I suppose, even grindcore. There are muted electronic passages that invoke the realms of vaporwave and 80s nostalgia, before the madness comes back and smacks you upside the head. A topsy turvy listen, for sure.

The Doom II Master Levels is a mixed bag. One of the most irritating things about it, is that whilst a lot of the files occupy map slot 01, you get the same soundtrack over and over and over as you play. Thank any metaphorical heavens then, for the Doom community. Megasphere has popped up a few times in regards to soundtracking WADs, but this was my first encounter with his work. Honestly, he puts…

The Final Countdown is the title of this album, of course also the single, and its also the title of the band’s ‘best of’ album too. For a group that apparently doesn’t like to milk their biggest hit, that’s a bad look. I understand there’s probably a ton of label meddling in these decisions, but still. I’ve always loved the title track, since I was a wee lad studying music in school. So I figured…

Oh boy. So. I’d never actually listened to this all the way through before. Sure, we all know those tracks that people hate so much, and I saw the band live during this tour cycle and witnessed a lot of the death metal songs here sounding pretty impressive, I won’t lie. How do I even tackle this? This record is considered one of the most universally reviled metal albums of all time. Playing it through…

Nile’s debut album (not counting the demo, even though that feels long enough to be an album) is a blocky and solid affair that introduces the world to the band’s unique take on combining ancient Egypt with death metal. This is far from the polish of Annihilation Of The Wicked or In Their Darkened Shrines, but its great to see where the band’s musical journey truly started to begin and flourish. At a first listen,…

I have to say off the bat that I find Democracy underwhelming. I’ve listened to it twice now, and it just doesn’t jump out at me. It’s not bad, but it’s just very uneventful. The mix is very wishy washy and everything gets lost and buried. Kinda like the shoegaze hoover effect, but not in desired way. Democracy, unfortunately, sees Killing Joke on auto-pilot. This is a crying shame after the return to form thay…

Hater is now 11 years old. Damn, son. Anyways, this little fucker is probably my favourite TFD stuff, outside of the sessions that appeared on the Slimewave splits (I absolutely love the drum sound on those sessions). Here Rich Hoak and chums perfect their spastic, jazzy grind down to the very last blast or chug. The songs are just brilliant. From “Weaponization Of The Mega-Self”, “Everything You Need But Nothing You Want”, “It’s Only Attitude”…

Thecorpseinthecrawlspace is one of the more “musical” things that Bobby Maggard and chums were involved in. In fact, I can’t remember if this was actually a solo project or if it had other members (some of the main-line bands on Stoma Stew had some other people involved, I’m sure). Anyways, blasting goregrind is the order of the day, only here we are happily engulfed in riffs and some excellent drum programming, rather than the endless…

This was a project that I put together in late 2013. I’d decided that I wanted to do some gorenoise, but with the genre feeling rather saturated, I initially figured I’d fire up some “pornoise” shtick but eventually settled on using a bong for long, watery vocal effects. In fact, this was a ton easier than using actual pitch-shifted vocals. The bong is run through the same kind of effects that you would use on…

I’m no jazz expert, as I’m sure I’ve declared numerous times already. With that in mind, I sometimes struggle to review jazz records, even in this micro-format of a short paragraph or two. This is great, old-fashioned and busy jazz; just what the doctor ordered if something of the more classic variety is what you were after. If you want spacey 25-minute fusion epics, you’re looking in the wrong place.

I’ve heard the name Jah Wobble many, many times, but have never had the pleasure of partaking in any of his music. Thank the dub heavens then, for this collab with the legendary Bill Laswell. A Dub Transmission takes you on an hour of ticking, chill-out beats underpinned by intense, fat sub-bass. It won’t blow a hole in your speaker cone, but you can definitely feel its presence, which is fantastic. A bit later on,…

I’m going to have to address Douglas P’s politics at some point. Probably in the form of a YouTube video so nothing is lost through hard text. That is an unfortunate reality I am faced with have now covered several Death In June records here. I love Death In June. There is no other band that sounds quite like them, despite them being a highly imitated pillar of the neo folk movement. In the early…

This is a long overdue listen for me. Dogg Pound, is perhaps, quite famously, a duo comprising of Kurupt and Daz Dillinger, who you may know from Dr. Dre’s albums or Snoop Dogg’s legendary Doggystyle album. These are the two guys that fill out a good chunk of guest spots on some high profile releases in the hip hop world during the 90s and it was high time (lol) that I checked out their debut…

Intestinal Disgorge’s first album is as fuckin’ batshit crazy as you’d expect to be. By this point, the band have a long and surprisingly varied career (who saw that coming?), so its nice to go back and check out the very sordid beginnings. In fact, Intestinal Disgorge got seedier and more brutal as they progressed into the 2000s (Depravity is probably one of the sickest and most unrelenting things ever recorded, at 60 tracks long)….

Hrmmmm. This is a rare misstep for Burial. Let me preface this by saying that the music here isn’t bad, nor is its production inferior. Everything is above board. I’m just…. confused by the vibes. The name Rival Dealer of course conjures the usual Burial magic of urban grit filtered through fractured and almost ambient dance/dub sound pieces. All of them are unique yet united as a whole. On Rival Dealer however, which contains some…

Juicer are a sonic force to be reckoned with. Calling All Cars shows their all-encompassing sound in its infancy, from sweet, lullaby-esque vocal pieces to stomping grunge and or sludge bangers. The duo would get heavier, more experimental and more extreme as time went on, but their debut is a sunny slice of all the things that makes this project so brilliant.

Very angery. Straight up heavy as shit, balls out powerviolence. I love the aesthetic, I love the production, and I love the rabid vocals and unstoppable instrumentation. As with most compositions in this style, it doesn’t last forever, but it doesn’t need to. Highly recommended.

Burial is a dissapointing transition between The Guilty Have No Pride and the absolute classic that is Nada!. What we do get in the way of genuine new material is fantastic, I personally enjoy “Sons Of Europe” and “Death In The West”, even the seemingly hated “Black Radio” sound collage. Unfortunately side B is crammed with nothing more than a shitty live recording, so to call Burial a second album by this band is really…

A live split EP which actually sounds pretty clear. The AGx stuff crawls a bit, rather than being from their selection of mincing microblasts. Quality is usually any issue that I have with splits from these Belgian legends, repeated songs aside. And that’s all OK here. The Nyctophobic side isn’t bad either. Is this an essential underground gem? Perhaps not, but it’s not bad either.

Atrocities has to be one of, if not the best, First Days recordings. Their slushy drum machine gore is perfected here, with interesting themes and perfect shifted vocals. The vocals in of themselves are something that need to be heard to be believed. Fast, brutal, savage. That’s all I need to say here, I think.

The Real Thing blew Faith No More up. Angel Dust, which followed, seemed to weird a lot of mainstream media and fans out, if what I read on the Internet is true. I can kinda see this, as Angel Dust can get quite obtuse in moments. Songs like “Jizzlobber” and “RV” are of course going to hit a bit on the nose, but fans of Patton et al will of course no doubt instead revel…

On first impressions, VHS Logos’ legendary Mantra record fits right in alongside the other early greats of the vaporwave genre. However, give it chance to develop and you are treated to a smattering of beats and vibes in the hip hop and funk styles too. Everything is wrapped in that warm, fuzzy 90s analogue sound that we all love vaporwave so much for, and I’m sure there’s plenty of re-worked samples and songs going on…

It’s really cool to look back at the beginnings of this band, who are now one of the biggest names in modern death metal. This cavernous debut is probably the most “different” sounding to all their other stuff, where they found their true style and their feet. That isn’t to say this demo is shaky, far from it in fact, its just the style of death metal on display is a little different, and the…

Cannibal Corpse’s second record with Corpsegrinder on vocals certainly hits home a bit harder for me than Vile did. Not to shit on Vile at all, but I just prefer this one. The album art features a woman who has perhaps the longest torso in the entire world, and whilst its not one of the best pieces Vince Locke has ever done, it fits the sound here perfectly. Opening track “I Will Kill You” is…

This has been my jam recently. To say that I have overlooked Morbid Angel would be a lie, but I’ve definitely been a dismisser of their “later” discography, starting with Domination. More fool me, however, as this has probably become my favourite Morbid Angel record (for the time being, at least). Domination marks Erik Rutan’s addition to the band (the producer legend, also of Hate Eternal and currently the recent incarnation of Cannibal Corpse). Domination…

John Tardy has to have one of the most distinctive death metal vocal sounds. He reminds me of the gnolls from the Forgotten Realms computer RPG Baldur’s Gate. Your man here literally sounds like a feral beast let loose to scream over these sludgy, lurching death metal tunes. Do I love this as much as Autopsy? Probably not, but it’s still a legendary lesson (lesion?) in doing slow death metal just right. I love the…

Abruptum’s initial legacy ended in the mid 2000s, but after a few years hiatus, the member known as “Evil” returned without founding member “IT” (Information Tech? – these fuckin’ names, man) and released new material under the Abruptum name, even though, realistically, this should have been called something else entirely. However. This is fucking great. Potestates Apocalypsis (you know its grim and evil if the name is in fuckin’ Latin) is actually really, really good….

This is the second and final album from The Blood Divine, the band featuring several members of Principle-era COF, as well as Darren White from Anathema. Mystica is a refreshing journey, actually. The first album is a solid and fine lesson in 90s British doom (arguably the best doom?), but Mystica goes off in several unpredictable directions. There are a lot of rock and blues parts, and the keyboard playing is absolutely excellent in this…

The Blood stuff here is great. Its raw, its nasty, and it really shows the styles that the band flirted with, bridging elements of death and grind with even black or war metal stylings. Love it. Unfortunately for me, I’ve heard the Impetigo side a thousand times because I got the Giallo / Antefatto complication CD through a trade when I was a teenager and these songs are already on there. Plus, the version of…

I’ve approached The Epic multiple times since release and have struggled to find the words to do it justice. Therefore, I’ve decided after another recent listen through at the beginning of the year, to throw all pretense of “doing it justice” to the wolves and just commit this monster of an album to the site. Is it too overblown for me to state that The Epic is the Bitches Brew of our generation? Possibly. Bitches…

I snoozed on this when it came out, and I snoozed once more when the 3XM side was re-released on 12″ vinyl. In fact, why did the vinyl re-release only include the 3XM stuff? Seems a bit shitty. Anyway, I digress. This is a pretty solid effort from 3XM, which farts hyperspeed drum machine grindcore over you in their “original” full length style – i.e. the production is decent, the vocals are weird and the…

How is this 9 years old? The time, she flies! I used to trade a lot with the Fuck The Industry label from Japan, who at the time were putting out some of the highest quality home made releases I’d seen. It goes to show how much difference can be made by investing in a decent printer (lol) – all of FTI’s stuff looked the part, both on CDr and cassette. Video Nasty (not to…

I’m not sure why Voices’ output fell off the radar in the mid 2010s, after the quickfire one-two of albums in 2013 and 2014, but I’d have to assume that it had a lot to do with Akercocke becoming a functioning entity again. In a running theme with a lot of the posts that I have made here recently, I completely missed this record around the time of its release, finally catching up with it…

I’ve never really been able to get into Watain. It’s not that I don’t like a bit sneaky melody living beneath the frosted, barren landscapes of my black metal. Nor is it that I find any of their music to be boring or badly made. Lawless Darkness is a intense slab of blackened metal tomfoolery, which admittedly doesn’t quite live up to the savage evilness promised by the title and the cover art, but is…

It seems almost pointless to write a blog post about a download-only single. But hey, I’ve listened to this thing a ridiculous amount of times so its probably a good idea to go ahead and commit it here to the archive of forever. This is unreasonably catchy. For someone who enjoys both vaporwave and TES III: Morrowind, this is a match made in heaven. Hey, April 1st seems a good a day as any to…

I have a spotty relationship with Wheelchair x4. Granted, its mostly my fault, having organised a failed compilation featuring 69 bands around the time everyone was leaving MySpace en-masse and it took a year or so to get everyone’s money back. Anyway, that’s water under the bridge. I got this in 2013 along with the Elastic Death split and I really enjoyed it, despite the animosity the guys seem to have against me. Maybe its…

Dense, brutal death metal is the order of the day. In the old school style of course, as I’m sure you can tell by the artwork. The resurgence of this kinda shit is still flowing freely from an unblocked sewer, and for now, I’m OK with that (no doubt saturation point will be reached at some point in the near future). Insurrection Or Submission isn’t a particularly long affair, nor, dare I say, is it…

Vile is the first Cannibal Corpse record without Chris Barnes on vocals. Fortunately, the history of metal has been kind to us, and metalheads will surely know that this means that Vile is the first record with the now-legendary George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher. This tidbit aside, it is unfortunately difficult not to compare this to what came before, especially considering Barnes left the band on such a fucking high, with the final record being The Bleeding….

Abigail has always danced at the corners of my musical peripheral vision (lol); the odd festival appearance here, the odd logo shirt there. But never had i submitted myself to their sleazy thrashing blackened metal until now. Think Nunslaughter, but throw in some more d-beat and make all the songs about “sluts” instead of goats, and you’re on the right track. Imagine if Midnight were a band full of horny teenage boys, and you’d maybe…

Ah! Classic old school Agathocles EP right here. Guitars down-tuned to non-existence, shifted vokills and drums that are all over the place – what more could you possibly want? I love this primordial soup stuff, way back before mincecore was defined by stomps, d-beats and those riffs. Not that I hate any of that stuff, no no, but I do have a soft spot for the more grinding death metal sound to Agathocles had at…

This is fucking great. I heard about this as it was mentioned in passing by Stuart Anstis; during a very long interview he mentioned that Robin (the original COF bass player) had a project called December Moon. I don’t think Stu had anything to do with this, but he led me down this path at the least. Honestly, this is awesome. It’s showing its age, in some regards, but that’s OK. The production is great,…

2 sick tracks from early muddy Brujeria? What more could you possibly want? I love this band’s unique mix of hardcore, grindcore and death metal, all with their unique spin and immediately recognisable vocal. Production is a bit primitive here, but that’s absolutely fine by me.

Wow. There’s something humbling about listening back to old noisecore stuff. There always seems to be an element of fun involved with just getting into a room, or switching on your board setup, and giving everyone’s ears hell. When I listen to raw rehearsal recordings, which is the case here with the Final Exit stuff, I feel like I’m given an unique window, a fly-on-the-wall look into a rehearsal room full of friends messing about…

Doom The Way id Did is a community WAD pack that intends to pay homage to the original “classic” Doom mapping trio of Romero, Tom Hall and Sandy Peterson, by emulating their design philosophies and – literally – make a new Doom campaign, but the way id did. The problem I have with this is that outside of pigeonholing Romero into his now-famous, tech-base-based (lol) design criteria (you just need to look at Sigil to…

I was turned onto Havohej by the Punk Rock MBA YouTube channel, of all places. I love how fucking weird some of this shit gets, but in the grand scheme of things, Dethrone The Son Of God is pretty straightforward as far as black metal goes. The vocals are fantastic, and so are the riffs and drums to be honest, and the whole thing comes together nicely and the production isn’t too abrasive. If you’ve…

Well then. Wild card listen of the week award goes to this…. record? Honestly, it’s a stretch to even call it that. Baphometal is almost indecipherable, whatever thrashy blackened metal we should be enjoying here is buried beneath decades of grime and dust. It truly must be one of the most unlistenable and barely audible tape demos that I have ever heard. And hey, trust me when I say folks, after over 20 years in…

Is there any type of death metal that is as bland and as boring and disinteresting as this? The answer is no. Fuck, these guys suck. Fuck them and their fucking bullshit music. Just gonna stop this here before I go off on one, but I listened to it so its on the site, thems the rules. Lowest common denominator trash, weak even for Sevared Records (and they’ve released some absolute shite over the years).