This is something that I have had in my possession for the best part of ten years and have never bothered listening to. I’ve got about three of ’em left from some trade from many moons ago, and I guess that fact that they were all shrink wrapped put me off listening to one and I just winged them all in my distro case and that’s where they have been ever since. The split is…

Such misery and death befalls us, such puny humans that we are! Septicflesh channel said misery through exotic and traditional sounds, distilling an interesting brand of death metal that is mournful and morose, yet boasts masterful dexterity and precise brutality. That album cover is something else, though.

I’m unsure if Tom Waits is a genius or a raving madman (why not both?), but Real Gone is my favourite record of his that I have heard thus far. It brings the throaty, terrifying blues that he is known for and drags into into an either dirtier sound with a more modern sensibility. Even though it came out in 2004, it sounds like it could have been made yesterday.

Brutal, blasting, menacing black metal done properly, for once. Wurdulak are a veritable furnace of scorching hatred, and on Severed Eyes Of Possession, that furnace is firing on all cylinders indeed. Severed Eyes of Possession by Wurdulak

Where the hell has this been all my life? This sounds like Agathocles on steroids. Imagine mincing goregrind with Morbid Angel riffs and you are in the right ballpark. Not much to say about such a short old demo tape but definitely listen to this! My eyes are truly peeled for more Germen stuff (of which, admittedly, this is not much).

Ultra heavy grinding metallic noise from Ireland (apparently they are very pessimistic). To be fair to these guys (and girl these days) they have a solid back catalog. Thick, decent production for rabid, fast paced tunes. <a href=”http://candlelightrecordsuk.bandcamp.com/album/pessimist”>Pessimist by Abaddon Incarnate</a>

Ooh she’s a harsh one, Mildred! The Rita batters you with Vomir-esque walls (admittedly with more variation and wobbles) bookended with bizarre samples about Romans and a very English-sounding Cleopatra (lol), whilst Worker (who are new to me) operates on a much more skittish level; like the sounds of the bass from a hundred gorenoise bands running through a substation at 40,000 volts. All in all, these eggs is good.

Hyperemesis has got to be one of the best things to ever exist in the history of the world. Furious Scent Of Dumped Rotten Offals treads the line between blasting rancid putrefaction and stomping mince groove in such a way that the balance of the two itself almost becomes an art-form in itself. There’s a lot of stompy mincegore out there now but Hyperemesis easily remains one of the best. Cassette version is still available…

Hard rock from Carcass’ Bill Steer. Quite a bit of a departure from “Swarming Vulgar Mass Of Infected Virulency”, but who’s comparing the two? It’s pretty laid back and chilled, and it’s pretty decent background music. It does drag a bit, and I’m not a huge fan of the vocals, but it is hardly awful. I bought this on CD years ago but I have no idea where it is.

This is the third offering from a more matured and developed Jig-Ai. It is still the same blasting goregrind at heart, but with an additional level and nuance and flare that was not present on previous efforts. I think to call goregrind progressive would be a bit daft on my part, but over the three full length records to this point, you can genuinely see the plotted path that Jig-Ai has taken in growing their…

A veritable cocktail of evilness, Panzer Division Marduk is a maelstrom of blasting militant madness. Watching blastbeat videos on YouTube led me back to this viscous classic, which I’ll be honest, I haven’t heard in a while. The record balances sheer brutality with a tidy, all-encompassing sound, much like what I’d except a warfare-obsessed 1349 to sound like, if I had to make comparisons. Marduk have a long and varied discography, but this always stands…

Active Stenosis is genuinely my new favourite thing. I was turned onto them last year by Carlos of CxBxFxExTxCxExTxCx. Channeling the vibe of Lymphatic Phlegm and the watery, disgusting goodness and heaviness of say, Regurgitate, and presenting it for the new generation of goregrind sickos. Final Histopathology Report, and the band’s follow up album are essential listening for this genre. I am seriously late to the party! Tapes were out on Cadaveric Dissolution Records but…

Nowhere near as trippy or “out there” as I thought it would be, from past efforts and from the frankly amazing album cover. Really chilled out, laid back, with long songs and meandering themes. Nice, but not their greatest.

This is a bizarre one, even by my standards. Imagine all kinds of weird lo fi pop meeting drone or noise. Mouthed drums, hypnotic guitar loops, odd synths. Highly enjoyed!

Scorn is generally, all-round, just a really under-rated project, which unfortunately low-key fizzled out in 2011 or 2012 (I forget which). I was lucky enough to catch Mr. Harris performing live under this moniker before the end came, and the remixes on this 12″ are a brilliant example of the type of shit that was pumping out of that later-day set. Props also go, of course, to King Cannibal and The Wee DJ for providing…

I probably haven’t heard this record in over ten years. It is still impossibly heavy, but to the nearly-30-year-old me the lyrics now seem a bit emo (lol). In all seriousness, this album changed my life, and is no doubt responsible for a lot of the direction that my life has taken. A very dark and angry album. Does it hold up today? Fuck yeah, I’d say it does.

Absolutely gorgeous dungeon synth music! You’d never know that this was made only in the last year or so; Thangorodrim captures the vibe of 90s dungeon music to a tee, and then improves on it tenfold. I love mirky, hiss-filled lost recordings of old, but Taur-nu-Fuin is a high fidelity performance that takes the sounds of Era 1 Mortiis to whole new realms of imagination. Taur-nu-Fuin [REMASTER] by Thangorodrim

By the time World Of Lies entered this world of lies (hur hur hur), The Berzerker had become a fully fledged death metal band, shedding their grindcore and gabba roots and replacing them with more intricate song structures. This was hinted at on the skullfuck that is Dissimulate, but the songs here have much more room to breathe. I think ‘melody’ would probably be the wrong word; I’d say ‘scope’ would be the better option….

I checked out Life Index after being very impressed by a few of the singles that I’d come across from the producer. Unfortunately, the debut album doesn’t appear to be up to the same standard. Some of the vocal performances sound like Mortiis trying to break into the mainstream dance scene, and admittedly that leaves a little bit to be desired. Recommend sticking to the EPs for your Maceo Plex fix.

I attended Field Day 2017 with some work colleagues (sadly it was the same day as the London van attacks – mental shit) but I failed to inspect the merch stall and missed this record, which was for sale on this day only. Thanks to the wonders of the internet however, I’ve been lucky enough to not miss out retrospectively. This is, purely, a stunning display of Aphex Twin-erisms. I can’t really say more than…

Commando Mengele, or Angel of Death is an 1987 action movie that is best completely forgotten about. This is one of those films which is totally devoid of action, suspense or anything of any real interest. The plot is fucking dire, the cinematography is just appalling, the acting is unspeakable. The only thing of any redeemable quality is the synthesizer soundtrack, and even that sounds like a cross between the soundtracks of a porno and…

The 2 Minuta Dreka stuff here seems to stand out from the rest of their discography, taking a super-downtuned, 8 string approach to proceedings. Frankly, it is rather jarring, even more so than the difference between their pornogrind and their noisecore. It isn’t bad per se, but I’m glad to see that they did not continue in this direction for very long. Lymphatic Phlegm I’ve never been a massive fan of, but I have come…

What we have hear is a prime example of the genus Metallicus Typicalus. Often, in its natural habitat, the foibles of such can be glossed over by the dedicated elite, but stand it alone, and its blemishes can be seen – and heard – all the more easily. What I’m trying to say is, Beyond The Light is not the perfect metal album, not by a long shot, but it an entertaining one, warts and…

Christ, this is fucking miserable. In the best possible way, of course. Xasthur has this interesting method of making the most damp recordings sound absolutely hypnotizing and magical, and A Gate Through Blood Stained Mirrors is of no exception to that rule. This is a long one, to be honest, but if you’ve got the time, the pay off is phenomenal. This shits on most “transcendent” black metal. A Gate Through Bloodstained Mirrors by Xasthur

Surely one of the most classic rock albums ever, right? The things Alice Cooper has done for the theatrical aspect of rock and metal really cannot be charted or appreciated here in just one review, but Billion Dollar Babies is the perfect example of his (edit: their) early work, balancing the commercial sensibilities of School’s Out with the bizarre horror elements that would later be found on Vince’s solo stuff like Welcome To My Nightmare….

XIII marked the point where Mushroomhead finally had the financial backing to deliver an all-out polished, nu-metal with bells on full length record. Their first “international” LP, XX, was a compilation of tracks the band had self-released in their early years, so XIII was the group’s first album whilst being in the limelight. It is quite the departure from the jumbled, beautiful clusterfuck of XX and the records that came before it, but absolutely nowhere…

With the recent 20th anniversary re-issue of this I was not-so-subtly reminded that I’ve never checked out any of Myzery’s stuff. The production on this is great; proper solid old school street hip hop style, and Myzery’s flow is seamless, darting back between Spanish and English like it ain’t no thing. Throw in a guest appearance from a Milenko-era ICP and that is just the icing on the cake. Great little EP. 

I don’t have much in common with the type of people who relish a yearly visit to the Reading and Leeds festivals, but one thing I do have in common with a lot of them is a seemingly rabid appreciation of the early Muse records. Granted, anything the band has released since 2008 onward has been pretty much a disgusting wet fart to the face. But the early records mixed odd, dark indie a la…

The first thing that blew me out of my chair when playing this record was the drumming performance from Seth van de Loo. Holy shit! That is some insane stuff! Kudos. The second thing would have to be the bass guitar work of Patrick Boleij, which clanks away, underpinning the carnage, akin to the sound on early Cryptopsy records. Feasting On Blood is a solid, solid album, and is a nonstop trip through some of…

Ok, so Smashing Dumplings sound a whole lot more death metal than when I saw them live four or five years ago. I mean, either they’ve given their sound a bit of a more ‘brutal’ overhaul in lieu of spazzy, fast grind, or my memory is terrible and I’m just an idiot. Either way, Side Effects is pretty fuckin’ great. Chunky, nasty death metal that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Infinity is a task of a record, if I’m being real here. Just sitting down and honestly, thoroughly listening to a track of this scope is a bit difficult for me, which is weird considering how much I love harsh noise. There is just something about the pace of Jesu’s music, which is heartbreaking as it is at the same time enormously uplifting, that results in me only being able to ingest it whilst in…

I love goregrind, and I love Autophagia. Unearthing ancient tomes of dusty demos is part of the fun when it comes to this particular sub genre, but unfortunately, Anatomical Septicemia fails to offer anything of any value, to absolutely anyone. Sure, you’ve gotta have a ear for badly recorded demos, but the quality on this cassette demo sounds like your listening to a band rehearse in another room, recorded on a mobile phone. It doesn’t…

More haunting gorenoise from the Big Frog himself. This short EP seems to be compiled entirely out of layered vocal gurgles, like a whole swamp itself is teeming with enough life to create a gorenoise racket. A good place to start if you’re into Phyllo’ but some of the track lengths to the noisier stuff puts you off. (2021 edit: My original link for this died. If anyone has any info on this release, please…

Antigama are a very special grindcore band, in that I don’t really believe that they play grindcore at all. I mean sure, their music has roots of chaotic grind elements, and the vocalist’s roar is reminiscent of Napalm Death’s Barney Greenway, but Antigama draw from all over the musical spectrum. You can probably tell from the record sleeves that this isn’t just another grindcore band, and to the un-initiated, I would describe Meteor as a…

Imagine High On Fire crossed with Mastadon and you should get a good idea of what is going on here. Throaty vocals propell these dreamy, heavy-stoned musical explorations of sound through the infinite cosmos of experimental wonder. It is progressive, but with the underpinning vibe and, I guess, performance lulling in the school of doom metal, providing busy, Sabbath-after-twelve-Dabbeths (lol) drumming and rumbling, chunky bass guitar underpinning the soaring guitar and vocals.

Everything about this album is looooooonnnnng, including the amount of time it has been on my review “to do list” (about 7 years – my bad!). I first became aware of the Samsara Blues Experiment after a trip to Roadburn Festival in 2011, and I fell in love with their excellently balanced heavy / psych approach to prog. The songs are meandering, jam-like, but held together by an underpinning heavyness with stops the record from…

I’ve had something of a bloody rekindling love affair with Mortician as of late. I’ve been jamming some goregrind stuff and I guess some of the slower riffs resonated with me and I went digging through my Mortician stuff. Finding only Hacked Up For BBQ and Zombie Apocalypse on CD, I went straight to Spotify and devoured the entire discography (sans Re-Animated Flesh), of which this House by the Cemetery re-issue stood out to me…

Nightmare city is a decidedly average yet somewhat quite enjoyable zombie horror movie from the 80s. It tells the story of a radioactive army plane returning from an unknown destination, bringing with it an army of crazed undead. As unfortunate for the viewer as it is for the victims trying to escape in near slow motion, the pacing of this feature is somewhat dire. This even makes the most chaotic or gory scenes seem boring…

Cradle really seem to be firing out albums lately, or perhaps I’m just getting old and time is sailing by with the pace of say, a methamphetamine powered Concorde. Stylistically, Cryptoriana is not dissimilar to the excellent Hammer Of The Witches; it is nimble and well-produced, with the band still enjoying its most reliable and consistently strongest line-up in quite some time. However, I cannot shake the feeling that the band are just going through…

This is just pure analogue noise heaven; bleeping, blooping, leaping, looping fun for all of the family, or something like that. Dancing along the line that zig zags haphazardly between a harsh noise auditory palate cleanser and the type of soundtrack you’d get in a b-movie about aliens invading the earth, Disregard Your Life is a refreshing and almost relaxing trip through the world of electronic noise. The first track, at just shy of nineteen…

This is a digitally released EP between two pornogrind bands, one from Thailand and one from Mexico. Pornorama are the latest addition to the Bedroom Pornogrind Club, offering a plodding, somewhat tedious approach to proceedings. It is, honestly, not that good. The riffs are pretty interesting but the vocals are crap and the drumming is thin. Lord Piggy have a slightly more filled out sound, but fall into the Cemetery Rapist school of crickets-meets-chugga-chugga death…

Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle, I forgot that I owned this. I dug it out for a trade recently and realised I hadn’t covered this for the site. Bobby M sent me this back in 2012 when my girlfriend was in New York, so I had a week long goregrind and pizza binge, really getting to grips with the depths of the genre. RSWC incorporates spooky, echoic production into the gorenoise style, bringing all…

After returning to this after some time, the first thing that strikes me is how fucking massive those drums sound. Yeah, the kit is triggered out the wazoo, but this is symphonic metal my dudes, not acid jazz. Nicolas Barker plus triggers equals percussive armageddon. Piledriving blastbeats and mind-warping double bass is the order of the day, leading Dimmu’s razor sharp twinkly goth heaviness from the rear. The band got a bit “poppy” on this…

Everything Anal Whore puts out has this somewhat endearing (lol) analogue quality, as if it has been recorded onto tape or using an old school drum machine. It adds a warm edge to the project’s insane pornogrind approach, taking the maniacal, noisecore-direct path rather than the groovy, plodding variant. Sexual Perversion is the first EP under the moniker and was released way back in 2001, cramming 22 nonsensical tracks into 17 minutes of mush. The…

This looks like something of a classic, but unfortunately fails upon delivery due to excruciating pacing issues. The plot follows a series of characters as they squabble over the estate of the late John Carradine (who plays yet another useless mad scientist / professor type). Basically, Carradine’s character was about to sell out to an American, and have the contents of his wax museum shipped to New York. The wax creatures of his museum are…

Tu Carne play boisterous goregrind in a groovy style. Despite this, there is nothing groovy about their pitchshifted vocals – that shit is, how can I put it – evil as absolute fuck, yo. There is also something of a hardcore punk sensibility, particularly in the production sound of Culto… and especially in the riffs, which at first results in an awkward mesh of styles. One of course, which works rather well once you have…

Party Cannon are a somewhat legendary band on the British underground. They wallow mainly in the slam sub-genre of death metal and hail from misty Scotland. It is refreshing to see a band bringing some colour and humour to the drab and excessively gory bogs of the death metal world (without, of course, losing anything in ferocity or musical dexterity). Clean and precise production has allowed Party Cannon a clear canvas to err, be able…

This was one of those little gems that I accidentally discovered via Spotify. Maceo Plex’s Conjure Infinity EP/single seems to tread the line between deep house the more hypnotic stylings of the pystrance genre. Throw over some dark electronic passages and you’ve got yourself a recipe for success. The two tracks almost meld as one (the second may even be a re-working or a remix? What do I know…) and have a chilled, subliminal feel…

Welcome to a world of dark, dense, atmospheric horror. The title of the split, for both acts, is Domestic Goddess, and coupled with some The Rita-esque artwork, delivers a seedy yet subliminally disturbing romp through the, dare I say, usual tropes of the power electronics genre. That is not to tar the artists here as “usual fare”, but [Gone Dark]Bleach offers a much more variant and interesting approach to the subject matter at hand. Survivalist…

This band’s discography varies in quality for me, especially as time goes on. Perhaps amazingly, there are no massive, bulging stinkers, which is pretty impressive considering the length of their career and the apparent “simplicity” of the ingredients that make up their music. I feel that a dirgy, analogue sound lends itself to Cramps records much better than the clear, professional production jobs on their later albums. Stay Sick strikes a good balance between the…

We played a show with these guys in Bruges (ha, geddit?) earlier this year (edit: nearly a whole year ago! I need to get through my posting schedule quicker, jeez) and I thought it would be a pretty clever idea (always full of ’em) to check these guys out before we went over. As with all things that I touch, Lines In Wax temporarily fell to shit and it took me a gazillion years to…

Orifice play sloppy, burpy, bottom-flapping pornogrind, which, refreshingly, does not get stuck into the endless tupa-tupa snoozefest. Better Than Sex comes across as almost identical to early Anal Whore, but with more, er, melody in the mix. It all sounds a bit lo-fi at first, but the guitars are churning out some interesting riffs, and the drum programming is fucking spot on. Lazy drum programming is the downfall of many a bedroom grindcore outfit, but…

Welcome to a world of cornier-than-corny rock and/or roll. Sacred Few few play metal in the metaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal sense of the word – metal so metal that it is basically bad hard rock. You know what I’m talking about right? Songs about riding bikes and coming and playing your town and all of that shit. But, there is something about this that is so deliciously more-ish, like a crap children’s cereal. If female fronted rrrrawk is…

Its no small joke how long the world (well, the goregrind world) has been waiting for a new 2 Minuta Dreka record to drop, and now that it actually has, it has seemingly taken me a whole age to get around to reviewing it. The first thing I notice about Porno Bizzarro is its fairly polished production job, which gives the whole thing a massive fucking gut-punch. The sampling has become more obscure, and lends…

Gothic, oddly melodic death metal from Sweden, played in the style of say, Disembowelment meets Vital Remains or some such ridiculous statement. The Ending Quest seems to have that welcoming analogue quality, which is accompanied by that production sound that kinda falls into a wall of hiss (y’know, like how a vinyl record sounds when you reach the tracks pressed closer to the label in the middle). This gives the riffs a wasp-like quality, but…

There’s something just downright cheery about this record. Blag Dahlia seems to have this twisted way of making songs about being a violent, jailbait chasing punk seem all sunshine and roses. I mean, the album cover is kinda a give away to the true nature of this upbeat, poppy punk record, but there we go. The first seven tracks of this thing are pure unstoppable, sleazy, violent punk sang through gritted teeth and an insane…

(Hats off to the artist of this record sleeve – 5/7 would commission art) Paediatrician offer us medical sloppiness portrayed through the brutal death metal medium. Deformed Premature offers bludgeoning riffage, meeting ants-in-your-pants drumming and the usual scatological farmyard range of vocal rituals. It draws a little blood (virally infected, no doubt) from the slam genre, specifically in more of the choppier guitar playing and the higher vocal sounds. All in all, it is solid,…

Quite possibly the worst (best?) film I have seen thus far. I mean, wow, this is bad. This is about a bunch of rival gangs vying for control of the beach now that the police are off the scene due to a massive earthquake or some shit. I don’t really know where to begin. Honestly. I need a moment… Shocking acting on all fronts, except Dawn Wildsmith as Eva, who is probably the most enigmatic…

The Autopsy Of Jane Doe starts as a promising creeper, where a pathologist / medical examiner father & son duo come across a female corpse that has sustained horrific injuries and is harboring all sorts of bizarre secrets. Dad (Brian Cox) is a methodical and professional character, who offers interesting insights into each increasingly bizarre discovery on or in the girl’s body. I felt that there was over-use of musical queues (I hate being told…

Mid-career Cathedral output is often looked at with a certain degree of scorn, which is understandable in some respects but then, mainly not so understandable in others. Playing Supernatural Birth Machine, which bursts forth from the womb into heavy metal life (I went there) with the highly entertaining and excellently heavy “Urkos Conquest” and firmly establishes itself as a cheesy doom masterpiece within a matter of minutes. Do you need any more ride bell in…

Ba ba doo de da doop. What’s more insane than Mike Patton smoking crack in a jazz club? Why, John Zorn’s Naked City, of course! Meet the album that spawned the band of the same name. Bizarre grindcore elements meet experimental jazz music, resulting in pompous explosions of glorious noise in bed next to smooth, swinging numbers and interpretations of famous TV/movie themes. I’ll never think of the James Bond theme in the same way…

Parazitózis play the sort of goregrind that makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. Sludgy, toned-to-almost-human-inaudibility guitar mush meets arsehole-for-a-face swamp vocals and drumming that is swifter than instant decapitation. The Taste Of Medical Waste is billed as a one man old school goregrind attack, which kinda undersells it, as there are hundreds of projects fitting that description. Parazitózis is much more adept at invoking intumescent tunage from the suppurating, bubbling vats of putrefying filth….

I have a soft spot for early Celtic Frost; it just seems to tick all of the right boxes as far as metal goes. The overall product is slightly primitive, with a condensed production job, but this allows for a dry, punchy drum sound to penetrate through the fog of guitars. Leads (and oddly, the bass) are fine but the rhythym gets swallowed up in the haze. Asides from the well-known classics here, my favourites…

It is such a weird feeling when you discover something that has been under your nose this whole time (hell, since before you were even born – imagine such ignorance!). Today I’m talking about Cardiff’s Demented Are Go, who are – granted – a band praised for helping pioneer the psychobilly sound, which isn’t exactly my strong point. But, Demented Are Go lean towards the harder, more abrasive end of the scale, and hail from…

This is perfect, considering the current political climate. It dropped at just the right time; days before the election farce of 2016 this came like a wet fart out of nowhere into the face of the world (I wrote this a loooong time ago, the world hasn’t ended just yet – Ed). Anal Trump have gone on to release several short blasts of petulant goregrind wetness, having at the socio-political issues of the day through…

IMDb has this down as a “spaghetti horror”, which is pretty funny. Where does a giallo end and spaghetti horror begin, definition wise? I guess, if anything, Delirium is a late offering to the giallo cause, coming out in 1987. Either way, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, despite how bad it looks. The sound effects are so fucking cheap, and couple that with an unbelievable bad overdub, the even more unbelievably bad acting, we have…

The Day Everything Became Nothing play in a dry, sterile, heaving approach to goregrind; the type that can suffocate you beneath its weight, like dying slowly trapped under rubble, or having your fucking head smashed off in one go by an anvil or some such grotesquery. Harking from the school of the CBT vein of gore, TDEBN expand on this template to take the groovy gore into a more solid, straight-up metal direction. The song-writing…

A Chapter Of Accidents is surely the pinnacle of classic Dead Infection? Fuck it, even in the history and development of the goregrind sound itself. Yeah, I’m going with that! A Chapter Of Accidents manages to stand out in an infernal sea of disgusting goregrind, even by today’s standards. The subterranean production of earlier Dead Infection records is replaced by a crispy – yet still repugnant – sound that is far more suited to the…

I’ve always had a soft spot for Bad Religion, despite having a “metalhead” background whilst growing up. It all started when I heard “You” on the soundtrack for the Tony Hawks 2 game back when I was a nipper (along with horrorpunk era AFI and Millencolin’s “No Cigar”, man that soundtrack didn’t half sell punk rock to me!). Although, coming up through a world of extreme metal, I found Bad Religion’s laid back punk rock…

Billed as Full Moon Of The Virgins on Amazon Prime, and known as The Devil’s Wedding Night to most of the world, this fantastic Italian horror movie can comfortably join the Low Budget Movies With 9000 Different Names Club. I’ll go with the original title, Il Plenilunio Delle Vergini, even though I have absolutely no real fucking clue on how to correctly pronounce it. Il Plenilunio Delle Vergini is brilliant. I loved every second of…

I forgot how much I love this record. Sure, it is not in what is considered the high-point of Godflesh’s career, but appreciators of their entire body of work such as yours truly can find a lot of pleasure in the less-trodden paths of the ‘Flesh. My main complaint is that the whole thing sounds a little flat, but this isn’t something that cannot be rectified by turnin’ ‘ting up a bit, ken? That hurdle…

Distant Satellites, upon its release, marked a quietly confident return for the band, with the band’s sound maturing further yet again. Just when you think Anathema could not have evolved any further, they came out and dropped this. Distant Satellites is subtle yet emotionally dense, restrained yet soaring in ravines of ups and downs, warm yet cold with tales of loss and despair. The Cavanagh brothers et al have song writing down to a fine…

Ah, good ol’ Pumpkinhead. Honestly, I only wound up watching this because of the Misfits song of the same name (which I guess is loosely based on this? It has the same poem at the end). On first impressions, I found this to be a fairly crummy movie, but the more I thought about the whole premise and story, I found it to be pretty original and interesting (more so in story than in actual…

Buried deep beneath the sedimentary layers of this wasteland we call a musical landscape, there is a carved plateau in which six unscathed gems wait to be excavated.  After a few days of digging around Spotify radio playlists, I hit gold… or diamond. Unlike the previous releases that these four New Yorkers have put forth DIY, the 2014 EP – Careful Kid – was recorded in an actual studio (Room 17). The clarity shines through…

Of the two things that I never thought would go well together, football and thrash metal are high on that list. I suppose the insipid hooliganism and tribalist subtext to the football psyche (sorry football fans!) goes hand in hand with the one-dimensional attack of thrash metal. That would be true of course, if RDP didn’t expertly blend in hardcore punk influences too, giving the record a chaotic edge akin to the works of D.R.I….

It should feel like I’ve been waiting since the dawn of time for new Akercocke material, but with the Antichrist Imperium and the incredibly excellent Voices, my fix has been kept somewhat at bay. However, to the die hard Akercocke fanatic, I imagine this is somewhat akin to taking methadone instead of heroin, so it is an enormous sigh of relief that I can now lose myself in the blissful, all-encompassing abyss of the group’s…

Blackstar is a strange trip; a trip tinged by sadness, although that particular sadness was steeped in strength and ready to face what lay beyond. It isn’t everyday that you get to hear a record put out by a man who knew that he was dying (inb4 the general existential dread that comes with the knowledge that we are all slowly dying lol). This in itself should cut an interesting enough scenario, but things were…

Azealia Banks keeps popping up in the media due her somewhat erratic and bizarre behaviour. Naturally, this led me to actually check out her music, remembering “212” from a few years ago being a bit of a banger, with rude lyrics and intense Euro-style techno instrumentation. Broke With Expensive Taste is a bit of a mixed bag, if I’m honest. It reminds me of Lady Gaga’s debut album, which was also desperate to try and…

Cracking Morrissey album, this! The strongest sounding Morrissey album since 2004’s You Are The Quarry, very easily so in my opinion – yeah Christ, I really enjoyed this one. Great sound here, especially from the very grand opener “My Love, I’d Do Anything For You”, with its horn section coming into play, adding to that nice big band vibe. I keep going back to this one – a definite favourite! I won’t waffle on about…

A decade ago (Jesus Christ…) I tried (and failed) at running my own record label. I have done it again for fun once or twice since, but cutting out tape covers in my house is a bit different from trying to press vinyl and organising massive splits. Anyways, I failed miserably at it, but I did get my hands on some awesome music. This here was a CDr re-issue of an atmospheric Italian death metal…

Falling Early, Falling Often is a lesson in pure, unfiltered USA sludge mania. Channeling that Eyehategod school of combining time-warped Sabbath groove with downtuned desperation, Noothgrush’s dirty sound shines like a revealing black light through the dry, crisp and restrained production job which dominates most of the tracks on this collection. (Why is a lot of doom produced this way, is it to cram all of that riff in when recorded at what I can…

Tell you what, this has been on my review-list for over three years. I initially added it on when they were announced for a Temples Festival line up way back when. The initial review fell under the bus when some seriously dodgy accusations were made against the main man in Enabler by their ex-bass player. Now all that has blown over somewhat, I have finally decided to crack open the ancient draft file of this…

You gotta love Richard D. James, right? Often imitated (attempted, at least!) and discussed, but instantly recognizable and stands in his own little microcosm. Orphaned Deejay Selek came out around the same time as Syro, and honestly, I still spin this a lot more than I do the Syro record. There is something much more imminent about this; the way the opening tracks pulse and drive makes you just want to get up and go,…

(Excuse the lo-fi art today, can’t find anything with high enough resolution!) This is a barking mad, rabid display of hardcore punk power. Strong Intention’s music is underpinned by what seems like genuine disgust and anguish at the American work-a-day life, which sets them apart from their peers in a sea of similar bands. Songs like “Model Citizen”, “Consumer Sucker” and “Economic Outpatient” are perfect examples of this malice utilized to deliver scathing punk noise…

They do say that the devil has all the best tunes, and that is mos-def the situation here with Neuropathia’s 5th album (I could be wrong as the band have a long and varied discography and I just took a cursory glance at Discogs lol). Prepare yon lugholes for a bombastic explosion of somewhat rock-n-roll tinged grindcore madness. Imagine Regurgitate meeting Blood Duster at a Malignant Tumour gig and distill all of that through a…

It’s thrash-o-clock here at Lines in Wax! Its not often that I spin a thrash record, but when I do, you’d best be sure that it is a nasty thrash sound. Sodom always hit the spot every time, and I was reminded to write a little bit about them after catching them live briefly back in November. Tapping The Vein is a solid, denser-than-dark matter metal record, with a tight, condensed production and a dry,…

This is a thousand fucking lightyears away from the previous steaming pile of turd that the band put out. Credit is due where credit is due, and I must admit that Kingdoms Disdained is absolutely crushing; miserably heavy riffs meet inhuman drumming and a solid, dense yet full of life and clarity production. One should look to the latter half of “Garden of Disdain” for the perfect example of all these elements working together in…

Wolf is the third album by Odd Future founder and, I suppose leader – Tyler, The Creator. It is a solid record that prominently develops the rapper’s style and direction, not only as a lyricist but mainly as a producer. Goblin, for all its entertaining malice, wallows in darkness. Wolf expands on Tyler’s off-key production style, adding more colours to his intrinsically different yet instantly recognisable track design. Track-wise, the album begins proper with the…

Where has this band been all my life? The incredible symphonic metal sound of Ill-Natured… is like Enthrone Darkness Triumphant-era Dimmu on steroids, boasting a fatter production job, slightly-less-twinkly song structures and a drum sound that is nothing short of an absolute privilege to listen to. I mean, the fact that we as humans can make sounds that are as awesome as this… it brings a tear to my eye! sobs. It’s almost enough to…

Yes, I am actually reviewing Pirates. A new low for Lines In Wax – our first ever porno review! Haha! In my recent sleaze-engulfed foray into horror and sexploitation film history, I thought it fitting that I should check out a full length feature pornographic movie. I thought that the line between sleazy exploitation and actual pornography, especially because of some of the more intensely risque exploitation stuff, would be fairly blurry, but it is…

This is (now) a fairly old split released by Rotten Roll, putting US goregrinders Queef Huffer up against Aussie equivalent Nothin’ Suss. The whole thing kicks off with Nothin’ Suss’ tracks, and whilst there isn’t anything particularly that much at fault with the band, the overall production is pretty shabby to be honest. Queef Huffer on the other hand, have their shit together. The production is much more on point; everything is clear and concise….

Haggus are easily one of my favourite bands right now, simply for having the perfect blend of dank mincegore nailed down to a fucking tee. I love goregrind that you can dance to that also doesn’t have songs about penises and bondage. Each to their own, and I do like a lot of groovy goregrind stuff, but it is currently over-saturated to fuck with a legion of shit bands. Haggus is brutal, yet with that…

You can always count on porno/goregrind to keep things classy and hi-brow; to touch on society’s most pressing issues and philosophical dilemmas. In the case of Gutulax’s Shit Beast record, the maesters of flatulence ask the lifelong question: to dance or not to dance? With this many fart samples and songs about poo, the dilemma is a short lived one, as the answer is of course, yes. Shit Beast has enough tupa rhythms to get…

Dead Flowerz is probably my second favourite release behind Closed Casket (a close tie with KKKill The Fetus), which deals less with fantasy realms and rapping about the devil and focuses on the life of an inner city black man in the 90s, played up entirely with the excesses and absurdity of E’s “wicket shit” acid rap style. Drugs, guns and XXX girls is the order of the day, and whilst that might sound somewhat…

World Ov Worms is a lesson in razor sharp, sadistic death metal, taught by purveyors of the “other side” of the school: that being some of black metal’s most revered elite. Couple this with a dodgy name, very long trench coats and similar bizarre electronic passages to those on Mayhem’s A Grand Declaration Of War, and you have the icing on the cake to what is Zyklon’s Wormy World. I remember World Ov Worms coming…

I can’t really remember how I stumbled across this record. I guess I was on “that part of the internet”. Regardless of how the stars aligned, this is nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be, I’ll be completely honest with you. Things get off to a shaky start, and it takes some time for me to get used to the vocalist on this project (Cancerslug’s Alex “Wolfman” Story offers a grunge meets…

You better slow down baby! SAAAB Stories is the excellent debut EP by NY rapper Action Bronson, which has been out since June 2013 (holy mother!). I really need to pick up the pace with my reviews! Action is probably one of my favourite “modern” rappers that have come about within the last few years or so, and the SAAAB EP is a shining example of everything that makes his music so great, but tied…

There is something about this release that I find very hypnotic and mesmerizing; there is definitely a sense of mystery here, which I absolutely love – it isn’t something you see all to often in these glory days of the information age! Couple the fact that this cassette release meanders within itself as much as it leads with hypnotic rhythms, and you have the perfect recipe for pulsating electronic work. The “cassette” quality sound of…

Whoever thought that goregrind that sounds like it has been composed entirely on an early 90s game console chipset would be a good idea? I mean, I’m not even sure if it is actually a good idea, but fuck it, I think it is pretty awesome, so who cares, eh? S.M.E.S., if you don’t know, is the baby of once Last Days Of Humanity vocalist Erwin De Groot (who is also doing vocals more recently…

A colleague once said to me that regardless of your view on the David Lynch prequel movie Fire Walk With Me, there could be no arguing that the soundtrack for it is just simply incredible. I’m inclined to agree, as an avid Twin Peaks fan, my opinion on the jarringly bleak (and sans Mark Frost!) film seems to change daily. I cannot however, find fault with the hauntingly brilliant soundtrack, which was mainly composed by…