What I love most about black metal, asides from the ability to create intense cacophonous textures out of lo-fi hiss, is that is can really conjure up a dense and beautiful atmosphere, all the while being abrasive and “heavy”, if not in the traditional sense of the word. This approach to black metal is taken further in the wave of 2000s-era one man bands, and one of the best of the whole bunch simply has…

This has been on the back-burner for me for quite some time; the film’s sordid reputation initially drew me to it, but its fans pushed me away. “Man, some guy totally rapes a baby, hurr hurr hurr, sick, bro”. A Serbian Film has become a piece of work that has become known for its graphic content, and not for its “artistic” vision or even for its plot, which is fine if you want to wear…

Yesss here we fucking go; the long-awaited third album from gore/death metal maniacs Basement Torture Killings has finally dropped on Grindscene Records, and fuck me it’s a corker! I can honestly say, this has to be my favourite BTK album so far, I’m just sorry that the LIW downtime got in the way of me telling you all, not that my opinion really matters or anything. The production here is on point, literally. Everything is…

When I first heard of this weed-based tribute to Cannibal Corpse I was somewhat annoyed that I hadn’t come up with the idea myself. It is a funny twist that I actually prefer the music of Cannabis Corpse to Cannibal Corpse, and The Weeding EP is a perfect and concise sample as to why I love this band so much compared to the latter (and before I spark off any purists; I am aware that…

This has to be one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. I love watching awful movies (that is the whole point of this venture!) but this just fails to entertain. I mean, in all rights it should; it’s a tale about a boy (?) called Sukeban who looks like a girl so he goes to a girls school, dressed – rather convincingly – as a girl. There he meets a whole array of bizarre…

Head Noise are a 3 piece Electro Art-Punk band from South Wales, often using a keytar as a primary instrument as well as an array of nontraditional instruments. With no live drums or an actual drummer they are certainly a different act and stand out from the crowd with their less conventional, more experimental approach. So here we have the bands new 6 track mini-album “Special Effects Improves The Defects”, a very fun sounding release…

Satan’s Satyrs play dirty, dingy rock and roll tinged with that punk attitude that everyone loves so much (amirite?). The guitar tone here is off the chart, transporting you right to the heart of Fuzz City USA. We lose a bit of clarity in the overall production sound, which is a bit muddy, and the drums have this strange treble-heavy density to them (which is rather intruding at first but you get used to it),…

One thing I will say about Hellbastard is that Hellbastard live is a different beast to Hellbastard on a record. Whilst the band have always stood apart from their peers (even when they wallowed in the crust scene), there is an undeniably experimental, forward-thinking edge to the band’s bizarre mix of metal, punk and other things in-between. Granted, this experimentation doesn’t always pay off, but on the Feral record, it pays off in spades. My…

Can we at least get a round of applause in for that album title? And then a standing ovation for the album sleeve? Haha! Anyways, RazorRape play a bludgeoning, thick’n’creamy variety of goregrind that is more akin to shades of death metal than the primordial ooze of say, Last Days Of Humanity. This particular “cross-over” style is very popular at the moment, as it blends the lines with pornogrind, which all the metal kids seem…

I have to admit, up until I recently Googled the movie “Zombie Strippers” (for err, personal reasons), I had completely forgotten that Roxy Saint existed. Recalling that the track “Firecracker” off her Personality Tapes DVD/Album (?) was a decent song, I downloaded this record onto my Spotify and gave it a spin. Honestly, I was surprised at what I found, and that it was pretty good. There will be no awards for originality here, but…

Urine Junkies is a Relapse compilation CD featuring three of Abscess’ earliest releases and demos. It was put out in 1995 under the label’s Underground Series, and brought Abscess to a whole new level of exposure. One of the downsides of listening to a compilation is that the sound is all over place, but it is a small price to pay when you get to check out a cross-section of stuff that a band has…

Man Bites Dog is a bizarre “noir-mockumentary” in which a young film crew follow a charismatic and disturbingly chipper serial killer who goes by the name of Ben. Black humour is served by the truckload as we document Ben as he kills victims, eats mussels, visits his gran and generally waxes lyrically on subjects of his choosing. At first, the violence is jarring, but as we enter Ben’s world, it starts to become more and…

My recent Sehnsucht review reminded me that I have to touch upon Grand Declaration Of War by Mayhem. Contrary to a lot of Mayhem fans, Grand Declaration is my favourite album from the group. The clinical execution, insane song structures and bizarre techno passages are a hundred thousand million miles away from Deathcrush and the like; the fact that this is even the same band (to a degree) is startling. Maniac is not my favourite…

Pylon is the latest (at time of writing) in a long line of consistently excellent contributions from the legendary Killing Joke. It would be rather cheap of me to say the ol’ “if it ain’t broke…” thing that I always say, but that is somewhat true here: Pylon offers nothing new to the Killing Joke palate of sounds, but that is absolutely not to say that it doesn’t offer a whole new menu of phenomenal…

I can’t tell you how rare it is that I come across the perfect album, and I mean that in the sense of when on a record every single song is flawless; each piece contributing not only to the overall experience, but able to stand its own ground without just being needless filler. Faithless are not a band that I spin all that often anymore, but if I’m in the mood for this style of…

Kilslug are a sludgy band from the USA fronted by the mysterious Larry Lifeless, who initially comes across as a mix between Eyehategod’s Mike Williams, Scott Walker and err, Crank Sturgeon or something like that. Kilslug have been around for yeeears, and the Limited Appeal (what a label!) pressing of Sin, Tricks and Lies is so awesome it makes me want to start collecting vinyl again. I mean, just mosy on over to Discogs and…

Simply put, nobody does dream sequences or dream worlds like David Lynch, and considering this entire film blurs the lines between dream and reality from beginning to end, this is the ultimate expression of that art form. The budget is minuscule, but you will be left questioning what is real, and what it is that really matters, if anything. Laura Dern is excellent, as usual, and there is a pure-Lynchian (sorry to use that term!)…

Dense, thick, industrial beat loops is the order of the day, from the excellent JK Flesh project. Nothing Is Free seems to have dropped completely the guitar elements that so heavily caressed the beatwork on recordings such as Posthuman, in favour of bringing the beat entirely to the centre-stage. Nothing Is Free is not dissimilar to the work produced by Mick Harris in some of the more transitional and experimental eras of his excellent project…

With all the recent hubbub around the It remake I thought it would be worth finally checking out the original. What I didn’t know what that this was essentially two TV movies glued back to back, so I found watching the whole thing in one go was a bit much, especially as the second half kinda wanes and gets lost a bit. I don’t know what it is about Stephen King stories, but they are…

Oh man this is some sick shit! Welcome to the world of dental-based Hungarian mincing goregrind, friends. Imagine the drill has slipped, and now it is just boring into your gums at full pelt, all the while the dentist is blasting some Agathocles on the stereo in the background; hopefully that will give you some idea of what we are dealing with here. We played/caught two shows with these guys on the Dzhumagaliev tour; once…

When I first saw this as a kid it frightened the absolute living shit out of me, and re-watching it 20 years later, I can still see why. Perhaps it is the echo of that fear I developed in my youth, but there is something incredibly unsettling about Event Horizon. Yes, the sci-fi side of things doesn’t really add up, causing enormous continuity errors and goofs, and resulting in this half lost in space adventure…

Well, now I know what Grand Declaration of War would have sounded like if Maniac was given full creative control! I’m kidding of course; the Richter-like artistic meandering here would be far too much to take for an intolerant little man like Hellhammer (2023 edit: handbags away please, ladies). But, as per always, I digress. Sehnsucht is the experimental / power electronics project between Maniac and his wife Vivian Slaughter, who also plays in Gallhammer….

Ahhh, the twisted and wonderful world of Vektor; coming across like a mix between Voivod and Dragonforce, and packing a vocalist that sounds like Chuck Schuldiner on crystal meth. I’m not really into this breed of hyper-thrash, but the sci-fi elements and the incredible density to the proceedings really adds a whole new edge to things. This is incredibly precise, dream-like yet lightening-fast metal, as if Devin Townsend drank too much coffee and smoked heroin…

Oh my days, what a film! Haha! This is absolute, total trash, in the best possible way, and my first introduction to the world of J-sploitation (surely Japsploitation would be better?). As the title might suggest, the film focuses on a deadly carnivorous parasite that nests inside the vagina of its female human host. It also seems to be able to possess control of whoever it is currently inhabiting. It is never clarified whether or…

I’ve never been much of a fan of Lamb of God. I’ve seen them live multiple times, but they never really connected with me. Their fans, and the whole “southern” metal thing really just turned me off. I’m not entirely sure what it was that made me add New American Gospel to my Spotify to-do list, but I finally got around to listening to it all the same. The best thing about Lamb of God…

Groove masters from Germany meet  French goregrind legends on this excellent split CD. SxRxOxMx take it slow and steady as per usual; churning out their snail-paced gore with menacing aplomb. “Wandering Flesh” stands out, with unusually catchy riffage, and terrifying pitchshifter gurgles. Pulmonary Fibrosis open things up sounding like Odour Of Torture-era GUT meeting Creeping! Crawling!-era Plasma, which is a tasty feast for any goregrind nerd. It isn’t the longest split in the world, but…

I primarily checked out The Astro-Zombies because of The Misfits track which shares the same (or very similar) title. This film is, in a word, terrible. The pacing is excruciating, and when anything does happen, it is so badly acted out that it is just laughable, and not in a good way. The plot is paper thin, and the “Astro-Zombie” scenes are incredibly hammy. The titular “Zombie” is just some dude in a plastic mask….

Towards The Megalith is a bludgeoning epic in explosive, doom-laden, monolithic (or is that megalithic?) death metal. I’ve gotta be honest, I had never heard of these guys until they were announced for – and then controversially dropped from – the first edition of Netherlands Death Fest, due to accusations that the vocalist is involved in some national socialist noise project. Whether he is or not, I couldn’t really give a fuck (that style of…

Welcome to the first LIW film post! In the seemingly endless recent downtime I have been thinking of ways to expand on and better this site and incorporating TV/film-speak into the goings on here seemed like the next logical step. LIW started in 2011 as a vinyl-only blog and initially grew to cover CD and cassettes. In 2014, it became “format free”, covering music regardless of format or whether I owned a physical copy of…

Crazy Clown Time is, for the most part, a journey through rusted Americana with treated, dense beats. Repetition is God, repetition is key! Lynch has openly admitted that he is neither a singer nor a guitar player, but it only seems right that the all-encompassing artist releases his own music as well, and it does not disappoint me in the slightest. I mean, I kinda half-braced myself for some Mr. Bungle / John Zorn style…

I’m not sure if “angelic” is the correct word to use in regards to Nicole Dollenganger, but it is indeed the first thing that comes to mind whilst listening to this possibly troubled teen. I say that because there is something a lot more than just the voice of an angel here; there are many other faces, perhaps those of demons, bubbling beneath the surface. Her voice is fragile and delicate, yet powerful and mesmerising….

Kong Saves is the debut EP from new South Wales based doom metal / stoner outfit Kong Lives, featuring members of Tradish and the recently (sadly) defunct Desalvo. Kong Saves treads firmly on the ethereal yet groove-laden side of doom, rarely falling full force into the pits of sludgy despair. The trippier, more laid back parts remind me of Germany’s Samsara Blues Experiment, whilst the more full-on, distorted passages are akin to The Inside Room-era…

This CDr is a split between prolific gorenoise lads Catastrophic Blunt Force Intercranial Haemhorrhage Fluid Leaking From Ruptured Eardrums and my gorenoise (read: “weednoise”) project, Tetrahydrocannibal. It’s the first time I have released something under this name in quite some time, so it was fun to get back to and work on some ridiculous song titles. I swore I wouldn’t do another record until I’d shifted all the copies of the first, but this is…

Excellent, if not a bit too polished pop from France. Initially I suspected that this record suffered from “lead single syndrome”, and whilst to some degree that statement still stands, this is a subtly clever album that will grow on you over time. Well, unless you exclusively listen to shit like Hatebreed, then you’ll probably despise this, obviously. This was subject to one of those weird comeback-outta-nowhere scenarios; having originally being released in France back…

Martian Cartography is an excellent album release by the criminally under-rated experimental duo Necro Deathmort. Mixing catastrophically heavy atmosphere with intelligent, progressive electronic work has always been ND’s forte, but on Martian Cartography, I find that this approach to sound design has finally had chance to spread its wings and fly. In some respects that means that this record isn’t as hard-hitting or droning as something off Music Of Bleak Origin or earlier, but the…

Didn’t really know what to feel about posting this, what with the “accusations” against Satanic Warmaster (who denies flat out being racist, despite some extremely questionable lyrics and releases). It is also a weird situation where a non-NSBM band has done a split with a band that is considered to be a NSBM act. Regardless, I’ve covered some pretty extreme shit here before, and have also written about Death In June and even Burzum, so…

10/10 split 7″ from Olso fastcore/PV maniacs Higgs Boson (who perhaps have one of the sickest bass tones ever), going head to head with British kings of start/stop savagery, Nothing Clean. Both bands churn out rapid-fire bursts of aggression, as, of course, you would expect, but with Higgs Boson not being afraid to slow things to a crawl pace for a few seconds to highlight the speed of the quick bits even more, or to…

O.A.P. (or Onanistic Anti-Peristalsis for short) were a death metal band based in Newport, Wales. I believe they finally kicked the bucket sometime around 2013/14 and Human Milkshake was their only album release. They featured members of death metal bands Necrocest and Cryptophile, as well as having local promoter / general all round good egg Sam Wall as one of the vocalists. Human Milkshake gets better as it goes on; personally I find the opening…

King Midas Sound is a beautiful collaboration between Roger Robinson, Kiki Hitomi and Kevin Martin, which (I think, correct me if I’m wrong) began life as a track for Kevin’s much more wider known project, The Bug. I find it hard to describe and categorize KMS simply because my exploration into this kind of music is incredibly limited (I got here through Godflesh, Techno Animal, etc.), although I can say that this is a incredibly…

Easily one of the best slices of death metal I’ve heard in the last few months, Cease Of Breeding’s only album, entitled Sounds Of Disembowelment, literally has the definitive death metal production sound, giving all of these massacres (I’m talking about the songs, geddit?) the room they need to breathe, and more importantly, brutalize, like a hundred daggers to the face and a thousand punches to the stomach all at once, or something equally as…

Aun are one of those bands that I constantly end up back at. For what is essentially noisy ambiance with synths and the odd guitar, this is quite impressive. Fantastic, shoe-gazy drones meet unfurling electronics in transcendent “songs” that average around the 7 minute mark; deep, involving worlds swirl into life, conjured from the chasms of nothingness by this bleak yet somewhat inspiring show of digital noise. Enter the Black Pyramid!

This has to be the benchmark to which all drum machine grindcore is judged. ANb’s first full length record is far cry from anything that has followed it (even the lightening fast pharmaceutical headfuck of Frozen Corpse… is a million miles away from this); the production is bassy, fat and bludgeoning, the guitars almost sludgy, and the shrieked, yelped vocals are almost drowned out by the cacophony of the strings and machine. And that harsh…

Ah man, this is just, like, so lush. That was probably the Welshest sentence I’ve ever written to describe music, but I feel like it is somewhat entirely justified in this instance; you tend to hear the term “nice” black metal bandied about to describe acts such as Alcest, but I don’t usually rate those types of acts. However, Deafheaven for some reason seem to be an exception for me. This band have managed to…

Salt Bath are a new band from the Newport area of South Wales, playing an abrasive form of back-to-basics noisemongery distilled through the blunt force weapons of choice – bass guitar and drums (with Venom Prison sticksman Sheehy on the skins). Uncomfortable Choices boasts an impressively all-encompassing production sound, courtesy of One Louder Studios, again in Newport. Imagine Big Black meets Melvins or if you want to go all out; Death From Above 1979 meets…

Jesus, what a glorious fucking mess. I am instantly reminded of the Pissgrave review I did recently; these guys are really, really similar, only Portal has a more dark and eery vibe, rather than the terrifyingly vivid, gory splurge of Pissgrave. It would not surprise me if the bands shared members or something (edit: I just found out how old this album is, guess that Pissgrave relation was wishful thinking). Anyway, this is some spooky…

Sleaze Servant is the new EP from long-time techno-gore-grind filth mongers, Libido Airbag; a “band” so balls deep in scum and vulgar sounds that even your gran loves a dance to some of their older tunes. They’ve hardly pumped out volumes of material in their long existence, but the fact that they can still develop and spew out fresh sounds in such a restrictive genre is a testament to gore and porno grind, especially the…

I’ve had this for so long but the sodding thing is so small I keep losing it amongst my CDs! The Agathocles stuff here seems to be original tracks, which is refreshing in itself, but the greatest surprise is that they are also somewhat strangely melodic; it is the same lo-fi high quantity of shredding mincecore, but with strange, almost ethereal guitar leads over a few of the tracks. Just when I’d thought I’d heard…

Look Past The Gore… is the long awaiting debut album from Barrow-based death metallers Repulsive Vision. It is to my knowledge that RV have been around for quite some time in various different line ups, with the most recent incarnation of the band solidifying suitably enough for a much-overdue full length to finally gestate. I am pleased to say that it has been well worth the wait, as this is a serious slab of death…

You’d think that given the opportunity, I would do everything in my power to throw mud at this band, but the reality here is that I have to admit that this is a decent fucking record. The production is solid, the riffs are intense and the vocals are on point. As with the previous release, Vorarephilia, the main downside is that for some godforsaken reason the band used a drum machine in lieu of their…

(I implore you to forgive me the ridiculously low quality of today’s upload. This is literally impossible to track down online, and I unfortunately do not own a copy of the super-limited lathe cut 7″. That being said, if anyone has any hi-res scans of the cover art that would do this post more justice, then please, by all means, feel free to get in contact with me, and of course upload the pictures to…

Hallucinocide is one of the noise identities of Chilean artist Vicente Perez, perhaps most well known for his other project, Bucket Of Piss. The Peel Session isn’t quite so drumstick-meets-saucepan-core as his more “meme’d” project, but it definitely offers up a much more violent and vital exercise in proper harsh noise. Comprised of two tracks, each clocking in at over 20 minutes, The Peel Session is a meandering listen covering a broad spectrum of the…

Phyllomedusa has been sneaking doom metal tracks into his (?) gory repertoire for quite some time now, but Fijian Holiday marks the point where the stark lines of contrast have blurred so much that the multitude of perplexing styles this project perpetuates have finally come crashing together into one big sticky disgusting bog of beautiful, nauseating mess. Almost sounding like slam in parts; this record crawls and grooves with absolute menace. Phyllomedusa can do no…

Wraith are a ridiculous metal band from the UK, who I can only imagine expired quite some time ago, falling into the pits of obscurity along with dozens of failed major label deals and washed up airbrush artists. I mean, wallowing in the mire of death and grind for so long has exposed me to some absolute shiners when it comes to record sleeves, but whoever painted this deserves a fucking medal; that has to…

I find that Nine Inch Nails’ release history is constantly hit-and-miss. This latest EP is absolutely no exception to that rule. How can something that is only 5 tracks long be so “meh”? I mean, surely it is either going to be shit or it is going to be great? No. Not Nine Inch Nails. Not Not The Actual Events (see what I did there?). Below is easily the best track on the whole release….

Here we have the Earth EP by South Wales based acoustic singer/song writer Craig Watkins; a well put together collection of soulful acoustic material, with lots of raw energy and passion coming through, with a very real sense coming off of it all as an artist (real in the sense of you can tell he’s passionate about what he’s playing and what he’s singing about, which is always great to hear). Production wise the EP…

Before we start can we all just take a moment to bask in that truly awful album art? Why did the zombie guy take the time to keep his pants on? Oh, the mirth! Maybe one day when I’m old and dying alone in sheer misery I will make an archive of awful record covers to stave off depression and an early suicide. But anyway, as usual, I have digressed… Thankfully the music isn’t as…

This latest Kendrick Lamar record is a strange collection of what is supposed to be left over tracks and ideas related to the rapper’s previous record, To Pimp A Butterfly. Musically, it has a lot in common with the beats and instrumentation of that album, but as these songs are demos, there is a welcome rougher feel to things. At first the vocals seem a little lo-fi, but every falls into place quickly and the…

This is one of those albums that I ended up checking out purely because of the cover art. I’ve been avoiding Abigail Williams for the best part of a decade, purely because I thought they were some sort of shitty scene metalcore band or something, and whilst they do bring that kinda “edge” to the table, In The Shadow Of A Thousand Suns is a complex piece of a work and a decent contribution to…

Oblivionized are a grindcore / tech death answer to the distillation of sounds purveyed by those such as early Dillenger Escape Plan, Fuck The Facts, and even to a degree, Antigama. The shredding guitar / intense drum work is reminiscent of fellow British grinders Evisorax, but Oblivionized have a much more – how should I put it – “progressive” edge that sees a lot of interesting elements brought into the firing line (like the singing…

Luciferion were a band from Sweden that played an interesting blend of genres that I can only describe as symphonic death metal. Like Dimmu Borgir, Emperor and the like did for black metal in the 90s, Luciferion apply the same logic to brutal, unrepentant old school death metal. Obviously, there is a lot of variation in death metal now and a lot of different angles to the style, especially as incorporating certain aspects of melody…

Killbite are a hardcore band out of Bremen in Germany, playing in the heavy, almost metal style rather than the punky, upbeat style of hardcore. Discrimi-Nation isn’t a million miles away from the powerviolence sound; hard-hitting, dark, distorted, angry as fuck – there are many tracks here worthy of getting the pit moving, whilst a few others are more thought provoking and morose, especially the untitled closing number. This is thoughtful, powerful hardcore music with…

This is an absolutely mental little EP featuring members of Water Torture and Thedowngoing (who I am currently not too familiar with, I’ll be honest). It only clocks in at around 5 minutes, but with this kinda hyper-intense level of energy I’ll forgive the tiny run time. Bordering somewhere between a rehearsal room recording and a decent recording sesh for like, a split 7″ or something, Sects meld different corners of the grind world together…

So here we have Eisley’s first release since the departure of Stacey and Chauntelle (as well as drummer Weston who remains as a studio member but not a live member), leaving vocalist Sherri Dupree Bemis and bassist Garon Dupree to pick up where the band left off and move forward. It is always tough to lose band members, especially ones that brought a lot to the table and in this case, the loss of the…

Holy fuck! This is fucking amazing! Bass-driven, hardcore-tinged powerviolence madness from the Americas! If I keep using exclamation marks does it look like I’m shouting!? I hope so! Easy comparisons out of the way first: Man Is The Bastard, Water Torture, Prisoner 639 (or anything that grinds like a fucking beast at a low rumbling frequency). To quote a YouTube commentator: “Non stop harsh grinding savagery from start to finish”. I could not have put…

(Words by Griefmonger) I’m a prissy fuck. I thought this would be a straightforward shit-shoot. And I was wrong. We have got at least 15-17 mins of engaging music (and vocals may I add), although I dare you to try and make it to 20 mins without getting diabetes, which is when it becomes a shitestorm of Trivium, Metallica, Hatebreed and Alice in Chains. There is no amount of nonsense or high end guitar that…

So, so, so stoked for the return (yet again lol) of Last Days Of Humanity, and the return to the gurgling madness we all know and love. This return is somewhat low key, but I guess it fits with dropping new shit on a split. I believe the music on here was recorded some time ago, and that the vokills have been provided recently. It is good shit though, glad to have ’em back! FUBAR…

From Crotch To Crown is the latest offering from long-running Dutch death metal group Prostitute Disfigurement. Honestly, when I first heard this, I thought it was an older release, as it isn’t as polished as the previous album, Descendants of Depravity. It isn’t exactly a step backwards though, as personally I prefer a bit of a rougher edge to my death metal, despite the clinical execution of Descendants… being pretty incredible stuff. As always with…

It has taken me so long to review this album that the follow up came out recently (2016’s Agony). That is pretty shameful, as I have been pretty stoked about this bunch of Brazilian thrashers since catching them at 2015’s Obscene Extreme. Nervosa are an all-female act, and it is incredibly refreshing to not see this used to their “advantage” as some sort of gimmick or selling point. Victim Of Yourself has the perfect production…

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

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

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

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

(Guest Revievv Invokked by Griefmonger on thy infernal date ov 27/02/2017) Polish Darkthrone if they were from Manchester. It’s good; there’s a nice mix of heavy and tremolo riffs with a production that you can hear, both without sounding polished or like it was recorded in your Nan’s shed. I like it. It’s not afraid to go slow and the vocals are just crossing the line of black from death. There’s a fine line. The…

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

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

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

This Becomes Us is the solo collaborative release from Future Of The Left (and not forgetting ex-Million Dead) bassist Julia Ruzicka. This debut contains ten tracks of absolute pure gold, featuring a different vocalist on each track, including Black Francis from The Pixies, among others. Opener “The Picture of Delorean Gray”, is a cracking little number; a nice and fast-paced, hard-hitting, fuzzy, punky number that leads into the bouncy “Undervalue Love”, which has a kind…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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