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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(words by dance, Gareth, dance!) I decided to say a few words on this album after seeing the band perform live a week or so ago, where I was actually lucky enough to see all 3 versions that have been of the band perform since all current and ex-vocalists were present as part of the band’s 10 year anniversary tour. So, here we have Mothership, the latest release from the Tilian Pearson era of the…

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

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

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

This is the brand new album from a recharged Sum 41 and the first with guitarist Dave Baksh back in the group. My initial impression upon listening was “Oh it’s darker, keep this theme going please and we may have a good record here,” and I wasn’t too far off with such a request; its a lot darker, especially to those that may only know Sum 41 for “In Too Deep” or “Fat Lip”, as…

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

(Words by Burra, who recently gave back Wednesday) I really like this album. Overall, it feels so much more alive with energy than any of the more recent releases; maybe with a slight return to their classic sound at times. Although nothing they do will ever be as good as Tell All Your Friends or Where You Want To Be, unfortunately thats just how it is! So anything they do always lives in the shadow…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(words by Burra; eater of worlds, rustler of Jimmies) Here we have the band’s latest 11 track release: Integrity Blues; a beautiful sounding record from start to finish, and one that definitely shows off the slower, softer side to the band (which I love) with lots of atmosphere and lots of emotion. Haunting, soothing and yet, at times, harder hitting. It’s very difficult to pick any stand-out tracks from this album, simply as this is…

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

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

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

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

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

Everything I could have wanted from a Billy Talent album is right here. I’m happy that they’ve released yet another solid album from start to finish, as few bands nowadays manage to release cracking record after cracking record with little filler, but so far Billy Talent haven’t let us down there at all, I feel. This is full of catchy hooks – both vocally and musically; the catchy riffs and shouty choruses that this band…

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

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

(Words by Griefmonger, archivist of blackened aural misanthropies)  A brutal black metal record? “What?” I hear you exclaim! “Warm bass and deep vocals?” Shock horror! What would seem at first as your average death metal chunk-and-stop evolves into a black death slugger quicker than water into good red wine. We have the drill of the tremolo layering the typical bellow and breakdown-friendly nod that what would normally be a staple of a death metal band….

So pretty much, if you’re not already a fan of The Beatles, then there’s an extremely slim chance you’ll be buying this record, as a live album is pretty much in my eyes a fan-targeted release. Normally I’m not a fan of live albums, I’ll be completely honest. There are exceptions, however I just feel that some moments you can’t recapture when it comes to this type of thing, kinda like how 90 percent of…

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

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

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

(Words by Burra; The 6th Beatle) This is the debut EP from fresh on the scene South Wales-based female-fronted four piece, Montreaux Fires. The EP starts with a quick spoken word intro taken from the recording process (it’s worth noting that this was self-recorded by the band’s bassist in his living room) before launching into the track “Our Little Life” – a cracking opener and one I can imagine would go down really well live,…

Grim, inappropriate, catchy and scathing – these are the first things that come to mind for describing Wolfbastard’s debut. Self-proclaimed as d-beat black metal, don’t expect later Darkthrone worship as this little 21:41 minutes of fuck you has more in common with Discharge-meets-Carpathian Forest than F.O.A.D. It’s a bastard (forgive the pun) of two thirds of blackened death Mancs Burial (more blackened nowadays). The first four tracks have a very grim feel and you can hear the black…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(words by Porth’s man-in-thon-know, Gareth Burra) Here we have the new 6 track release – The Great Depression Act 1 – from South Wales 5 piece Calling Apollo. What a huge sounding record this is; production wise, instrumental and vocal wise – it’s great! A very wisely chosen opening track comes in the form of “Light The Way”; I love the guitar tone in this, it’s very reminiscent of a lot of the 2000’s era…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(words by Le Manifico Doomfindaaaah Jenerales) Before anything else, can you just take a second to appreciate how amazing that artwork and album title is…. The Body are a two piece sludge band from somewhere in America. Well I say sludge, but they don’t sound anything like Eyehategod et al, but they are slow, heavy and unpleasant, so it’s close enough. The album opens up pleasantly (if not miserably) enough with “Wanderings” which has just a…

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

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

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

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

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

(Words by Burra) Ok, so I’ll state the obvious, but there may be a lot of people who may not realise founding member Tom DeLonge is no longer a part of the group. Anyway… this is Blink 182’s first record with their revised lineup, featuring Mat Skiba who most of you will recognise as frontman of Alkaline Trio. A nice opener to this album comes with the track “Cynical”, which might I add has a…

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

(Words by Gumpy, Doomfinder General) Agoraphobic Nosebleed return faster than ever, this time managing to squeeze 27 songs into only 3 minutes…. Wait a second, there’s only 3 songs and one of them is 12 minutes long? It’s a sludge album? What the hell is going on? Shit talking aside there is a very good reason for this drastic change in direction; instead of just making another album, Agoraphobic Nosebleed decided to make 4 because……

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

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

I was asked to review this recently; jumping at the chance to do so (frankly, I’m just so happy to finally hear studio material by Conjurer). I can be quite wary of being asked to review things, or of bands that “farm out” reviews, because usually, if you have to ask for something to be written about, then it’s going to be shite, but this is something incredibly special. Conjurer have been gigging maniacally for…

I’ve been listening to Holocausto Canibal on and off for quite some time now, as well as that, Judas Cradle share a split with them and have played live with them, but one thing I’ve never done is looked backwards at the bands older stuff, until now, and I literally could not be happier that I did so. This shit leans more towards the late 80s / early 90s dirgy goregrind sound rather than the…

I’ve caught Benediction live a few times (with Dave Hunt on vocals) and they have always killed it, so in my recent hunt for new tunes I decided it was probably time that I check out a studio recording by the band. They’ve got a pretty long and eventful career, so I wasn’t sure where to start, but the name of this record just jumped right out at me (I wonder why…). I’m not entirely…

Exmilitary is the debut mixtape/record/whatever from seminal noise-meets-rap maniacs Death Grips. I can’t believe this thing is five years old, especially considering I’ve been planning on reviewing it since I started this website! But yeah – I don’t think the hip hop world was prepared for Death Grips, and neither were the legions of fans from outside of that sphere; would-be converts sidling on over due to this group, and this mixtape. I first came…

Grunt (the Portugese gore/porn/whatever/grind band, not the power electronics project of the same name) have been causing quite a stir lately for various reasons, and the main response among “haters” online is that the music made by Grunt is for neanderthals. So I listened. Ha! I’m not exactly a stranger to the seedier sub-genres of grind (shhh though, don’t tell the real trve grinders I called this grind) but I was very much blown away…

Gore Beyond Necropsy are nothing short of legendary on the noise/grind underground for a multitude of reasons (the hilariously titled split/collab with Merzbow springs to mind). They have long since changed their name and disappeared into total obscurity, but for a short while they kinda flew the flag for this kinda noisy shit, and this 12 minute EP showcases a slightly different side to the band’s infamous noisy grindcore. It all starts off with horror…

Bad Brains are nothing short of legendary so it’s kinda hard to sum this up in two paragraphs or so. I have to admit that I am a recent convert to this group. I’ve always been a fan of dub reggae and the like but not so much hardcore punk, but as time is quickly ticking away the hours of my life I have grown something of an appreciation for the genre, and Bad Brains…

Debridement is (I believe) the third album by Italian goregrind / death metal squad Bowel Stew. Whilst Debridement owes more to brutal death metal than any goregrind record, it manages to maintain that authentic air of dodgy pathological madness that is often lost in the ‘brutalism’ of much death metal. Bowel Stew is a nasty band, and whilst the cover art might not be a real picture of disgusting gore, you know they mean business…

I love power electronics and noise but when this came out I completely lost it….what the fuck is actually going on? Estuary English is one of those rare records that I completely fail to understand, so I wrote it off for a while, completely unable to comprehend what I was listening to. It just sounded like Vyvyan from the Young Ones screaming over sub par bits and blips of electronic mush. If that’s what you…

Surgical Steel is Carcass’ big comeback record, 18 years after their original death rattle – Swansong – in 1995. This was a big noise when it first came out, due to the high profile of the comeback, but my ears were elsewhere, as being an elitist goregrind-loving asshat I had written anything post-Necroticism off as widdly death metal shite. To be fair, I’m still completely 100% right, but I’ve stopped being such a dick about…

(2016 edit: this review was written about 7 years ago for my old blog Even Shakespeare Fed The Worms. I’ve rejigged it so I don’t sound like so much of an immature ass, but please keep this in mind whilst reading. Enjoy!) As I start this compact disc I am unaware entirely of what to expect, but I am met with a fairly typical sample, but it is followed by a very interesting and refreshing…

Glowering is a side project ov the tr00 and totes brutes invokator of gore noise havoc, Bobby Maggard. This time however, Bobby puts aside his hacksaw and bloodstained apron in favour of a pentagram-topped staff and a severed goat’s head hollowed out to make a snug little mask, as black metal is the theme of the day. But this ain’t no ordinary romp through black metal, no sir. It’s quite annoying actually, because a few…

It’s been a while since the last Gwen Stefani solo album, and being a No Doubt fan and enjoying the bands last release (Push and Shove), I was interested to hear how this new solo effort would sound, and mainly the vibe it’d have this time around. Opening track “Misery” is a great introduction to the album; and in regards to the route the album goes down, this album is an awful lot less R’n’B/hip…

As far as doom metal goes, Cathedral have always been one of my favourites. They were the band that introduced me to the genre in my youth, and therefore have always occupied a soft-spot in my blackened heart. Heading up to London Forum to catch the band’s final show was something that will stick with me forever. The disbanded warriors of gloom have a varied and interesting back catalogue ranging from the downright heavy to…

This double CD package brings together a bunch of old splits and demos from the prolific, blackened grinding thrashers Nunslaughter, as well as a bevvy of live tracks. The splits and demos are fantastic, and I will surely review them on their own with the material from the respective splitting bands, but I just want to cast some light on this little package as I got my hands on a copy recently. Do you love…

I was recommended this band to check out, and having known literally nothing about them I was interested to hear what was going on. The LaFontaines are a very difficult band to pigeonhole; I’m finding myself presented with rapping, smooth sounding vocals, riffs, indie guitar licks, lovely guitar tones amongst really big sounding anthems. What a mental combination! On paper this shouldn’t work, it really shouldn’t… however these guys have seemed to pull it off…

The Jesus Lizard are one of those bands that I had been meaning to check out for all eternity but never seem to get around to listening to (until now, obviously). I picked their Goat record to try out at random, simply because the art looked kinda cool and abstract so I just dove in and went for it. Anyway, I’m not sure if it’s just because I’ve taken so long to jump onto this…