Jerry really set himself up to fail here. In what world would a re-recording of the Graves-led tune “Descending Angel” ever be better than the original? In fact, I’m pretty sure “Descending Angel” is one of Graves’ own songs (he brought many to the Misfits) which rubs salt in the wound even more. But yeah, everything about this single is absolutely pointless, and pretty awful to be honest. The live version of the B-Side from…

I was 22 when this came out. I was a vinyl-buying devotee of Devizes Records, and the very minute it was possible to do so, I ordered the 3 album on 12”. Spewings… was OK, but Belief… was fucking savage, and having seen the band live a few times I was now as pumped as I could be for the next Fukpig installment. 3 came and it was just… there. I can’t really remember thinking…

Finally, Halford returns to his rightful place at the front of Priest. No shade to Ripper, who had a 50/50 track record with Priest albums, but Halford belongs as the group’s front man and from the off this actually sounds like a Judas Priest album, despite the modern production (which is not a problem, just a little jarring if you think the last time we heard Halford-fronted Priest was the legendary Painkiller, an album that…

A gargantuan fecking slab of brick-walled goregrind. Loudness war? Forget that shit, you won’t ever be able to hear another record ever again if you play this little bastard loud enough. Obscene production technique aside, Katana Orgy is the Jig-Ai sound fully matured from the debut era, and kind of the blueprint that they would use going forward for the rest of their work. For that reason, and because this album is just generally amazing…

Nasty little EP from the frantic and chaotic Kreator. The drums are massive on this, and the sound is less messy than what it is on Pleasure To Kill, making Flag Of Hate a concise, short, sharp hit of classic Teutonic thrash.

What can I say about a record this legendary? Pleasure To Kill is a classic of not just the thrash genre but an integral piece of metal music history. The production is clean and whilst I wouldn’t go as far as to call the band’s playing sloppy, there is definitely a youthful energy to their work here that is barely contained. It feels like each song wants to go racing off as fast as possible,…

I first bought the Mahakali album in 2010 or 2011 and despite being massively into Swans and even some of the guest players here (Atilla for example), the album didn’t really resonate with me. I found it slow, frustrating and directionless. I’m not sure what has changed, but coming back to it thirteen years later and I am immediately blown away by this thing. I listened to the whole thing through for the first time…

I’ve always had a stand-offish relationship with Die Tur Ist Zu because well, what’s the fucking point in this thing? “Helpless Child” (slightly extended here) and “All Lined Up” sang in German is little more than a novelty, and the hodge podge of other cuts and live bits are just… well, just there. Considering SFTB is such a gargantuan and groundbreaking album, this “EP” stands entirely in its shadow. Don’t get me wrong, nothing on…

I fucking HATED this shit when it came out. Little did I know how much worse it would get (looking at you, Devil’s Rain). I’ll be honest, thanks to seeing the Jerry-Fits live a bunch of times and also thanks to the DeA.D. Alive! CD I really started to appreciate some of the newer tracks, especially “Land Of The Dead”. The chorus is mad catchy. Jerry’s Danzig / Elvis attempt on “Twilight Of The Dead”…

Cunnilingus and hardcore punk brought us to this! It says a lot about your relationship with a band when one of your favourite albums by them is a covers album but fuck it, Undisputed Attitude is the shit. Slayer are angry as fuck and it translates perfectly into the world of hardcore punk. They absolutely fucking kill it here. (As a side note I totally didn’t need to hear Tom Araya singing about putting his…

I don’t want to say the first few tracks from the Winnipeg… sessions are “calmer” than the latter, but they definitely do not descend quite as far down the staircase of pure electronic fuckery and madness as tracks like “Die Winnipeg Die Die Die Fuckers Die” or “Winnipeg as Mandatory Scat Feed” from the Vol. 2 but they are still a test of patience for those who are not initiated into the world of breakcore…

Bosh bosh bosh! “Album” which compiles both the Winnipeg 12″ singles, as well as a bunch of new tracks from the same session, into one super mega awesome 45 minute breakcore fuckfest. …Frozen Shithole seems to be one of those albums that gets more and more brutal as it goes on, just pounding you into the shitty, frozen dirt with each passing track. This is something which I do not doubt was a purposeful decision…

The main selling point for Slabdragger, at least on this LP, is the phenomenal guitar tone. Crunchy, fuzzy, chewy, riffy goodness! Unfortunately, Regress fails to hold much attention for the entirety of its runtime and I attribute this to the lack of variety in its textural content; it’s all rather one dimensional, despite the songs being generally very good in isolation.

A stunning debut from this legendary band. Personally, I think the Rainbow sound was perfected on Rising, but there are some frankly excellent songs on this album, including the now immortal opening track, “Man on the Silver Mountain”. The production, seemingly shared between Blackmore and producer Martin Birch, is organic and flows nicely through the various styles of songs present on the album. (Apparently I enjoy listening to this so much that I reviewed it…

Somewhat predictable but immensely satisfying industrial metal that worships almost exclusively it seems at the altar of Godflesh. Expect claustrophobic guitars, punishing programmed drums and robotic vocals. Expect pain, anguish and misery. Expect it to sound a lot like Godflesh!

Stop this crime? What crime? The only crime here is this band’s attempts at ballads. If you wanna go ahead and stop those, I’m with you 100% of the way, my dudes. Toad’s 4th album, released 26 years after the previous studio album, is a bit of a wet fart of a comeback. The production is fantastic, but the album is top-loaded, with excellent numbers at the start, but the record soon meanders off into…

Very atmospheric and evocative black metal, with the riffs wandering through the haze of the mist, and bathing you in their ancient glory. Beautiful undercurrent of synthesizers / keyboards present too, giving these tracks a unique dimension, despite fulfilling many of the tropes of black metal. Good shit.

Entertaining but incredibly messy black metal from Germany. The synths and atmospheric elements are fantastic but when the core of the band come in, well shit is almost as shambolic as early Graveland. In fact, I’m pretty sure the guitarist and the drummer are in different bands and they’ve just stapled the unrelated recording sessions together to form songs. I’m joking of course, but the tightness is uhhh, not great. Verdict: A for atmosphere (and…

I was surprised by how good some of the songs were on The Mighty Death Pop. Don’t get me wrong here, there’s a lot of shit floating around on this here disc, but damn I cannot deny that the title track or “The Blasta” or “Bazooka Joey” are fucking excellent. I also can’t speak for the bonus discs including the covers disc because that shit is just too awful for me to sit through, but…

Armed To The Teeth is a fairly uninspired split release from the usually excellent Curta’n Wall and the grimm and grimy Fugitive Wizard. Curta’n Wall’s tracks here are pretty catchy, especially “Castle Spire”, but the quality does not come near that what can be found on the self-titled EP or the Siege Ubsessed full length. Fugitive Wizard falls off the deep end into a bottomless murky pit of horrendous production. We’re talking almost as bad…

Incredibly solid black metal that at first feels quite impenetrable, but gives way to some dense yet mesmerizing songwriting. Equal parts unforgiving and atmospheric, Lamp Of Murmuur’s full length debut ticks all of the right boxes when it comes to modern black metal. This project seems to get a lot of hate, I guess for attracting hipsters or some shit, but who gives a fuck about that when the record is this good?

As a white man in a western country I can only empathise with the themes of this record. That’s not to say Kuti’s music isn’t for me, as music is for anyone who is willing to listen. Knowing the sensitive political situation around Kuti and the severity of the confrontation between him and those that were in power, one can really feel the weight of every word in these epic, sprawling tracks. On top of…

I appreciate the experimentation that Sepultura did with A-Lex. Previous album Dante XXI aside, Sepultura ran a very real risk of becoming stale in the years running up to this record. However, A-Lex is a step down from its predecessor in a number of ways. The first is the production is nowhere near as clear. As a musician I would find it infinitely frustrating having found the perfect palette of sonic clarity for my band…

“Leck Mich Im Arsch” is a mess, I’ll be honest. Nothing about it works, at all. The musical styles are a complete mismatch, and ICP’s lyrics are probably the best thing about it all. “Mountain Girl” on the flipside is appalling, a second-rate continuation of the same-old same-old shit you got on “Redneck Ho” and “Chicken Huntin’”. Aside from the novelty that this was produced by Jack White (like…what? lmao), this is mid ICP at…

I expected a fairly high drop off of quality after Seasons… so I was pleasantly surprised to find that Divine Intervention has aged quite well. Yeah, there’s more of the “groove” sound here than anything that could be called thrash metal, but we are now firmly entering the phase that I like to call “angry Slayer”. It’s a silly term, I know, because Slayer has always been angry, but from here on out they seem…

When I saw the “Cyanide” single on the TV as a teenager I thought it was pretty cool even though it was clearly very cheesy goth music. I wouldn’t usually be super into this sort of stuff, but I was really into The Kovenant’s Animatronic album, after hearing “Mirror’s Paradise” on one of Bam Margera’s CKY dvds (those were the days, eh). Deathstars to me seemed like KovenantLite, and that was OK with me. I…

Dante XXI is the best Sepultura album chronologically in quite some time. There seems to be a fire underneath Dante XXI that has been absent for far too long, despite the band’s best efforts in the interim period. With the metal world crawling out the grip of nu / alternative fads and into some whole other bullshit (metalcore I’m looking at you), Sepultura forged ahead with their own unique sound. The production for Dante XXI,…

Seasons In The Abyss is an amalgamation of the previous few Slayer albums. Good thing that these albums are some of metal’s all-greats, so Slayer retreating old ground here is not necessarily an awful thing in this case. I think they got away with rehashing stuff here for the first and only time, only because the quality of the songs are still very, very high. There are signs of the not-so-great groove / nu metal…

One of the most magnificent pieces of music I’ve heard in some time. I’ve seen this artwork bandied about online / on people’s RYM lists for years (also I’m pretty sure YouTube has recommended me this album about 700 times). The art is very striking to me; a soldier wielding a gun above the clouds has a strange otherworldly feel to it. Musically, I get the same feeling from this as I did from Peste…

I’m new to the music of Sturmpercht, but more or less completely in love with it after only a few short weeks. Geister Im Waldgebirg filters traditional Alpine folk music (a type of music that I am admittedly not familiar with) through the medium of neofolk, resulting in a morose acoustic experience that sounds confident and authentic. The record cannot be dismissed for following repetitive acoustic folk structures however; for each campfire acoustic guitar track…

The Jugulator V Demolition argument has raged for several decades now, but I’m here to finally lay it all to rest: this shit fucking blows ass. This is clearly, unequivocally the worst album of the two, and is a stain on the Priest name. There’s probably two good songs on this thing, the rest of them are either inconsequential or sound like bad Rammstein or Fear Factory b-sides. Cyyyybeerrrfaaacccceeee lmao get the fuck out of…

I’m just gonna say it: Slayer were way cooler when they did Bathory-esque metal (pre-Bathory metal, even!). I’ve coined it “evil Slayer” (original, I know) and it’s better than “thrash Slayer”, “nu metal Slayer” and “legacy band releasing shit for the sake of it Slayer” all put together (thrash Slayer is pretty cool though). I’m obviously breaking bawls here but fuck this shit rules so hard. In layman’s terms this is Slayer’s Kill ‘Em All,…

An excellent set, featuring some of Voivod’s best tunes, and – of course – their Pink Floyd cover. The sound is a bit flat in places but generally the production is very well balanced, especially between Chewy and Rocky. Snake sounds just like he does in the sound, it’s uncanny.

Came for the album art (I mean, just look at it), stayed for the cold yet precise black metal. Arising Realm sounds so brittle it feels like the entire thing could collapse into thousands of icy shards at any given moment. Despite this, a rock solid backbone of tight drumming and deep bass allow hypnotic guitar riffs to weave through frozen tapestries, accompanied by occasional smatterings of frosted keys and evil roars of vocal outpouring….

I’m not gonna lie to you, chief. I have zero fucking clue who or what Ultraman is. I can only assume, this being Voivod, that it is some sort of obscure sci-fi movie or TV show. I did not expect, in any universe or pocket dimension, to ever hear Snake singing in Japanese. Sometimes even a band like Voivod, where you should expect the unexpected, continues to out-pace my imagination. Fair play. But yeah, these…

Of all the tracks from The Wake, “The End Of Dormancy” is far from the best, the first few minutes of it even being tedious, not a word I would often use to describe Voivod’s music, but here we are. The version of the track here, with the additional brass sections, is a fun experiment, but not one that I feel really pays off. The track doesn’t really get interesting until mid-way through and even…

You gotta love it when bands release EPs that almost reach LP status due to their run time. Voivod is one such band; a band that is always bestowing onto us the most interesting and engaging dystopian metal gifts. Post Society is no different. Come for the off-kilter sci-fi thrash, stay for the Hawkwind cover (yes!). As always with the “modern” era of Voivod, production is fantastic and everyone is performing on point. This EP…

Yantra Creating sees 7 H.Target expanding upon their punishing slam sounds. Unless I’ve got this all wrong (I am, after all, an ignorant westerner) there’s an undercurrent of Hinduism layered through the precision blasts and massive riffs. This bleeds into the music too, with not only more traditional elements of religious music interwoven into the brutality, but also introspective passages of melody and moments of calm. It’s an interesting development that has 100% of my…

Mint Jams is a collection of cheeky, sprightly, impossibly complex jazz fusion played carelessly in front of a no-doubt enthralled audience as if it was the easiest and most natural thing in the world. The ease at which the group play in a live environment is truly impressive, although I would be a liar if I said the exact “music” hit the mark 100% of the time. This is an inherent problem I have with…

Calling midnight sloppy does them / him a disservice, but there is a looseness to this EP which gives it a kind of drunken swagger, allowing tracks like “Black Rock N Roll” or “Vomit Queen” to hit that much harder. I don’t want to say farewell to hell, especially if this is what it sounds like. Sounds like Satan smashed on whiskey.

Pretty incredible that this came out in 1995, when you think about it. Not that it was particularly far ahead of its time or anything like that, I’m just a simpleton and I’m easily amazed by the crushing certainty of the passing of time. Anyway, Ai is a busy slice of noise, with all sorts of punishing sounds going on (and some great cover photography to boot). If you like your noise more involved rather…

Side A is a blisteringly fast and chunky “HM2 hardcore & death metal smoothie” (that doesn’t actually sound like it utilises a HM2 pedal lol) but where An Unexpected Reality really shines is Side B, with the ten minute “Emptiness”, a doom-laden masterpiece that earns every second of its run-time.

Slightly muddy sound, but an excellent set that covers the first four (read: the only decent) Berzerker albums. I saw them live on this tour and it was fantastic, so to have this disc come out not long after was a nice little treat and reminder about how good they were live. For this line-up Luke had long-time Berzerker collaberator Sam Bean on bass, recent (for the time) Akercocke recruit Matt Wilcock on guitar and…

Biiig, biiiig production for black metal. The drums sound fantastic but the guitars almost have a HM2 fuzz to them which is an interesting choice. I don’t wish to disparage the riff writing or excellent vocals but I find this entire record a touch uninspired. I’m not sure what it is exactly, but it’s just not grabbing me. The Poisonous Path is not equalling the sum of its parts.

Leave it to Archagathus to make completely inhospitable landscapes of downtuned grinding mush into catchy songs that are easily digested and heavily enjoyed. Truly, they are masters of the mincecore craft. Bangsat are a more straightforward grindcore affair, not that this is to their detriment; ample carnage awaits you on side B of this short disc.

Projects like Old Nick should always be taken with a pinch of salt but it is astounding how good this record actually is. The songwriting is fantastic, and some of the ways these songs turn out is just incredible, with these fantastic riffs or synth passages just coming out of nowhere and blindsiding you. Honestly, there’s a lot of talent here, and a real knack for writing catchy and engaging music, its just that its…

Random find of the day goes to this fantastic little split EP. Both bands are new finds for me. Ulcer are on the more brutal, “grindcore” end of the powerviolence spectrum, with a bludgeoning production intent on smacking you into the ground. Failure Face on the other hand have a bit more of malleable nature to them. The songs are tightly sprung and bounce around with that undeniable hardcore punk energy. The vocalist is on…

My first boogie with Failure, and hyperspeed, manic powerviolence is the order of the day. Clear, organic production allow the riffs to breathe over the barrage of vocals and blasting drums. Ona Snop are another beast altogether, absolute savage fucking unstoppable barrages of sound paired with riffs that could make a corpse get up and mosh.

The perfect balance between Sorcery… and the debut full-length, Pentagram. I love the denser “treble” sound to the production here, which is admittedly much more atypical of the style at the time (brb, tying an onion to my belt). Both tracks sound absolutely massive on this promo, despite the limiting production, but the riff leading us up to the conclusion of “Måneskyggens Slave” is just absolutely spellbinding (but better before the flanger effect hits, I’ll…

Hat’s vocals on this are absolutely insane. I also really like the production, its not that much rawer really than the debut, but still has a good balance. It begs the question, is (slightly) rawer better? Also, whatever “Sexual Bloodgargling” is about, you guys can count me out. The song rules, though. A great demo, all in all. I really wish it was a little bit longer.

Division Triad have some really good riffs, and some excellent production values too, at least from what I’ve heard on this split. The drums sound fantastic and there’s a really good balance between all the instruments, which is always nice. All in all, nothing super groudbreaking, but a good set of songs. The imaginatively named War 88 (no dogwhistles there, eh) have dare I say more of a traditional black metal sound, with wasp-like guitars,…

Solid debut from the legendary and influential Gorgoroth. I love the “dank” production and the organic sound, might sound a bit silly but it feels a bit rare to hear this kind of thing in black metal. The riffs are just fantastic. Hat’s vocals are a bit strange (kind of weird effect on them sometimes) but otherwise this a great album. Short and to the point at less than 30 minutes.

Pretty uninspired, straight forward d-beat style stuff with that “dark” edge that was trendy as fuck around maybe 2010 or whatever. My only real surprise here is finding out that this wasn’t put out by Southern Lord. If that were the case then my “dark and mysterious modern hardcore” bingo card would have been well and truly full. I’m being facetious of course, and Usurpress are hardly a bad band. It’s just I feel like…

A fucking incredible split from two giants of the goregrind world. Golem Of Gore bursts out of your speakers in a frenzy of crazy riffs, absurd pitchshifter vocals and a restaurant kitchen’s worth of pots and saucepans (the drums lol). It’s a hell of a smack to the face, with tracks averaging about a minute long. Pharmacist on the other hand, take a bit more time to make their incisions and fill your mind with…

Not to be confused with the self-titled Disrupt demo/7″ from 1990, this archival release combines unused material from two split releases into one banger of an EP. Spinning at 45 RPM and only about 11 minutes long (both sides combined!) this is really the perfect way to experience such music. The quality sounds incredible, and the production is fantastic. Fucking great shit.

If this doesn’t make you want to move then I don’t know what will. Incredible crust punk music, with the right sprinkling of grindcore elements to keep things interesting. Production is a bit grim, as to be expected from a 1990 DIY release, but everything hangs in a nice balance and can be heard in the mix. The songs are fucking killer, and this EP makes me want to drink cider and run around in…

On Donec Mors Nos Separaverit, Hymen Holocaust further hone and perfect their snail-pace goregrind. The vibe in general just feels a bit more mature than the previous records and the crawling pace gives me a Mortician meets Satan’s Revenge On Mankind vibe, which is just absolutely beautiful in every single possible way. The production is organic and clear, and the buzzing guitars stand apart from the sewer monster vocals. The only (small) downside is that…

The single version of “Suffer The Children” contains the incredible track itself (obviously) but also “Siege Of Power” redone from Scum instead with Barney on vocals, in the band’s death metal style, which is much more in line with how you will experience the song live. I’m not sure what’s going with the final track, “Harmony Corruption”, which sounds like something I’d hear whilst playing the N64 version of Doom or some shit.

A bit more interesting than the Gethsemane Dubplate purely because it really feels like a set of brand new songs have been created from the original work, rather than just being a remix EP. Alpha and Omega transforms “Addis” from Advaitic Songs into a whole entire new entity.

You’d think this thing would show it’s age with the Bush references but it doesn’t really matter. We have two fucking killer grindcore bands head to head on one split. I’ve had this fucking 7″ for years, I keep losing it (lol) amongst the pile, but every time I break it out every few years, damn I enjoy it so much. Phobia are stalwarts of the scene, blasting away here with laser sharp precision and…

Absurd’s fairly recent reincarnation has been something of a return to form. What we have here is seemingly a completely different line-up from the “Wolf”-led era, and it shows. The core of the band’s sound remains true, but the execution is different. The band have always had a punk edge to their music, and I always just assumed that this was due to the closeness of their / their audience’s proximity to RAC music. Whether…

1184 was the first Windir record I ever heard, and I have to say it was a very beautiful experience. It’s black metal, but it’s the kind that seems to draw you in via its cover painting; majestic, sprawling tracks with a far more positive vibe than you’d initially expect. Highlights for me include the opening track “Todeswalzer”, “The Spiritlord” and closer “Journey To The End” which really blew my wig off when the metal…

If the stankin’ mush of the first Pharmacist full length is akin to Symphonies of Sickness, then this perplexing follow up is akin to Necroticism. It sounds trite to compare this entire band’s work to that of Carcass, but if you are even remotely familiar with Pharmacist then you’ll know why I’ve done this LOL Real talk though, I did not expect this record to be the way it is. Pharmacist are one of the…

The Wormrot stuff sounds very similar to their Dead EP, with a lot of the same tracks (is it even the same session?), but there’s the added bonus of the Diseptic stuff here. I don’t really know shit about Diseptic, they seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth, but they play raw, aggressive, noisy grind led with a deep, growling vocal attack.

The Dead EP, another very early release from grindcore stalwarts Wormrot, has marginally better “production” than the group’s initial 2007 promo demo release, but is still a harsh and inconsistent listen. For a band that would become so tight and “on the money” with their delivery, Dead has some interesting riffs / detours which seem to distract from the overall greatness. Nevertheless, the talent is clearly here, even from right at the beginning.

Wormrot’s very first demo from 2007. The quality is dog shit, as to be expected, and the tracks seem to be culled from various recording / rehearsal sessions but even here we can appreciate the talent on display. A lot of these tunes would go on to be rerecorded for the Dead EP in 2008 so this release is for the true grind historians and completionist freax only (unless you prefer terrible production then by…

One of the downsides of being in the UK is the slight difficulty of getting a hold of these flexi releases from Decibel magazine. On the other hand, do I really want a shelf full of these fucking things that are nearly as thin as paper? Anyway… Here we have three tracks which sound like they are from the Dirge sessions, so we’re talking peak “grind” Wormrot (not that I have a problem at all…

Urine Festival bring that bubbling vats of boiling piss vibe to the party that girls really like. If you wanna holler at a shawty and you want to show her that you’re freaky, play her this 7”. Guaranteed success! CID bring that same piss vats vibe to extra-tone / splittercore drum speeds mixed with oddly coherent riffs. Legit though, when I first heard this 7” back in I wanna say 2010 (I bought it from…

Infester, not to be confused with the older band of the same name, is one of the several hundred thousand Bobby Maggard goregrind projects. A split with NxVx was no doubt inevitable, considering how prolific both bands are. Infester is surprisingly coherent and switched on, with very busy and involved drum programming and excellent riff writing. Top it off with some goregrind vokill sickness and you’re onto a winner. NxVx session is a bit more…

Another one of my absolute favourite songs of all time. I am, at heart, an album guy, but when it comes to strong singles there are a core few which have been with me for my whole life. “True Faith”, not so much it’s b-side “1963”, is one of these incredible songs. The cold, mechanical drum machines and synthesisers mesh with soft vocals and odd bass leads, making a concoction which shouldn’t really work but…

One of the greatest singles of all time, which probably needs little to no introduction, let alone a review from me. I remember falling in love with this song as a kid, hearing it on the radio but having no idea who sang it. I loved the drum machines, the synths, the vocal delivery. It all felt so futuristic, so new, so fresh, yet also rather dark at the same time. Just absolutely brilliant.

Absolute goregrind perfection. Some of the best LDOH material ever. Relentless drums. Subterranean guitar and bass. Vocals like a volcano erupting through a sewage treatment plant. Almost unbeatable. Stoma are one of the most underrated goregrind bands ever. I say goregrind, even though they style themselves more as “pornogrind”, this is in aesthetic only and the music is 100% fucking savage blasting, buzzsaw strings and pitchshifter vokill annihilation. Seriously, both of these bands go so…

Holy shit this fucking split absolutely kills. I’ve not been all that hot on the most recent reformation of Last Days but this is an actual decent live recording, even if the snare is too low, it fucking seriously kicks ass. The session is from the Putrefaction In Progress era so we have absurd drumming and SMES-Erwin vocals which were so absolutely disgusting. SROM are great here too, with a snare sound that is one…

Intestinal Disgorge side sounds huge, I think this was Sociopath era so the band had really hit their stride at this point, churning out endless disgusting screaming goregrind. 4 minutes or so of really cool shit. I wish I could say the same for Lincoln Love Log, which is far messier / harsher in the production as well as delivery. Sounds live to me, or just shitty rehearsal room recording. Nonsensical noisecore seems to be…

Like Gut’s Odour Of Torture on bath salts, if I could be so bold. Whore Splattered Walls is 50 minutes solid of frankly quite sordid and terrifying, grinding mush, perpetuated by the group’s trademark “bitch squeals” and interrupted only by brief samples that further devolve the tone. Sick shit.

When I was younger I’ll admit that I perhaps did not “get” Consumer Electronics. Truthfully, I don’t really know if I “get” Consumer Electronics now but I find the “music” infinitely fascinating if nothing else. Are there just rambling diatribes of fever and madness? Or is it more than that? Can sense be made from all of this? I’m not entirely sure. Unsettling.

I am undecided on whether the art is fantastic or downright awful. Either way, it was the bold cover that drew me in to the world of Baby Woodrose. I came expecting Harsh Toke – style obnoxious stoner metal but instead found something a bit more nuanced. This debut is a record based primarily in fuzzed out garage rock, but the songs are delivered with a variety of vibes, styles and paces to call Baby…

Keys To The Astral Gates are one of my favourite black metal discoveries as of late. Quickly following up on their excellent debut release, this second EP gives us another short blast of stale, dead air; another crypt is opened and the stench of old bones and death escapes for the first time in centuries. Keys… play obscured black metal caked in layers of dust and analogue cassette noise, something which silly fucking idiots like…

Triptykon, whilst perhaps the logical continuation of Tom G Warrior’s sonic journey after the dissolution of Celtic Frost, was a band that I found difficult to get into. Even seeing them live around the release of this record didn’t manage to sell it to me. “Goetia” was massive (especially live), but that was as far as I went with Triptykon until recently. I’m not sure what happened, exactly. All I know now is that Eparistera…

Early Kreator is such a treat. It’s not totally dissimilar to early Sodom, but nowhere near as messy. Endless Pain is a fucking wild dose of thrash, however. Production is a bit thin (it probably sounds better on vinyl) but it’s not unworkable and the songs are just absolute classics.

I hate to break it to you, chief, but the vocals on this one, they are uhhh, not good. That aside, I feel like I’m listening to my mate’s band rehearse in one of their parent’s garages. I get it, it’s a vibe.

I got this off the back of Too Short To Handle #3, which I got through a trade many moons ago (and is also a 12″ rather than a 7″ like this). Real talk here – what happened to TSTH vol. 2? Was it ever released? Does it skip straight from 1 (this) to 3 as some sort of joke? How bizarre. Anyways, this little piece of white wax varies from the brutal to the…

Is this Pantera’s heaviest album? It certainly goes pretty fuggin’ hard at points. A clean as fuck production job by Terry Date and the lads allows for these heavy hitters (and the softer ones too) to really land. Bonus points for Seth Putnam guesties on track 1, although some of the later lyrics / themes are a bit cringe. Oh, and, the line “Lesbian love is accepted and right” in “Underground In America” is just…

More upbeat and driving than the first in the series. Proper get shit done kinda music, but with the usual unsettling underbelly that lurks beneath the surface of most of Mick’s music, like a great big fat fucker of a fish lurking barely visible beneath the surface of muddy, algae-filled pond water. Grimy!

Slow, paranoid, sinister beats from the absolute master of the style. Not too dissimilar to certain eras of Scorn, this first “Hednod Session” is well worth your time, just maybe not after you’ve smoked too much of the devil’s lettuce.

Mick gives Aaron Funk a run for his money here in this sophomore record under the Quoit moniker (how even the fuck do you say that name anyways? hah). With tracks averaging around the 7 minute mark, Properties can be a punishing listen, but rewarding in its own way for disciples of the fractured, scattered beats in the drum and bass / breakbeat worlds.

A stunning arrangement of two tracks from Davis’ “electric” era. There’s a lot of funk and rock elements in the mix here, and the opening minutes of the first track, “Right Off”, are gloriously cacophonous. Davis’ horn lurks throughout the soundscapes, sometimes coming to the foregroudn to shine, but often skulking in the back as the others in the ensemble do their thing. A fantastic, busy record, meaning that it’s 50+ minute run time absolutely…

Great little early demo from Covenant and really interesting to look back on now, knowing the direction that the band went in. Things are a bit rawer here than on the 1997 debut full-length, but not to the point where things become unlistenable. In isolation, it’s a fun 15 minute demo well worth checking out for those who are fans of 90s black metal, and it would no doubt be considered a forgotten classic had…

There’s a lot going on here, including a lot of electronic synthesizer elements to go alongside the more traditional madman-plays-a-piano-wickedly kind of instrumentation that would accompany black metal of this era. In that regard also, Covenant do excel with their sophamore record. Hearing Sarah Jezebel Deva here is a welcome “easter egg” for fans of early CoF. Between her main band, this and Mortiis’ Stargate she was doing very well for herself at this period…

A cold, dark and grimm early EP from the legendary Immortal, showcasing a transitional phase for the group as they, like basically everyone else in Norway at the time (yay, go hive mind!) moved from playing death metal to this new fangled “black metal” style. Production-wise, this obviously leaves a lot to be desired, but if you like to be nuts deep in reverb-drenched drums, then look no further, this is the release for you.

War Against All is not a bad album by any stretch of the imagination, but it does come across as a little uninspired. At this point it does feel like an Immortal album for the sake of being an Immortal album, which is a huge contrast to Northern Chaos Gods, which burst back onto the scene with a vital and renewed life force. Personally, I think War Against All would have worked better as a…

Blasting goregrind with a fat and chunky sound. Really great guitar work and vocals, which are – of course – of the disgusting pitchshifted variety. Reading the song titles makes me feel a little bit ill, if I’m honest, but I don’t really know what I expected there. The one down side is that the blastbeats are a little uninspired, its the same beat mostly every track, slightly off with a… uhhhh how can I…

Ahhhhhhhhh fucking hell lads Demonaz is back! Can you feel the shred!!!!! Northern Chaos Gods bolts out the gate with the title track, swarming at you like some bastard lovechild of both 90s Immortal and 2000s Immortal. At first I was unsure how I felt about Abbath’s exclusion from this release, but Demonaz and Horgh (and Mr. Tagtgren of course) have really pulled out the stops here. There are some cool callbacks here like “Gates…

A decent set of songs with a strong, clear production. Unfortunately, there is nothing super memorable here. Your mileage may vary, and whilst I found no real fault with the material on display, I could not draw anything from it that I found to be truly inspiring, which is a shame.

I’m no expert on the intricate discography of Satanic Warmaster but this compilation brings together the Revelation EP and the …Of The Night EP / single, and expands on them with a couple of extra tracks: one it seems, for each session / era. I have this record to thank for introducing me to the stunning …Of The Night release, which is one of my favourite things from the project, but the other tracks are…

Probably up there with the best Satanic Warmaster material. There’s a coldness, and a rawness to this that is missing from a lot of the later recordings (if you would allow me the use of these massively overused terms) that permeates every second of this fantastic record.

PHD (lol) is, if my memory serves me, a fantastic side project / off shoot of Chainsaw Dissection. It’s a little rough around the edges production wise, but other than that this thing fucking slays when it comes to bringing shovelfuls of brutality. For those in search of truly disgusting brutal drum machine goregrind and / or death metal, please look no further than this. Your prayers have been answered!

How this was released the same year as the cumbersome Conqueror is anyone’s guess; this EP brings out the absolute best in Jesu. Broadrick’s hazy, dream-like songwriting can unfurl in its full glory and really soar. I had this on vinyl for many years, I must have sold it because I can’t find it anywhere, which is a shame as it’s really grown on me in my old age (ha).

Grausamkeit has this uncanny ability of making some of the most beautiful black metal out the shittiest sounds. This demo contains some of the most lo-fi, decrepit black metal you will find, but played in such a way that mesmerises you and draws you in, wanting more. It’s like Mozart got given a £5 Casio keyboard off of eBay.

I checked this album out due to pure morbid curiosity rather than anything else, and I’ve got to say, it’s not as bad as it’s made out to be. Is it the kind of hip hop that I like to listen to? Absolutely not. The production is hideous, IMO. Well crafted, but hideous. That being said, I’m more impressed by 69’s verses than I ever expected to be, and some of the guest spots (including…