Album Reviews

Persecution Complex is the new EP from Leicestershire band Resin.  It’s been an unsettled year for the band, with the departure of drummer Danny Finch in October last year followed by what seemed to be the end of the band in December.  That would have been a shame after a great 2014 in …

A somewhat unusual name which conjures up images of men in corpse paint, axes, hammers and the usual paraphernalia suited to such a name. This is far from the truth. The band hail from Sweden and formed in 2006. To date have released a series of eps and now this …

          Sweden’s purveyors of Doom return with a stunning follow up to 2011’s “A Rose For The Apocalypse”. Much has happened in the Draconian camp in the intervening four years, the major upheaval of losing long time vocalist Lisa Johansson, the subsequent search for and unveiling …

Sweden’s long-running death metal stalwart act, Grave, has returned with an aggressive, pummeling new album, titled Out of Respect for the Dead. The disc is a blistering marathon through nine tunes, ranging from mid-length to a nine-plus minute epic. Recorded, mixed, and mastered at the modern, digital Studio Soulless, Out …

There have been some fantastic releases this year so far; one I have been eagerly awaiting is Mercy Isle’s new EP; Storm.  Having been lucky enough the last few years to see Kassandra Novell in action at Metal Female Voices Festival, I knew Mercy Isle would be something special.  Kassandra really …

Sometimes a band comes across your path by seemingly the most inconceivable route.  In the case of Kinasis, that path traversed its journey from Somerset to Belfast via Dublin – and more especially one Gareth Jeffs, guitarist with extreme death groovesters Xerosun who, one day out of the blue, contacted your humble …

For Arlington, Virginia band Deceased‘s devotees and collectors, the new 2 CD set, Cadaver Traditions, is a treasure trove of uncommonly-heard cover songs. Featuring 53, yes 53! full length songs, this set incorporates 2 albums of Deceased’s which were out of print, plus a collection of 17 previously-unreleased tunes. The …

@planetmosh reviews Cobras and Fire (The Mastermind Redux) by .@monstermagnetnj on .@NapalmRecords Almost a year ago I reviewed Milking the Stars: A Re-imagining of Last Patrol.  Around the same time I had the privilege of interviewing singer and the creative force behind Monster Magnet, Dave Wyndorf.  It was twenty minutes …

Slovenian melodic black-death metal act Dalkhu has released its latest opus, Descend… Into Nothingness. The album contains seven songs, which are an intense mixture of death, black, and even folk metal elements. Guttural, brutal death metal vocals permeate “Pitch Black Cave”, and the other tunes. Like Jeff Walker‘s famed vocal …

Daylight, a self-proclaimed hard working pop-punk band from Barcelona, Spain, has released it’s latest offering, an album called One More Fight. One More Fight contains ten songs of pop-meets-rock-meets the melodic sensibility of punk, delivered on the gentler side. The album’s mix is contemporary, crisp, loud, and clear. The sound …

Welsh alt rock band Dream State have their debut, 5 song EP out, titled Conssquences. The band states that they draw inspiration from melodic hardcore, and the EP seems to back this up, with melodic arrangements, well-sung female vocals by Charlotte-Jayne Gilpin, and interesting instrumental breaks and tones. The band …

Munster, Germany is the hometown of modern melodic metalcore act Idle Class. The band’s newest album, Of Glass and Paper, contains eleven tracks of melodic, fairly fizzy music. This particular breed of music is oft panned as “the screamo stuff”. Wildly popular for heavy music, metalcore enjoys working with a …

Portland, Oregon’s Cemetery Lust are very sincere flatterers of the early extreme thrash metal invasion’s pillars: Slayer, Kreator, and a few others. On Screams Of The Violated, the revivalists’s eight song re-release, it pays homage to these forerunner bands in spades. To state this more plainly, these guys sound like …

A posthumous release for bassist Bones, Evil Army‘s Violence and War is a five track blast through death-thrash. These three Memphis denizens kick things off with a killer divebomb, letting listeners know they mean business. They’ve got a maniacal, rip your head off direction established right away. Songs range from …

A certain faction of the black metal fandom prefers raw, unpolished music, because it sounds more true or authentic to them. Ruach Raah, from Portugal, has arrived to add its spin on metal music to the genre’s already immense ranks. Hate Fanaticism, the band’s ten song album, is a mid-paced, …

A relic from extreme metal’s distant past, Monastery‘s Ripping Terror 91 demo seems to be part historical documentation and part nostalgia release. This trio of acclaimed musicians (Sinister‘s Aad Kloosterwaard and Ron van de Polder, plus Entombed‘s Lars Rosenberg) were still fresh faces in the death metal scene in 1991, …

Rough, raw, and reckless, Playfastordie by America’s Bandit is a crazy run through basement-ethic punk, powerviolence, grindcore, and hardcore. The entire presentation is ‘underground’, with a B level mix coupled to new-level punk musicianship. They’ve got the basic beats, chords, and screams down, but need a lot of work on …

This albums biggest stumbling block to the casual listener,  is also the albums biggest asset, and that is Violin player Jean Luc Ponty. Once you accept that there is no lead guitar on this album, just Jon’s exquisite singing and Jean virtuoso violin playing, then you are in for an …

To say that the guys from the “Christian Metal” group Styrper have been busy since the release of ‘No More Hell To Pay‘ nearly two years ago is an understatement.  With most of the members participating in a variety of side projects.rom – Oz Fox working on Bloodgood’s ‘Dangerously Close‘ …

The Hollywood Vampires were born in 1972, in the upstairs bar of the Rainbow Bar & Grill on Los Angeles’ notorious Sunset Strip.  The bar infamously was a gathering place for the rock stars living in or passing through (or even passing out in) LA during the heady days of the Seventies …