Tag Archives: album reviews

Beaten To Death is a band from Norway, featuring members of current, established metal acts: Tsjuder, Insense, and She Said Destroy. If you are looking for vicious grindcore that’s also innovative and satirical, look to Dodsfest!. These guys nail it: everything from dirty grind to jangle-pop melodies (played over blastbeats). …

Ghost Avenue‘s brand of heavy music used to be called classic or power metal. On their eponymous 2013 disc, this Norwegian band showcases 11 energetic, catchy, melodic songs powered by dual guitar riffs. Add to that a solid rhythm section and a reasonably good vocalist for the genre, and you’ve …

Canada’s Dissension have released a ten-song, fifty-minute concept album, Of Time And Chronic Disease. Combining elements of symphonic black, gritty death, burly power, and raging thrash metal, it offers sonic shocks to a diverse palette. Fans of second-wave symphonic metal (contemporaries to Dimmu Borgir, Cradle Of Filth, et al) ought …

Rare is the band who grasps the concept of ‘storming out of the gate’ with a killer debut that meshes great musicianship, good songwriting, and top quality production. Portugal’s Destroyers Of All offer a left-of-center metal assault, combining technical proficiency with catchy riff arrangements and songwriting, to deliver an incendiary …

Mockingbird‘s Live Cuts was recorded at Wizzfest in Belgium. This Irish band formed in 2009; they still have some raw energy and enthusiasm carrying them forward. The album’s ten charming tracks are mixed fairly unbalanced, which is typical for a live setting. When the guitar breaks to solo (tasty!), the …

Finland’s Oranssi Pazuzu presents fans with six original, genre-expanding, no-frills good tunes. Music replete with creativity sparks interest. Valonielu blends sparse industrial with rock, insanely running it through an extreme metal filter, resulting in a crazy chimera. The long, well-crafted songs feature guitars utilizing some of the heaviest, thickest “breakup” …

Master, the former Chicago – now Czech band, are alive and well! These guys rose through the same ranks that acts like Slayer and Metallica did. With The Witchhunt, they play through some of the most bludgeoning riffs of their career. A variety of moods and tempos offer something to …

Pennsylvania’s Incantation channel quintessential classic mid-90s deathmetal / grindcore with this reissue of 1994’s Mortal Throne of Nazarene. This band is one of the forerunners of what became brutal deathmetal. John McEntee and crew perfected the doom-to-blast atmospheric mood, alternating slow segments with ‘breakneck pace’ grindcore blastbeat licks. In eight songs, …

Hailing from the humble, hardworking Pittsburgh, PA, is modern rock outfit Parise, a band composed of friends in music. Spearheaded by guitarist Dan Parise, this project came in to being to showcase the prodigious talents of these musical collaborators. These aren’t any ol’ friends: the band features within it’s ranks, …

Pat Travers has long been known as a guitar force to be reckoned with. With an illustrious career spanning back at least 37 years, the Canadian-born six-string slinger has more pure life experience to draw on then most. His records Heat In The Street and Makin’ Magic are considered influential …

First of all, Famous Underground can pull it off live, and that’s something to admire about them. What you’re hearing on the album is what you’re going to hear live in concert. It’s not a manufactured ‘Autotune’ band. This is a monster group of heavyweights to watch. Plus, how can …

The first notes of Immolation‘s ninth and latest studio album, Kingdom Of Conspiracy, blare out from my speakers as I sit down and begin to listen. I reminisce: they were a killer band ‘back in the day’. Then I quickly realize: they still are. This newest disc drives that home …

What can be said? Joe ‘Satch’ Satriani has been at this music composing and recording game for longer than many of the readers of this review will have been alive. Many musicians cite Joe Satriani as one of their core influences, due to his consistently high-quality musical output across decades. …

I love underground music, if it brings out some obvious talent, and especially if it’s from outside my home country – the USA. Turin, Italy’s Ultra-Violence (yeah, like Death Angel, or A Clockwork Orange, your choice) seems to fit that bill. Their newest, Privilege To Overcome, is a long-playing album …

A pan-European effort is presented here: an English vocalist, a Greek band, a Finnish producer. Right out of the starting gate, Greece’s Serenity Broken impressed me, by including links to 32 reviews and 21 interviews (many with major publications within Greece, such as Metal Zone or Rock Overdose) in their …

El Pistolero means literally, the gunman. More figuratively, it’s taken to mean “a pistol”: someone with a quick fiery temper, who’s unpredictable, or has an angry streak. With that in mind, I eagerly popped Tracer‘s new one in the CD player, hoping for an album with hints of unpredictability or …

Nice review of Sacred Mother Tongue's 2013 album Out Of The Darkness, by Iris North

Revel In Flesh is a very young band, with their first album Deathevokation released only in 2012. Their second album, Manifested Darkness, is being released by underground label FDA Rekotz in 2013. I remember when Entombed‘s Left Hand Path came out… and turned the death metal world on it’s ear. This …

Whitechapel are a fairly young band, forming in 2006. They are a death metal band, with four releases under their belt, from Knoxville, Tennessee. The band have returned with their newest offering, for Metal Blade Records: the re-release of The Somatic Defilement (their 2007 debut album), which has been re-mastered. Overall, the record …