Reviews

The use of electronics is becoming increasing popular in extreme metal and (insert prefix here)-core, yet there’s a relative dearth of such groups that could accurately be described as industrial fusions.

Angus McBillion has packed up his unicorns in his old kit bag and is smiling, smiling, smiling through gritted teeth. But how are things down at the farm?…

The cake is a lie.

Kommodus's second album of raw black metal is a mess of ideas: some good, some bad, some ugly.

How often do you recall being genuinely blown away by a NWOTHM (new wave of traditional heavy metal) album these days? For me, not very often. But, this just so happens to be one of those rare occasions…

Who's to say that heavy metal can't be just as dark, mysterious and seductive, as it can be wild, glamorous and energetic? The Night Eternal's Fatale provides clear evidence to the contrary.

Welsh atmospheric black metal band Ofnus will celebrate the release of their debut album, Time Held Me Grey And Dying, with a performance at Bloodstock Festival. If you’re wondering how a year-old band…

For the second time this year, I'm reviewing a two-song death metal EP with black-and-white cover art. And for the second time, it's a release that is short but sweet.

It’s easy to eulogize the great albums, and gratifying to dissect the disasters (even if one doesn’t make many friends while doing so); the albums that offer mixed results are arguably the more intriguing…

With only one EP and one full-length record under their belt, The Zenith Passage have already become regarded as arguably the hottest new act in the tech-death scene; Datalysium is likely going to cement…

You know when you find a great recipe but keep improving it over the years? Revolution Saints know all about that. Their special blend of hard rock had me interested again in the genre a few years ago.

The return of the band with the big V from Down Under; Australia’s Voyager have been a steady prog machine since 1999. Daniel Estrin may be the only founding member left but the lineup has been steady…

I’ve listened to enough metal by now to know which albums in weekly release round-ups I can safely assume I will not find myself delving deeply into. Of these, albums tagged as ‘brutal death’ with gory…

I never quite imagined the phoenix as a horse, and I thought I'd see a new Sombres Forêts or a new Gris before a return to their seemingly one-off project Miserere Luminis, but regardless here we…

The vengeful spectre is back with a lust for death.

What do you get when you mix Sleep's Holy Mountain and Norwegian black metal influences? Karavan's Unholy Mountain, of course!…

When a song from a relatively new metal band manages to accumulate the level of engagement that Lorna Shore’s “To The Hellfire” accomplished, it’s not surprising to see an ever-growing ensemble of bands…

This one slowly grew on me: a melodic death metal album that managed to make me listen to it more times than I had initially expected after my first listen.

If death-doom isn't enough to send shivers down one's spine, then how about a bit of jazz for you, then? That should do the trick, right?

Whatever Onheil have presented to us here with In Black Ashes, whether it's melodeath, meloblack, or blackened thrash, there's one thing I know for sure: the album is just as overwhelmingly ferocious…

Blackbraid’s debut album took the world by storm last year. In 2023, with the element of surprise now no longer a factor, can Blackbraid II continue to impress?

Calligram’s debut The Eye Is The First Circle was a strong first statement of intent by the London outfit. Position | Momentum takes their hybrid black metal sound to the next level.

Krakatoa.

What does the Fox say?…

Divide And Dissolve keep protesting in a loud yet silent manner.

Folk metal has never been a strong contender for the position of the "most popular subgenre”, as the scene is overshadowed due to unoriginality, staleness, and perceptions of being silly or gimmicky.

Are you feeling doomed and gloomed? Well, perhaps The River will help uplift your miserable spirits with A Hollow Full Of Hope (or hopefully not put a downer on your perhaps otherwise good mood). I hope…

If you ever wanted to experience the true nature of the almighty apocalypse without actually being a part of it, then take a listen to what this Old dreadful Serpent has unleashed unto us. Through Ensemble…

It's a risk, but not a Risk-level risk.

Fen have had a fairly explorative musical journey thus far, one that I’ve resonated strongly with very specific sections of. I don’t know whether my enthusiasm towards Carrion Skies above all their other…

What lies at the limit of cosmic horror? More drone?

Power metal generally has a bit more of a fantasy dragon-slaying setting, so how's a dystopian future as a setting?

Swans are once again, for potentially their swan song, a band of excess.

Oh man, I'm late to the party... and it looks like everyone already got angry and broke everything.

After over 20 years, Japanese sludge/blackened hardcore group Seek have released their first full-length record on Silent Pendulum Records. Well, it’s their first full-length at least according to the…

Now THIS is the type of symphonic metal I crave!

OK Pokémon fans, admit it, the first thing that comes to your mind when you're listening to a bit of blackened death metal is the character Snorlax lazing in The Necrotrophic Abyss, am I right?

Both Radu and myself have previously voiced our enthusiasm for highlighting metal emerging from underrepresented countries within the scene. In the process of writing this review, I’ve learnt that not…

It isn’t too often that you see proper US power metal these days; you know, the real asphalt-ripping stuff that’s as muscular as East Coast thrash and as dark as death. Well, dark as Control Denied, anyway.

For a band that have ostensibly been a deathcore band for the duration of their career thus far, Mental Cruelty have found a few ways to reinvent themselves quite early on in said career. From slamming…

For an album where each song deals with different persons and their different personalities, the atmospheric black metal on Portraits does little to differentiate the songs from each other.

How do you make a genre-jumping avant-garde black metal album sound approachable?

So here we have an extremely prolific psych rock band creating the Tool version of a thrash metal album about environmental apocalypse.

Though Crippled Black Phoenix have had touches of metal in their music, enough for us to include them on our website, they remained firmly a non-metal band, albeit one that's a bit hard to categorize.

Not the feelgood hit of the summer.

What do you get when you mix D-beat and crust punk with modern style melodic black metal and satanical themed lyrics? The answer is Haradrim.

Here's some of the highest standard and most exhilarating meloblack you'll hear this year, brought to you by a band Sworn to take you on A Journey Told Through Fire.

If it's a blend of traditional 80s heavy metal with a hint of 70s hard rock (with an added oomph) that tickles your fancy, then this First Sighting of Blood Star will surely meet your nostalgic needs.

If one were in the mood to listen to some music in a genre ending in -core, there’s a lot to choose between: hardcore, metalcore, deathcore, mathcore, grindcore? For the more indecisive listener that wants…

Being a band typically flagged as avant-garde, Thy Catafalque unsurprisingly have different flavours for their various records. Naiv was generally fun and bubbly, while Vadak had a more melancholic feel…

To Be Cruel could very well be the most terrifying album of this year. It’s impossible for me to get straight to the point and explain what this album means to me. Partly because this album doesn’t go…

Harambe?!…

If Wytch Hazel keeps putting out great record after great record, I might end up reconsidering my dark, heathen ways.

Symphonics, electronics, breakdowns. Predictable, monotone, uninspired. I could start this review with that “definition of insanity line” to express my thoughts on this album, but I guess that would be…

Some people like their death metal to be blackened, or technical, or melodic, or symphonic, or progressive, or atmospheric, or brutal. A rare group of people want their death metal to have a little bit…

I’m not sure how one would go about drawing similarities between hills and white lions, but Hills Like White Lions evoke similarities to good progressive metal groups, by virtue of being one.

What would it sound like if Mahavishnu Orchestra played black metal?

There's a mold one creates when being categorized as one subgenre. Pupil Slicer's debut Mirrors was quite unquestionably a mathcore album. So is Blossom for the most part, but it's one less…

Horizon's End have possibly produced their grand achievement, three decades into their existence. And it’s not that their previous output hasn’t been some first-rate progressive metal music.

Midsummer Murders meets doom.

The band Wake have had one of the most intriguing musical trajectories of recent years, going from a pretty straightforward grindcore sound to a more elaborate extreme metal style that has roots in death…

Across the likes of Lotus Thief, Forlesen and Botanist, Beth Gladding (aka Bezaelith) has demonstrated an inclination towards music that is atmospheric and/or unusual; her latest project Inherus continues…

Vulture Industries are one of those charming bands that managed to pick up the ‘avant-garde’ tag not by being aggressively eclectic or divisively experimental, but purely by sounding unlike anyone else,…

The Netherlands has given the world plenty of solid-to-great symphonic metal. New listeners investigating the genre will never run out of recommendations by the old-timers. The latter may rightfully say…

There’s nothing inherently wrong with playing it safe when releasing an album after a 9-year-long hiatus. In fact, it may be a wise approach, if not artistically, then commercially. Playing to your existing…

Considering where they were a decade ago, Avenged Sevenfold have certainly had one of the more intriguing career trajectories of the 2000s mainstream metal icon bands.

Eremit’s charm across their first 2 records has come from pushing basic song concepts to and beyond their sensible limits, and in doing so transforming them into gargantuan songs that appeal both because…

Often when bands significantly change style, they either move from a sound that listeners are fond of to one that they’re less keen on, or vice versa. With Between The Day & I, Atlases transition from…

I was introduced to The Bipolar Disorder Project in the worst of ways: through the news of mainman Robert Cotoros’s untimely death in 2020. The recordings he made in the years leading up to his passing…

Here's the Arrival of the mysteriously wonderful Mesarthim, once again bringing you some atmospheric black metal from who knows where in the vast open cosmos.