Reviews

Have you recently found yourself lost in the feeling of Nostalgia over '80s heavy metal? Well, you could dig out some bands of the past, or Enforce yourself to listen to some Nostalgia from 2023.

With its origins in Scandinavia, it's no wonder that black metal is associated with freezing environments. Yet, one-man project Aridus shows us that the scorching American desert can be just as bleak,…

The Great Star Above Provides us with an hour of mesmerizing atmosphere. An enjoyable, hypnotic journey for some; an exercise in attention retention for others.

Vorna are a Finnish pagan folk metal band with meloblack tendencies, and for this past decade have been on a roll. Now, that should be enough to entice you.

Greece has made an impact on the genre of epic power metal in the last few years, with the emergence of bands like Warrior Path, Sacred Outcry, and Steel Arctus (to name a few). Triumpher are now joining…

Season Of Mist are a label that I primarily associate with extreme metal, and when looking at their roster, there’s good reason for that. I was therefore somewhat surprised to find melodic alt/prog band…

Dawn Of Ouroboros announced themselves as an act unbeholden to any one style in particular on their 2020 debut, The Art Of Morphology, a record that incorporated both elements of death and black into an…

It's safe to say that the "female-fronted" symphonic metal that dominated the 2000s is kinda saturated and there's few bands that still rouse interest other than the already established…

With a cover art that screams nu-ish post-grunge, Spotlights actually take alt metal in a more post-ish direction.

King Potenaz have a psychedelic band logo, and their debut album is not only called Goat Rider, but features a goat riding a motorbike along a rainbow road (or, more accurately, the red end of the rainbow)…

Black Sabbath and Jethro Tull walk into a bar where Jimi Hendrix has just risen from his grave…

It would seem Necronomicon have done it again, that is, producing thrash... Constant To Death thrash.

I imagine most music fans have a few artists that they generally do not enjoy, but find one song that they click strongly with; the concept of a ‘one-hit wonder’ relies on this scenario. It’s easy enough…

Someone should start a tribute act to the band called Lucifer chauffeur.

"Bring Back The Plague"? What other prophecies have these modern day Nostradamuses got up their sleeves?

Graveworm have finally resurfaced after eight years in the dark, going straight back into doing what they've done best by providing us with great symphonic black metal with a touch of gothic. Here,…

Hercules is a Greek traditional heavy metal one-man project masterminded by Chris Andreadakis. After a lively, full-blooded outing in 2022, Legend Of Metal, Andreadakis has opted for a curious change in…

Hold on to your hats, my fine lasses and gents! Here you'll be sent on a wild trip, reminiscing the classic '60s psychedelia and '70s punk eras. You'll be damned not to immerse yourself…

A glorious return. As if time never touched them.

This is like the trope of having a devil and an angel on each shoulder trying to convince you. Except both the blackened screamo and the chamber strings are devils in this case.

Erech Leleth's projects have been popping up like rain lately, all in various branches of black metal. It was only a matter of time until the bright rays of shoegaze touched at least one of them.

An old time classic prog rock band attempting a concept album about Norse mythology? Will we see another Grammy battle between this and 72 Seasons?

Don't judge a book by its cover. An album cover, on the other hand, can often give you quite accurate insight into the sound and attitude of the band in question. Such is the case with Black Mass…

You have metalcore that relies a lot on melodic elements, and metalcore that relies a lot on noisy chaos. And then you have metalcore that knows that the "core" in it comes from hardcore punk.

Well paced, powerful and varied: yes, this is another spellbinding record from Elvenking.

Some might consider it ambitious to release a 103-minute debut album; others might label it ‘excessive’. Ultimately, The Unsung Mantras is an album that I can sit through in a single sitting without losing…

Hitching a ride to the underworld? Mesmur can take you there.

It’s been close to seven sweet years since the debut release from Belarussian post-metallers Nebulae Come Sweet. In that time, members have come and gone (a situation exacerbated by fallout from the war),…

Here is a band that sort of has it all: death growls, black shrieks and blast beats, melodeath riffs, post-rock ambience, clean female vox, folksy post-metal; you name it, Vintersea has it. Well, here’s…

A vast, purple landscape, gnarled trees, … these cover art elements usually indicate that eerie black metal awaits. Instead, within the first few seconds, VoidCeremony make blatantly apparent that they're…

LLNN, Hexis, Eyes... Denmark is turning out to be quite the hotbed for venomous, pissed-off sonic violence. Another name from the same scene that you may not have yet encountered is Telos, but it’s a name…

Next time, Metallica, please just pick your 40 favorite seasons and call it a day right there.

At the extreme end of the power metal spectrum we find a Canadian power metal band called Atavistia, a band unlike any other in power metal (cough, cough, Wintersun).

Releasing a metal album the same day as Metallica is brave. Releasing a thrash metal album the same day as Metallica is crazy.

Worry not — they manage to top the last album.

Holy Moses — they're back! And after nearly a decade in the dark, Sabina Classen shows that she is no longer The Invisible Queen of thrash.

The number of musicians in metal to feature in multiple bands is so endless as to make learning of a musician’s side-project wholly unremarkable; two musicians from the same band forming a separate group…

What’s this, a review of a Romanian metal album that was not recommended by Radu? Okay, Metal Storm may not be entirely reliant on our resident Romanian to discover metal from the country, but Paenil Era…

Lotan combines a straight-forward black metal approach with a heavy tinge of Oriental melody, Mesopotamian themes, and a hard-rocking flair to top it all off.

‘Allochiria’ is a medical condition, in which sensation is felt at a different point on the body from the one that is stimulated. Allochiria’s Commotion is a post-metal album that uses different tactics…

Late Night Venture are a new name to me in the world of post-metal, despite existing for close to 20 years and apparently being reputable enough to have a Wikipedia page. I’m not sure where they’ve been…

I’ll be honest, the first moment in which I saw a new album from a post-metal band called Dirge had been released and then found out that it wasn’t a shock reunion of the French band Dirge, I was somewhat…

Last year was an immense year for extreme prog metal, to the extent that not only was the category stacked in our awards, and not only did some killer albums just miss out, but some more great albums weren’t…

Feast your ears on some pure aggressive death/thrash, but please be warned, it will most surely be a true Trial Of Chaos for those faint-hearted, easy listeners.

Roadburn 2018. A supergroup composed of members from a multitude of Icelandic black metal bands has composed a 67-minute show for this occasion only. What sort of doomy dissonance awaits the audience?

This album makes Lucifer cry.

Not what I expected, but a fine album nonetheless.

Ineffable is technically a debut album, but it’s not of the usual kind; although this is the first record released under the HamaSaari name, the musicians comprising this band have released music together…

How would I describe Sunrot? How about compulsive-post-noise-power-sludge? Or dark-spacey-abrasive-dumb-fuzzy-punk? Yeah, that sounds about right.

Stömb make what I feel is a rather bold artistic move on Massive Disturbed Meta Art; otherwise an instrumental-only band, they kick this album off with a song featuring vocals, leaving listeners at risk…

The popular response to the numerous King Buffalo albums released in the past couple of years is good evidence that there’s an appetite for other bands that similarly merge mellow psychedelia with patches…

Lo and behold! Fast post-metal!

Black metal about the highest peaks of nature and the lowest peaks of man.

I can appreciate that, in a post-Covid world, a 72-minute djent-heavy prog metal album from a band whose name sounds a bit similar to ‘Corona’ might not make friends all that easily, but for those prepared…

Another Finnish rock band, another trip down nostalgia lane for me. This time, it is the goth’n’roll band The 69 Eyes on the menu. It is both exhilarating and disappointing. Let me tell you why.

Now, here's a new, exciting prospect Drifting your way. Cursebinder may indeed sound like a marvelous band name, but I'll have you know that this is a post-black debut as equally impressive as…

Dear readers, how about something unique? How about some groove-meets-power metal inspired by manga soundtracks and with reggae vocals? Got your attention, did I?

Omne, I hear you ask, are you planning on celebrating three years on Metal Storm by reviewing a Limp Bizkit album?

You can take our lives, but you'll never take our metal.

Burn baby, burn.

Here is one Finnish sludge/doom act that has been monstrously Lurking in the shadows of the hellish doom scene since 2008. Now here they are 15 years later with their fourth release, Aegis. How good is…

Are you familiar with Hot Graves? I wasn't aware of graves being hot either, but the band, it turns out, are pretty good, and Plaguewielder is in no doubt their best release yet.

Well, a slight over-estimation.

3rd rock from the (seventh) sun.

When Smoulder’s debut album came out, traditional metal fans slowly but steadily started to become obsessed with it to the point that, in these four years that went by, it managed to gain the status of…

The HIRS Collective have been making queer grind for a while and a lot of it, but never until We're Still Here did it feel like we're finally getting a cohesive album from them.

Listening to new metal releases every week is bound to give you some degree of metal saturation. It's up to a noisy avant-garde psych folk atmospheric war metal album to change that.

I discovered Lethvm in 2019 with their album Acedia, which was some top-tier Amenra worship. Four years on, and the Belgians in Lethvm still resemble their compatriots, but they distinguish themselves…

I’m not sure if there’s any band I’ve compared albums with in my reviews more than I have with Mastodon. It makes sense, since Mastodon are a great band; however, the range that Mastodon have covered over…

Blasphemous music is an intriguing artform. Sometimes it’s just disgusting, and brutish diatribes against organized religions with the simple aim to shock and offend. If you based your opinions solely…