Reviews

Pop country is the worst form of music there is. From the Nashville assembly line of the ‘70s to Billy Ray Cyrus’s big achy breaky-through in the ‘90s to the luciferian monstrosities…

Ether Coven are a band that are not afraid to make their message loud and clear, and when that message covers topics as ugly and painful as cancer and suffering, it’s unsurprising that the music…

Grindcore has come along way since it emerged in the late 80s, with bands like Napalm Death, Carcass, Terrorizer and even Bolt Thrower contributing to this new wave of extreme punk. Now in the modern day,…

This music is not meant for easy listeners on a family road trip or vacation, or anything like that; it's death metal after all,. Still, the Swedish death metal scene showed us that it needn't…

A lot of chaotic music is described as "controlled chaos". On the contrary, it feels like Triumvir Foul created a beast so vile they cannot control it.

The Max Cavalera cookbook.

A lot of political music is filled with a lot of justified despair, but contrast it with something a bit more cathartic and triumphant, maybe they really do fear us.

Well, intrepid adventurers, it’s time to use your Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic and hitch a lift on the Sleestak Pylon to join Marcus, Ben and Matty on a sonic expedition. This time we embark on a bit of…

In the heavens, there's a frightful mix of drone and blackgaze playing.

I hope you like some Southern gothic in your noise rock.

Rain, torrent, mud, wind and lava. That’s the first track and it’s a good way to describe the whole album.

A shoddily conducted, atrociously produced, unamusing raid. All that glitters is not gold.

Looking at my teeth, my dentist told me I grind in my sleep. The hustle never stops. So this is probably what Teethgrinder were doing these past six years. They were on the grind.

A while after finishing my Nicolas Cage marathon in preparation for that one film in which Nicolas Cage plays a fictionalized version of himself, I find out that there's a hardcore band called Nicolas…

‘Aveilut’, in Judaism, is the period of mourning after a loved one’s death. On their debut record, Scarcity depict this mourning not in the form of solemn melancholy, but as an experience of maddening…

Cult Of Static is the sixth release by Static-X, and the title is a reference to the die-hard fans who followed them throughout the years.

Taste… taste changes. Jesu... Jesu stays the same.

"I got another confession to make, I'm no fool, everyone's got their chains to break, holding you." Yes, metalstormers, I have my own confession to make.

Korpituli’s sophomore outing of Burzumy black metal doesn’t stray very far from its roots, yet always seems in a rush to break free. Third time’s the charm?

With the album Oceans Of Slumber, the band Oceans Of Slumber followed the trajectory of their previous records into excess; with Starlight And Ash, they’ve changed direction entirely.

Don't get overly excited about this being Midnight Odyssey's longest release, it's but a compilation of three ambient albums.

- Knock, knock… - Who’s knocking? - The best black metal album of 2022’s first half.

Are those communist druids on the album cover?…

In the last decade or so, it has been a great time to be a fan of thrash; not only has there been a bounty of new bands releasing seminal releases, but veterans of the scene have reformed or returned from…

I misread the instructions and got my dose almost four months late. I’ve arrived at this jumping nu metal folk party a little later than is considered fashionable, but fortunately Get Your Dose Now!…

All around me are familiar faces...Yeah, this really feels like a Pt. 2...

Space is cold, but it's not always empty. Xenoglyph provide black metal to fill the cosmos.

Wake’s quiet evolution during the first decade of their existence culminated in a staggering redefinition of their sound in 2020; with Thought Form Descent, they show that they remain hungry to grow…

First Meditation, then Exorcisms, and now, after long last, an Apocalypse: Karl Sanders’ Saurian series has escalated dramatically as time’s gone on.

Music isn’t the art form most suited to sequels, so it may not have much competition, but Panzerfaust’s The Suns Of Perdition must be among the best metal album trilogies ever.

Hostile music about hostile architecture in hostile societies working as intended.

Some grind is more groovy, some more chaotic, some more experimental, some more pummeling. Antigama try to bridge a lot of that once again.

To borrow a line from Alan Averill, “We are Nero, and Rome is burning.” Imperial Triumphant don’t just revel in deconstruction, they overindulge. Like the worst kind of WoW Alliance gankers,…

Bavaria’s premier hallucinogen-peddlers break 7 years of introspection with Atma, conveying the emotional range of Soma with the immediacy of Moksha in some of their finest work to date.

A critic takes a critical look at Critical Defiance.

Tapping the keg.

The early 90's was a time when metal in general was really beginning to push the boundaries of music, with lyrics becoming more extreme, the sound becoming even heavier and more brutal, the vocals…

Kekal have been around for quite a while, so why am I hearing of them first now? On the surface, Envisaged sounds like sort of a punkier take on post-80s King Crimson, and that’s a pretty heavy compliment...

Now this is more like it.

Hard to think of a more eagerly anticipated grindcore album than this. Singapore's most famous metal export, one of grindcore's leading bands in the past decade, and a meme-worthy cover art all…

A second lease of life for this Australian disso-death metal band courtesy of an injection of Convulsing.

All dressed up and nowhere to go...

Mourning is an art form forgotten by many.

After a wildcard jack-of-all-trades debut, Greg Puciato shows with Mirrorcell that he'd ace being in Alice In Chains.

Water drips down from unseen stalactites as a voice from the underworld growls: "On countless worlds, the earth shakes as the forces of chaos strive to gain control. Whilst they unleash their devastating…

“Heavy metal has more than 50 years and many, many subgenres. It is very difficult to innovate and have your own identity. All in all, what matters is that your music excites, shocks and makes you wanna…

Fellas, your grindcore has to be absolutely unrelenting, noisy, pummeling. Do the right thing. Add a trumpet.

Hearing that there's a band named "Candy" I was expecting some glam hard rock stuff. I was instead greeted by some of the noisiest hardcore out there.

Conjurer are one of the hottest new metal acts in the UK right now. I hope that following the release of Páthos, they will be considered one of the hottest new metal acts anywhere right now.

The reunion that was never going to happen turned into the reunion that was never intended to take so long; Porcupine Tree waited just long enough for probably all but the most ardent believer to give…

You might remember Bipolar Architecture from our Clandestine Cuts series. Here, they take the big step in creating a progressive post-metal debut full-length.

One of the biggest strengths of Roadburn as a festival is its tendency to bring together unexpected collaborators, with reliably successful results. Final Light was my highlight of this year’s edition…

Civil War’s fourth album defies expectations not only by its very existence, but by its dynamism and spirit – although I have been tempted for the sake of gripping emphasis to describe Invaders…

Generally one of the first questions that noobies ask when getting into extreme metal is "What's the difference between black metal and death metal?", and that's something that, at…

Corpos Transparentes makes it hard to believe that there was a time where it wasn't obvious that one-man bands Bríi and Kaatayra were actually the same one-man.

Over the last few years, I have gotten prematurely excited on more than one occasion about a new music announcement, only to re-read the band name and see that it’s from Portrayal Of Guilt (no offence…

And just when I though Krallice was finally settling down, Psychagogue happened.

Even though both "melodic death metal" and "melodic black metal" are genre tags that get used fairly often, the former is pretty well-established as a separate genre, to the point where…

Seven albums in less than seven years should start feeling a bit stale by now, especially with how long their runtimes were. But Esoctrilihum knows not to make the exact same album twice. Consecration…

Guitar virtuoso Michael Romeo took advantage of the hiatus his main band Symphony X seems to be under, and decided to write music for a solo project. But he got a little carried away and what he wrote…

Oh, the inhumanity.

"Say, that wasn’t half bad! You're right! It was all bad!"…

Limp Bizkit approve of the scientific method.

This review is sponsored by Warfront, a new ambitious MMORPG out now on all devices and streaming platforms. Choose between different warrior classes like dwarves and dwarves, ensemble a team of five players,…

Time can provide many things. It can provide perspective, maturity, and wisdom. It can also show signs of deterioration.

Believe it or not, this band is actually not writing about the great outlaw of the American West and his infamous train robberies.

It’s a bit risky using terms such as ‘zenith’ to describe an album presumably intended not to be the last in your career; if the title becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, it doesn’t leave you with much…

As metal’s flirtations with the saxophone have intensified in the past decade or so, few bands have more effectively married the genre and the instrument than White Ward, and False Light is another true…

Sometimes, you just have to leave your established metalcore/djent sound to become a Deftones clone.

Not all music that sticks its tongue firmly in its cheek is that good, but there's a sweet sweet spot in music that embraces its own ridiculousness without compromising its quality.