Reviews

I don’t really review power metal, so when an album compels me to do so, I feel like that’s a pretty strong indication of its quality.

Do you remember how SubRosa took long, slow doom and gave it a dark folk twist? Well, take that as a musical base, add some post-metal, drone metal, dark ambience and whatever else you feel like throwing…

The void from that artwork sure looks inviting.

Six albums in and I still don’t really know how to describe how Helms Alee sound, which is great, considering that’s the main purpose of this article.

Keep Qaalm and carry on.

Four decades later, this Vulcano still erupts.

"Beautiful distortion" is what I'd call a lot of metal, though it's usually more "distortion" than "beautiful". Beautiful Distortion is more "beautiful"…

With Eupnea dropping the month after most of the world entered lockdown, Pure Reason Revolution chose a hell of a time to make a comeback. Thankfully, that misfortune has by no means derailed their resurgent…

I have reviewed music from a lot of places, but... French Polynesia?

Somali Yacht Club descended from The Sun to The Sea, but have now ascended into The Space.

The other kind of dad rock.

A clear example of the subgenre, but very much by the numbers...

As much as their name sounds like Oh Dae-Su when said aloud, Au-Dessus are sadly not an Oldboy-themed metal band.

Ok, I swear I'm almost done with the Roadburn related albums.

I guess I'll have to review every Neptunian Maximalism live album from now on.

Watain are back for real, bringing more Lawless Darkness for us all. Let the devils and their extras take you already. The coffee tastes like blood at the 11th circle of Hell - construction expected to…

Super Satan don’t sound like you would imagine a band named ‘Super Satan’ would; they’re a lot more interesting than that.

This album has been out for two months and war still hasn’t ended (actually, it has gotten worse). Nice false advertising, Sabaton.

Do you miss Eden Circus? Well, while that group crawl glacially towards putting out a sophomore album, other bands emerge in the meantime to scratch the same itch.

I enjoyed the first album I reviewed from India so much that I decided to cover another right afterwards.

Every night before going to sleep I check under my bed for Thou.

Tumultuous times call for tumultuous music.

By now, the one-song album is very much a done-to-death gimmick, and yet it’s one that allures me time and time again.

Plenty of artists have dabbled with dark ambient, but few have become as synonymous with the genre the way that Lustmord did. And out of all genres, dark ambient has been one that metal has interwoven…

Were you wondering what Evil Invaders have been doing during the last five years, since Feed Me Violence? I will tell you; they have been rebranding and reinventing themselves. If you remember them as…

A mediocre effort from a good band. Poorly composed, with little thought into what ideas to include and how long to dwell on them. A collection of B-sides that haven't made it on past records?

If you’re such a good psychic, then why did you get put in jail to begin with?

Jingle bells, the Devil’s bells.

Did the band name themselves after the Fistful Of Metal cover?…

Blast from the past.

Automated autopilot.

Ladies and gentlemen, weeb black metal!

Total eclipse hides the earth The night of doom has come Antichrist soldiers are proclaimed To send souls to the hell

In Stasis may well be a state in which Monuments wish to find themselves, considering their turbulent past.

Doom can be a lot of things, but it's quite rare for it to be cinematic.

It even has "Dark" in the band name!

What is it with Czech bands and Eastern themes?

In One Of These, I Am Your Enemy implies the existence of In One Of These, I Am Your Friend.

Swedish blackened doom about Sisyphus and antinatalism. Yeah, this review is gonna get dark, innit?

So, the two guitarists of Necrophobic and the drummer of Cryptosis formed a new project and just released an album. “What does it sound like?”, you ask. Well, it sounds very much like Necrophobic.

There was a time when Deathspell Omega played impenetrably technical black metal. Metal bespeaking the relationship between Man and the Devil; dissonant and avant-garde. The times they are a-changin'.

As much as I appreciate all that the great metal that the likes of the USA, UK and Nordic countries have produced, there’s something inherently more exciting about discovering bands from underrepresented…

Backbone have gracefully graduated from the Clandestine Cuts crowd.

Out of nowhere: black metal!

Tracing hardcore's evolution, at some point emotional hardcore emerged, into what became colloquially known as "emo". But even then, I don't think anyone was anticipated how crust punk's…

Finland's hottest cavern explorers of death return after five years.

For one night, Wolvennest became The Nest, by nearly doubling their lineup.

Now, diabolical.

Lords Of The Trident? I don’t care much for House Tully, but I do quite like this album.

Sludge and hardcore are natural bedfellows, as are sludge and post-metal; perhaps unsurprisingly, it turns out hardcore and post-metal work very nicely together as well.

I’ve written over 250 reviews for this website; it’s about time I covered a band from India.

Kvaen make my job easier by already putting "Great" in the album's title.

Vildhjarta ended 10 years of silence with last year’s Måsstaden Under Vatten; however, just after the apprentice has made a comeback, the master returns.

Nite is the heavy metal band with the most ghoulish vocals.

We might just be at the start of a fem-fronted symphonic metal renaissance.

"If You Have Ghost", you have arena rock in ABBA clothing.

Here it is, the (second) Dave Grohl metal album.

Only a black metal band can make heavy metal sound gloomy and rotten.

Aeviterne flourishes.

The music, band name and artwork of Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard’s The Harvest are not natural bedfellows. Once you get past the whiplash, however, you’ve got a pretty great album to get stuck…

Readers’ warning: you are not going to get much criticism in this review because the reviewer is a huge fan and this is another Messa album that hits the spot, roughly in the same way the previous two…

A comeback album from a cult Swedish melodic black/death metal band? Where have I heard that before?

Considering the wealth of folk music there is in the world, it’s a shame that most folk metal seems to either come from a Nordic country or sound like it comes from a Nordic country; it turns out other…

"Dark metal" is one of the terms that gets thrown out a lot, and even if a lot of times it's used to describe radically different sounds, I don't think it would be controversial to…

He’s not the apocalypse, he’s a very naughty boy.

By this point, being on Pelagic Records is about the closest thing there is in metal to a guarantee of quality.

Krallice's Crystalline Exhaustion feels more esoteric, mystical, technical, and otherwordly than other black metal due to how the great emphasis on keyboards adds a strange force to the compositions,…

The connection of Amenra to Neurosis has been a longstanding one, so it’s not surprising that it’s ultimately culminated in a full-blown collaboration.

Smart move from Haunted Shores to get their debut LP out into the world before the daddies of instrumental djent made their return.

In 2016, the groundbreaking band Vektor released their magnum opus, Terminal Redux. After a long hiatus, many fans wondered whether the technical thrashers would ever return. 5 years passed, and some fans…