Yearly Archives: 2013

I am an unashamed fan of Technical Death Metal- I find the challenge of absorbing the 'all-points-attack' of a band like Spawn of Possession or the blistering '1000-Uzis' approach of Brain Drill a total joy.The ice-cold chaos of Ulcerate brings me much happiness but occasionally one wants to reset the system, cleanse the palette of Death and this E.P. fits the bill perfectly.

Rex Shachath bring the sledgehammers, the spiked clubs and the cudgels on their debut E.P., quite content to leave technical wizardry and dizzying time-changes out in the modern day cold and drench us in the warm viscera of classic Old School Death Metal, the kind that we all grew up on, breaking our milk teeth on the likes of Death, Obituary, Entombed, Cannibal Corpse to sit proudly alongside Vomitory, Severe Torture...

There’s a long-running commercial on this side of the pond that derides the common misconceptions of California. A parade of surfers, boy bands and vapid celebrities bemoaning the typical stereotypes.

Yet, so far from the frozen fjords of Scandinavia, there’s a cold heart beating under the sweltering sun; dark hordes sprouting like weeds across the Golden State. Twenty-one years after Von poisoned the Pacific coastline and helped kick-start the USBM movement, the Californian black metal scene is among the nation’s most venomous and vibrant, with LA’s Lightning Swords of Death fast becoming firm fixtures on its dark mantel.

Taking a page from their bay-area brethren and binding it to the obsidian texts of black metal, the band have accumulated a decade of...

This is the second full length album from these Dutch death metallers. It is the follow up to 1998’s ‘Pure’ which is a 14 year gap but then the band have been on hiatus for a chunk of those years. The cover is your first look at this release and the artwork is a lesbo-necro-paranormal affair with a skeletal audience giving you an insight into the style and lyrical content contained within.

So as you may guess from the imagery Antropomorphia play death metal from the darker side of the fence. The core to their sound has a brutal death metal style with variations such as a more black metal element to the faster sections. The song structures remind me of Deteriorot for example the slow with the fast pace changes but with those extra embellishments. ‘Nekrophilian Mass’ is a perfect example to...

Terra Tenebrosa, are a relatively new band featuring members of legendary, but now disbanded, hardcore/post metal band Breach. Terra Tenebrosa’s previous album, The Tunnels, released in 2011 was such a surprise not only for how dynamic and layered it was, but for how it seemed to have taken parts of Breach’s unique sound and dropped them into the black pits of hell.

The first track, “The Redeeming Teratoma”, serves as an introduction to the gloomy world of the masked Cuckoo and his two accomplices, Hibernal and Hisperdal. This sets the atmosphere with delay, tremolo riffs and nightmarish tone.

“The Compression Chamber”, kicks in with a repeating creeping riff until the...

Leeds based Humanfly have been going 12 years, and have gradually evolved their sound over time from their original punk sound through to post-metal. Although anyone familiar with 2010’s excellent ‘Darker Later’ will be aware that their brand of post-metal did have healthy chunk of punk attitude and some absolutely monster riffs too: the atmospherics were often kept separate.

I’ll be honest when hearing that their new album was a prog beast I wasn’t sure what to expect. ‘Awesome Science’ however is a great album, its prog Jim but not as we know it. There’s immediacy here, and a complexity and inventiveness which is exciting to hear, and if anything the monster riffs are even better.

It harks back to the solid song construction of bands that weren’t following...