Archive for March 2015

Like any doctor worth his salt will tell you, at least several weekly listens of guttural groovy gore and/or porn grind is vital to maintaining a.) a happy soul and b.) the ability to dance like a total spastic and get away with it. And Analkholic are just what the doctor ordered. That doctor might be dancing around a muddy field in Trutnov with a dildo strapped to his head, but he’s still a doctor,…

Flesh Grinder are a long-running gory death metal band from the increasingly-metal-as-fuck nation of Brazil. Necrofiles is one of their later releases, being an EP unleashed on the public in 2013. What we have here is classic romp in the traditional Carcass take on death metal mixed with goregrind influences; low pitchshifted gurgles meet throat shredding screams in a mid-paced chuggy bog of deathly goodness. I’ll admit that some of the riffs are a little…

Voices’ follow-up to their insane 2013 debut is a puzzling, intricate concept album based in their home city of London. Whilst their debut blasted at 96,000bpm, the band (consisting primarily of ex-Akercocke staff) still managed to fit a lot of subtly, emotion, delicate guitar work and other elements of beauty into their high-speed aural assault. It was pretty similar to Akercocke, only dragged kicking and screaming into a cold and modern world. London expands further…

Christ, this band has come a long way since I heard their 7″ EP Whiskey Sierra that was put out by Dead Chemists Records a few years ago. I knew the momentum was building for them; their ever-increasing dominance over the UK live circuit testifies for that, but it wasn’t until this album dropped that Corrupt Moral Altar really made me turn my head. Now I feel like I’ve been missing out on something really…

Nada! is my favourite Death In June record. Brown Book is kind of similar but I prefer Nada! for its dominating dark 80s synthpop vibes and martial background. There’s also less Nazi imagery flirtation going on here, which is always a plus. I believe that this album was the last the group did as a three piece; and seems a fry cry from the acoustic solo project that Death In June has been for so…

Broken Hope have been on my stuff-to-check-out list since they were announced for OEF this year. It’s funny, death metal’s appeal for me is growing as I get older. When I was younger I didn’t have much time for a whole lot of death metal, it all sounded the same to me, despite the fact that I am heavily into grindcore and all sorts of other metal. But hey, I guess it’s just one of…

To say that the recent Electric Wizard album sounds like Electric Wizard would possibly be a very lazy analysis of the situation, but hey – this sounds like Electric Wizard. It sounds so much like Electric Wizard that it literally hurts. Even with Mark Greening back on drums (for long enough to record this record anyway) it just sounds to me exactly like the last two albums. It seriously boggles my little mind how Wizard…

When I heard of Urine Cop being a collaboration between Adam Jennings of Winters In Osaka and Putrefaction In Progress-era LDOH vocalist Erwin De Groot, I got very, very excited. I would be lying to you if I said I wasn’t a little disappointed with what is on show here. Bass, noise and LDOH vocals sounds fucking class in my book, but you literally can’t hear a thing here. You’ve basically got 8 minutes of…

I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but Dragged Into Sunlight have become one of my favourite British bands of all time. From misty beginnings catching them unknown on the smallest stage of Leeds Deathfest in 2009, to seeing them release two records and headlining tours, packing out huge rooms at festivals. I think it must be the air of mystery, darkness and intrigue surrounding the band and their music. I’m a sucker for shit…

Who would have thought that a split between two uncompromising legends of the goregrind genre could be so fuckin’ shite? Lymphatic Phlegm are not exactly my favourite band in the world; although I respect what they do I find a lot of their stuff kinda sounds like really crummy bedroom black metal. Once you’ve heard one Lymphatic Phlegm song you’ve heard them all, if I am to be brutally honest. That’s not meant as a…

I absolutely love (The) Dwarves. They are probably one of the most fun bands I’ve seen live, and all their albums (even the dodgy pop punk ones) are bursting with a childish, youthful punk energy, even as the band continue to age in the physical world. Blood Guts & Pussy shows a much more hardcore punk orientated side to Dwarves that unfortunately quickly died out as they adopted a cleaner, more mainstream sound. It matters…

The story surrounding Gore & Perversion always comes up at some point with Welsh metalheads over a certain age – we all have our own stories to tell about it, and there’s always one person who knows someone who also knows someone who’s uncle’s dog still has an pristine, uncensored copy of the original. But thanks to the absolute twattery and/or dickfuckery of Gwent police, a piece of death metal history has been blasted off…

You simply can’t beat Unholy Grave at their game. Okay, so they kinda fall into the same trap as Agathocles with releasing billions of EPs every week (slight overstatement maybe) but at least with Unholy Grave they have much a higher ratio of original-to-rehashed material than Agathocles. But if it’s raw, uncompromising grindcore that you are looking for then you don’t have to go much further than Unholy Grave. This 2007 release doesn’t exactly break…

Anamnesis is a ‘rarities’ collection from Mick Harris’ genre-spanning project Scorn. It’s actually a bizarre cross-section of the sounds that Scorn had made up until the late 90s; encompassing the early Nik Bullen material, the loud beatwork of the Logghi Barogghi era and the minimalist, bass heavy electronic beats that would come later. It’s all a bit of a mess, to be honest. It’s like this CD can’t decide if it’s a b-sides collection, a remix…