Archive for September 2023

Whilst you couldn’t really claim that Corpsefucking Art is pushing the boundaries of death metal, it is hard to argue that they are not an entertaining outfit. The aptly-titled Zombie Fuck is home such to ditties as “Beverly Hills Corpse” (completely with parody theme song), “High Skull Musical” (lmao) and “No Woman No Grind (Bomb Marley)”, the latter of which squeezes two puns into one song title for double your money. Musically this is downtuned,…

Chronologically, Sad Wings Of Destiny is infinitely better than it’s predecessor. For a start, it sounds more like the band we all know and love today, and well, if I could make such a bold statement, this feels like the true debut album for Judas Priest.  Production wise, this is absolutely perfect. Perhaps a symptom of the times, but it’s so well put together that it doesn’t matter if it sounds a bit aged now….

I’m loathe to rate this lower than a 3/5 because of how inventive it is for what is essentially nu metal. As far as Sepultura goes, this period is definitely a low point in their career, but truly, all elements analysed, this really isn’t that bad. There’s one thing you can do for me, though, and that is to promise to avoid the absolutely fucking godawful remaster of this thing. I don’t know if the…

With an intro speech that is no doubt going to fire up any self-respecting Welshman (I almost went out into the garden and raised a flag myself, I won’t lie to you), it is hard to not be disappointed when the first track “I’r Gad” first pops in through the speakers. The sound is flat, compressed, artificial and well… an antithesis to anything that I would associate with black metal and its production styles. Despite…

What a lovely, lovely release (lmao). I did not expect such amazing music from such a lo-fi and kvlt black metal release, but here we are. Colour me surprised, as always. Without going off subject too much, its discoveries like this, the real special and interesting gems, that makes trawling through thousands of releases worthwhile. Like… what in the actual fuck is going on here? On the surface of it, Curta’n Wall is a medieval…

A Haemorrhage record is always going to be a good time, if you are a goregrind fan (or just a Carcass fan and don’t mind a bit of “worship”). These guys (and gal) have been plugging away for years and Anatomical Inferno is their third album. I have the Brazilian reissue in my hands. Now, being from the UK, I can’t remember for the life of me where or how I got a hold of…

The “Selfdisembowelment” tape fell into my possession recently, and to be honest, without looking into it further I just assumed that it was some sort of bootleg or compilation of outtakes from around the Carniverous Erection era. What I didn’t know is that this is a reissue of a previously almost impossible to find Promo CD from back in 1999. Left Hand Patches (formerly Fat Ass Records, RIP), have done a very nice job re-releasing…

This shit absolutely fucking slaps. The riffs on this thing are outstanding. The drums are, well, bonkers. The vocals: savage. Phobia can be a bit hit or miss IMHO, but on this short EP they are firing on all cylinders, I am very much pleased to report. The production is solid and very well-balanced, without losing some of the charm that a rougher sound can give. Honestly, by the time you blink this thing is…

I’ve probably heard this a thousand times on the House By The Cemetry represses but was nice to go back and “isolate” this and focus on the original tracks. The evolution from Brutally Mutilated / Demo ’91 is subtle, the band still employ a real drummer here it seems, but the guitar and bass have already entered into the trademark downtuned-and-impossible-to-decipher mush that would become their wheelhouse. BTW if you’re getting filtered by the overuse…

I was drawn in by the fantastic cover art (who can resist fog and trees when it comes to black metal) and I was not at all disappointed by what I found. Majestic is a word that gets thrown around alot when it comes to certain elements of black metal, but maybe not so much when it comes to lo-fi one man projects. Primordial Serpent is not lo-fi to the point of becoming unlistenable (and…

I played the absolute fuck out of this record back when I was a greasy 20-something stoner with nothing else to do with my life. Whilst still longer than most band’s tunes, the shorter run times to the tracks, even with the reprising nature of themes here, definitely helps Om keep things more varied and interesting. “Bhimas Theme” is one of the group’s best songs from any era. RYM review writing fun fact: Today I…

Mood is definitely important when it comes to earlier Om recordings. The line between this being fantastic or infinitely boring is indeed a fine one, thankfully I’ve really been craving the long-form meditative qualities of work like Conference Of The Birds recently, so I’ve been returning to this album for the first time in a very long while. 15+ minute tracks built around repetitive bass structures is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea,…

Peak “woah dude” era Cathedral, where the funky, proggy, stoner elements were at their height. This was before they returned to their heavy roots with albums like Endtyme and VIIth Coming, so one does wonder what made the band change direction like this (only to turn back to the trippier side of life with albums like The Guessing Game). Andy Sneap produced this one, so whilst it isn’t the Woolven / Cathedral dream team, it…

Absurd-ly bad (lol, I’ll show myself out). We have to give them the benefit of the doubt (talent wise, actions and beliefs wise they can get in the bin) as they are so young here, but this demo is not one that has stood the test of time, nor is it one that promises a bright future in this particular thread of black metal. It is interesting hearing “Gates Of Heaven” here after hearing it…

An interesting blend of styles, taking the savagery of blasting black metal and mixing it with Lamp’s (lol) flare for extravagant synth work (we’re not talking Bal Sagoth levels of pomp here, but the synthesizers are at least more dynamic and interesting than a lot of other black metal), as well as sprinkling in the aesthetic and vibe of dark 80s pop such as The Sisters Of Mercy, which should be entirely evident from the…

The first couple of tracks on this are phenomenal, but with repeated listens I continue to trail off as the EP goes on, which isn’t a good sign as it’s under 20 minutes long in total. I thought initially this was a symptom of my own concentration but after several attempts I’ll have to admit defeat. Not bad by any means, because when it hits it hits hard (the production on the opening track makes…

If I were to give my personal, technical, in-depth opinion: This shit fucking slaps. It is a short demo but a promising one, that’s for sure. Vocally, it kinda reminds me of XXX Maniak’s Harvesting The Cunt Nectar and musically it lies between the precision of slam / brutal death and the sloppier, sewer-dwelling OSDM revival style of the last few years. So there you have it – something for the whole family to enjoy.

A sloppy yet endearing entry into the Graveland catalogue. Granted, it’s probably not fair to use “sloppy” as a descriptive word for this thing as every early Graveland record I’ve heard has some degree of wonkiness or amateurishness to it. Here however, the balance is struck where it definitely lends to the music’s favour rather than detracts from it. What happens when you mix Nazis, Bathory-worship and dungeon synth? You get Immortal Pride! (inb4 “ackshually…

The 7th Coming possesses a strange duality in that it is both underrated and also somewhat mediocre. It takes the heaviness that the band brought back on Endtyme and then mixed in some of the more “totally cosmic, bro” vibes that the band had on Supernatural Birth Machine etc. I will say that the production here is a bit better than Endtyme, with Kit Woolven back on engineering duties. Kit (RIP) and Cathedral are a…

Bathory’s ever-changing sonic palette is taking me to places that I never thought I would go. Honestly, when I think of “viking metal” I think of idiots at festivals with their plastic drinking horns and cringe shit like Amon Amarth’s stage shows, but honestly, Bathory are leading a much more genuine charge and I’m fucking here for it. Maybe I’m just forever bitter than Skyrim is infinitely more popular than Morrowind and I will forever…

Infinitely more well produced (and sung) that most neofolk that I’ve heard in my limited lifetime. Le Ceneri Di Heliodoro sounds like 00s Anathema, the first Bastille album and Death In June all rolled into one confusing ball. Sprinkle in some mixed vibes and hey, presto! Despite everything that Rome has going for them in regards to their talented frontman and extended palette of musicality, then let themselves down with the uniformity of their music….

Onwards to Golgotha is probably the most prominent musical equivalent of the words ‘blunt force trauma’. The music is an assault on the senses, and that assault is being carried out repeatedly, over and over, but some fucking maniac holding a blood-drenched brick in one hand. The other hand is around your throat, btw. Using such a ridiculous descriptive situation to describe a death metal record is usually done to convey how brutal the record…

Ah, now this is more like it! Previous forays with the works of Lustmord have left me wanting, but I should have started with the classics from the start. What a brooding, horrible noise! Such spooky, such creepy, wow. I decided to listen to this with headphones at night whilst in bed but admittedly it was infinitely better blasting out of my stereo the next morning at incredible volume. Embrace the all-encompassing noise!

I went through a phase where I was super into this duo, but I kinda let that obsession fall to the wayside. Returning to Yr Body Is Nothing (the title reminds me of Swans, “Yr Property” etc) was long, long overdue then. As soon as this record starts thumping out of the speakers I’m wondering to myself why it is I let listening to this pair slide in the first place. This album is fantastic….

Oi Oi Oi – let’s have a little dance then, shall we? If you want one of the fastest hours of your life to pass you by, throw this thing on. It has wall-to-wall bangers (some of which, as I’m sure most of you know, ended up as enormous chart-topping singles in their own right) and a stunning big sound. Not sure what sure I can say that hasn’t already been said, and I’m no…

The seemingly compilation-like nature of Varg’s “final” release as Burzum, Thulean Mysteries, coupled with the spaced out, almost relaxed tone of most of his ambient music, makes it very difficult to ascertain whether I’ve heard this before or not. It feels more familiar than it does new, and whilst that is rather welcoming in some ways, its also a bit underwhelming that this random “return” (whatever it means long term) is not something a bit…

I love this thing. Dense, fathomless, evil as fuck – but with a twisted sense of humour too. Production is dank and echoic, which can make the blasting sections a bit difficult to decipher, but generally the production really lends a lot of atmosphere to the proceedings. What I didn’t expect to really enjoy was some of the slower riff sections, where the excellence of the guitar work can be easily noticed, as well as…

UUURRGHHHH I recently got a copy of this on cassette. Whether it’s a legit repressing or a bootleg I’m really not sure nor do I really care, because this shit fucking slaps. To call any era of Mortician’s music “primitive” would be fucking lazy, but the earlier gestations of the band are not quite as streamlined as what would come on the full length records, or even EPs like Brutally Mutilated. That may sound rather…

What the actual fuck is this? Off the strength of basically every single Mortiis side project (including earlier Vond), I got myself a copy of this on cassette. It’s a recent re-issue, but still. I wish I hadn’t bothered. This is easily the shittiest thing I’ve come across that’s got Havard’s name on it. Totally fucking pointless sound collages and minimal synths. It sounds like there has been absolutely minimal effort put into making this….

Less of the slamz and more of the high quality production death metal ting. Which y’know, is absolutely fine with me. Variety is the spice of life and all that – and hey, it’s fuckin’ great to listen to some some fuckin’ brutal death metal every now and then when the production is good enough that I can actually understand everything that is going on! Blood Oath is just that. It won’t win any awards…

Well then, things don’t half fall off after the first record. Folkfuck Folie (what is the title about?) is not necessarily bad but is absolutely not what I was expecting after the super intense, evil and evocative black metal whirlwind that was the band’s debut. Folkfukk is far more fractured and experimental, heading into directions and tangents that, at first at least, seem to distract from the core material on the album – that being…

Guitar tuning is so low that it almost sounds like it is artificially pitchshifted, like Libido Airbag were about to mix these guitars into some sort of techno-pornogrind bullshit. Alas, once one’s puny mortal ears hath adjuste to thon brutallic onslaught of disgusting noise that is the tuning ov Drop 666, one can appreciate the ants-in-yon-pants old school brutal death that Bowels Out are finest purveyors thereof. Such beautous movements as “Gourmet Vaginal Stew” and…

The first time I heard this record I was 15 years old, and drunk on black metal classics like Transilvanian Hunger or Burzum’s first few records. Hungry for more I decided to start at the beginning with Venom’s Black Metal album….only to find a bunch of sloppy thrash with terrible lyrics about shagging your teacher or Satan being your dad. Safe to say, this went straight into a pile and never really got played ever…

Feel like I’m on a different planet to the rest of the folks hearing this. Beats are interesting at best, irritating at worst, and the flow is just…. shit. Feels like she’s rapping at me over the tanoy system at one of those giant Tesco Extra supermarkets at 3 in the morning when all I’m trying to do is cop a Monster energy drink and a cheese sandwich and get back to the rest of…

Man, I love London Zoo, and Angels & Devils, so imagine my surprise when I found out that I’d slept on this thing coming out two years ago. I won’t tell you its straight fire, because as always with this kind of thing, its impossible not to be a bit hit and miss. Some of the collabs are a bit, err, not so great, to be honest, but the ones that are (I’m looking at…

“Rub a dub dub, thanks for the grub – yay God!” Never thought a Family Guy quote would sum up Al Cisneros’ Om so perfectly, but there we go. “Gethsemane” is possibly the best song on Adviatic Songs (it’s been a minute since I heard that album though), but these dub remixes perhaps expectedly remove the startling urgency with which that beautiful song closes after 8 minutes of pensive meditation and bass groove. Instead, said…

I like this a lot more than I have any right to. I fucking HATED The Devil’s Rain, but on the other hand I’ve seen the Jerry-era 3-piece multiple times with multiple line ups (the one with Dez on guitar and Robo on drums was by far the best) and I fully enjoyed their live shows, regardless of how pointless the Jerry-led band is when on paper. The sound here is fast and loose, and…

Holy fuck, this is fuckin’ brutal; easily one of the best brutal death records I’ve heard in a hot minute. Dat bass, fam – dat bass. Fuckin’ drums on this are out of control though, mans can blast. Roger, perhaps best known for Mortician, is on point here with these drums. He can also be credited for producing this absolute monster of a death metal album. I feel however, writing endlessly about this would be…

Huggy Bear, oh yeeeeahhh! Cathedral were on a roll in the early to mid 90s, culmulating I’d say, with this absolute stonker of an album. Things slowly started to cool off after this, but goddamn, the band are on fire on this thing. First off, the production is huge. It takes away some of the chonk of The Ethereal Mirror and instead heaps on a bit of frosty clarity. Kit Woolven (RIP) and Doug Cook…

I won’t lie to you, I’ve avoided this album for about 15 years, only because Venom doing a 20 minute song has never really been something that has appealed to me. However, the joke’s on me becuase this shit fuckin’ rules. Also, generally, across this whole record, the production is fantastic. The sound isn’t a million miles away from the other earlier albums, but the guitar tone is just so goddamn sick and crunchy. I’m…

I think I prefer the songs on the S/T EP – these are the tracks that made me fall in love with Sunami after all – but the production here has got to be the best on any Sunami release that I’ve heard. The riffs and beatdowns just seem extra fucking hard as well, the ending of “Step Up” is just absolutely fucking off the chain, fam. Gulch’s bass drum is like a mule kick…

The only truly “meh” release in the 1349 catalog. This is down to the production more than anything else. If this was an bedroom album by a one-man industrial / black metal artist then I would be very impressed, but it isn’t – it’s 1349, with some of the best players in the game. There is no need for something as fast and crazy as this to sound so brittle and lifeless. A rare swing…

Perhaps closer to the themes and songwriting on Varjot than on the more “kvlt” Finnish Steel Storms or Death Before Dishonour, and whilst I prefer Varjot to the others mentioned above, I can’t help but feel that Voitto tai Valhalla lacks focus. Variety is one thing, but a lack of direction is another. I’m sure this was not the case during the writing and recording sessions, but I can’t help shake this feeling when more…

Love this album. I love the balance between the (dare I say) atmospheric, hypnotic riffs (a la Burzum) and just flat out brutality in the drum department. Guess it’s like Varg jamming with Frost or Nick Barker, only the drummers are not allowed to deploy their flagrant tom rolls and cymbal flourishes and must instead just focus on their machine-gun precision. Such stupid comparisons aside, Purity is fucking great. The songs are quite lengthy but…

My friend put this album on my computer sometime in 2008. I just didn’t get it at the time. It seemed boring, pretentious, overly long. I tried a few times over the years to get into it, but I just couldn’t do it. It wasn’t for a lack of patience, I love artists such as Sunn O))), Merzbow, Swans etc. – further to this, returning randomly to the album in 2023, some 15 years later…

The solid, first major entry from the now-legendary Cattle Decapitation. The band that made this record is a long way from the band that is putting out albums today, but this is still well worth checking out, especially if goregrind or grindcore in general is your bag. 18 songs in as many minutes, Human Jerky is frantic and messy, both in musicality (although Serbian (RIP) and Astor hold it down) and also in voice (Travis’…

Oh my fucking goodness gracious me (as my nan would say). I think I may have just found my favourite Nile record. I came onboard the goodship Nile (sailing towards the duat, or perhaps to Orion, if Robert Buaval is to be believed (probably not)) with the release of Annihilation Of The Wicked. That album blew my mind when I was a teenager – I really hadn’t heard anything like it, in regards to that…

Quality.Consistency.Brutality – You can always count on Revenge to deliver the full-blown headcrashing sledgehammer of unstoppable war metal goodness. Infiltration.Downfall.Death is no different to any of the albums that have come before it (sans as many groove parts as its predecessor, perhaps, but we are splitting hairs), but the quality of the sonic madness offered is so high that one really does not mind to be fed the same carnage over and over and over…

Shaky, ramshackle black metal from the early daze of the Polish scene. Had no idea these guys had ties to Graveland, but the world of black metal is quite incestuous. Night on the Bare Mountain tickles in all the right places, and those turning over rocks after having heard all the genres greats will perhaps find some merit in this blackened gem, as I have. As many have said before, the acoustic passages sparkle with…

Struggling to find the words to accurately convey how absolutely atrocious this single is. Nobody asked for this. Nobody wanted this. Nobody deserved this. This is, honestly, quite possibly, the peak (or is that nadir?) of cringe.

This release is great. Reminds me of Carelean-era Satanic Warmaster. There’s a lot of parallels with Satanic Warmaster, actually – the artwork too gives heavy similarities to vibes and themes that Werwolf has used with that project. I know the Finland scene can sometimes be rather incestous, so perhaps there is more going on here with this connection that tourists like me realise. The guitar tone is very fuzzy. Probably gonna be a WTF reaction…

I love this. Definitely an under-rated gem and not one that I have ever come across before, so I was very happy to unearth it. I can’t speak for the rest of the band’s discography, which appears to have a more mixed reception than their debut, but the interestingly titled The Lady Rides A Black Horse is a fantastic 90s black metal record. The production is actually quite dense for black metal, having more in…

What a fucking car crash of a split. Kudos to Cemitério Records for laying down mad cash to put this farce onto an fully glass mastered CD. RIP your bank account. So, where do I begin? The artwork I suppose. I’m getting a lot of mixed vibes here, none of which make even the remotest sense to me, but there we go. Perhaps I’m missing the point. The carnage starts with Crotch Rot, who are,…

Solid, nasty, evil-as-fuck sounding crust punk from the greats of the genre. Got this CD from the band way back at some random gig. There seemed a point where Doom were all over the UK underground (perhaps they still are and its I who hath becometh the hermit). Anyway, the production is a little brittle but otherwise this kills. It also seems a lot longer than it actually is, I guess because I associate crust…

I found a great big pile of goregrind CDs in my cupboard from a trade about 6 years ago, all without jewel cases and wrapped up in a pile. I totally forgot I even had these fucking things. In amongst the chaos of gore and spiky logos, Gross Hymns stood out to me a mile, probably due to its super fucking disgusting album sleeve. Into the CD tray it goes… So what does it sound…

Hard to digest, jarring “gabbergrind” from QNZ (the guy who would go on to run Rotten Roll Rex) and some other folks, all wearing silly masks and costumes, as par for the course. Coming on like a mix between NHC666 / Libido Airbag grade sleaze and the more bottom-of-the-barrel bedroom goregrind projects one saw explode during the late 2000s (I’m looking at you, MySpace). Lots of ridiculous samples, song titles, vocals and drum programming, with…

A lovely little package, but definitely another item in the Di6 discography that is for the die-hards and collectors only. There are much better live albums from Douglas, but the studio sessions here on disk 2 are actually worth checking out for those who are curious. There are some excellent reworkings of “Runes and Men” and “Fall Apart” as well what’s almost an acapella version of “Death Is The Martyr Of Beauty”, with Douglas yapping…

Love that fuckin’ album cover! Nice to see something from Locke that isn’t total fucking gore and evisceration (lol). So – onto the album itself. Sitting somewhere between the bludgeoning sounds of old and the more treble-heavy Rutan-produced sessions, A Skeleton Domain hits really fucking hard. There’s something about the riffs here that makes them extra dense and thick and sinister as all fuck. “Kill or Become” will melt your face off and turn you…

Scat Aficionados has gotta be one of the better sounding goregrind records you can get your disgusting little hands on. Slightly atypical of the blasting gore approach, Stoma do not employ a trashcan / bin-lid snare drum and instead have more regular produced drums (still doing lovely punk beats and insane blastbeats, of course). Production wise, this is where the album shines. Both the guitar and the bass (wow, the bass) sound absolutely gargantuan. Together…

Requiem, I believe, was a soundtrack that Scott did for a film. Now, I can’t remember if this film ever came out or if it was just an imaginary film which existed in order for such a soundtrack to be composed around, but you’ll notice some pressings of this release will have “The motion picture soundtrack” written above the word Requiem. Either way, this was the beginning of a short experimental series of releases from…

Dawn Ray’d seem to get a lot of shit flung at them but I think that this is more to do with their “politics” than their actual music. All that “its just evil riffs bro” shit goes out the fucking window when those NSBM loving edgelords get a whiff of some of the more prominent bands in the RABM scene. If you’re getting filtered by the existence of bands like Dawn Ray’d or idk Feminazgul…