Archive for December 2023

The beats are fantastic, the rhymes are really clever, and as I’ve stated on other YS releases the effort involved in pulling this off is massively commendable. Unfortunately, Sheogorath’s Zoom outstays its welcome very quickly, and I’ve never been able to make it to the end.

Excellent idea in conception, perhaps not as excellent in execution. Love what Young Scrolls is doing however, but this isn’t as good as something like “Neon Vivec”, which sticks the landing much better.

I have endless respect for the sheer effort involved in pulling this off, and the rhymes that have been written for the Juib character are outstanding. Unfortunately, objectively, the musical execution of it all is pretty poor (only so much chopped audio vocals you can listen to before your head starts to hurt).

Not sure if this was supposed to be some sort of off-cuts compilation or a best-of? Either way it kinda fails at being both, and I 100% recognise tracks off Esham records but not so much some of the others here? Fuckin’ bizarre. Anyways, this is some good old school acid rap shit from the king of the genre. There’s just no need to come here until you’ve been to all the other albums first…

Great, super entertaining old school west coast gangsta rap for the whole family to enjoy. Drugs, bitches and getting dat paper more or less totally envelopes the entire subject matter. but that’s OK. Expect smoooooooth but aged-tae-fuck gangsta rap synthesizers and boom bap beats (the beats have aged quite well, those synthesizer lines maybe not so much).

Wanted to rate this higher because I haven’t listened to Bizarre for years and years and this fucker was supposed to be some sort of super serious return to form. “Uzi” and “Hecker” out the gate makes you think shit, they might be right about that. Unfortunately, an hour of this shit and the shine wears off. There’s some fucking awesome peaks on this album “Desert E with Dope D.O.D.)” and “25 with Nems and…

The art is shite (developers of barely functional early 2000s photo editing software called, they want their crappy effects back), and at times this record reminds me of Mortician (never thought I’d be writing that on a Graveland review) what with it’s bizarre production. Despite these drawbacks (not that sounding like Mortician is always a drawback but for fucking Graveland it should be) Creed Of Iron is a very well made black metal record. What…

Stunning black metal, that ticks all the boxes of what I look for from the genre (could take or leave the apparent NS element but there we go). On top of this, you’ve got the fucking trash can snare sound of goregrind! Surely not intentionally done, but the dustbin snare drum works very well here. But yeah, no fooling around, this shit is fucking fantastic. The riffs walk the line between sinister and majestic, and…

First two Kaevum demos, compiled together for convenience. Production varies, of course. First demo is much rawer but is a really good listen. Second one is a bit more adventurous in terms of both song writing and also in production style. Fantastic black metal.

What is this tuned to? Drop Z? Heavy as fuuuuuck tunes here from this elusive goregrind project. Is Intrepid Corpse no more? I’m not sure! Maybe we should find out. But when it was around and active, this project dropped some amazing records. This release reminds me of earlier Dead Infection, some Blood, perhaps Black Clouds Determinate era of Agathocles (but that might be the artwork talking).

(Original:) Mmhhmmm de-fucking-licious brutal death metal with the mandatory slam passages that make you wanna beat your chest like a gorilla and throw some mad fucking shapes, dawg. The original mix of Butcher The Weak is much muddier than the remaster but it makes up for that in spades. Likewise the drums are lower in the mix here but I don’t know how it just somehow works far better. The guitars are walls of sludge….

Rock music that sounds like it was recorded inside a wind tunnel. There we go, that’s my expert opinion. Nah, for real though, this is some chilled out shit. Beautiful old school production, well balanced and infinitely repeatable (just let the album play over and over!). A highlight for me is “You’d Better Believe It”. Great stuff.

Ahhhh fucking hell blast blast blast blast! Cystgurgle gotta be one of the standard bearers for “gorenoise” right now, surely? This shit is absolutely fucking unstoppable. What a disgusting, impenetrable gory mess.

Blasphemous, cavernous war metal from Cyprus. Expect intense flurries of chaotic energy in the form of blurs of unfathomable guitars, an impaling percussion barrage and a hydra-headed vocal approach akin to the violent and terrifying exorcism of multiple demonic spirits from a singular host. Also, how fucking sick is that logo?

This is my shit right here. The cover art is just *chef’s kiss*, and the tunes ain’t too bad either, you dig? Back when old school death metal was the new school, Suffo was hitting it out of the park with releases like this. Dry, but organic production holds the framework for rigid but punishing cases of songwriting.

Markedly different from pretty much every Electric Wizard release that would follow, the self-titled walks a different path to the fuzz-laden doped up dirge that the rest of the discography plods along to. Nevertheless, the band’s debut is still unmistakably Electric Wizard, with riffs heavier than all the matter in the universe and of course Jus’s immediately recognisable vocal style.  Don’t be fooled by the Dave Patchett cover art (as awesome as it is), this…

Open the fukken toilet bowl, two gore legends are gonna crawl out, walk downstairs and play a set in your living dripping with piss and covered in shit. CBT got that porno groove that everyone knows and loves (your gran is a big fan) and LDOH’s music here is the aural equivalent of being turned into a meat crayon underneath an 18 wheeler truck. Fucking top dog split, this.

The similarity in name to both Voivod and Vektor cannot be a coincidence. By the time you reach the third or forth track, all doubt is gone. Terrifically intricate, maddeningly technical, but drowning in compression and triggers and on top of that, incredibly unoriginal. Top musicianship, but not very interesting.

Get your dicks out for some br00tal fukken slam, brutha! Bust out the pots and pans, run your guitar through your chainsaw (somehow) and get the Cookie Monster out of rehab for some vokills. Expect such ditties as “Maggot Swollen Titties” and “Concrete-Filled Rectum”. No frills, no experimentation, no compromise. Straight up brutal shit.

Make no mistake here, Pandemonium is a punishing listen. Doubling down on the rejuvinated sound of Extremities…, Killing Joke fall further into the world of industrial metal. Their sound is always unmistakably theirs, wherever they take it, but the industrial influences are hard to ignore. Geordie’s riffs are still dissonant, angular and strange, but there’s a repetitive chug to them in leui of the abstract post-punk approach on older records. Pandemonium finds a band which…

Thus today I spake ov thon deepest boggs ov Goremany, and of which creatures dwell therein! Oh, such hideous things! Oh, such ghastly sounds that are an affront to mine own ears! Ronseal as fuck goregrind / death metal here for sure. If you can stomach another frog project (frogject?) then this is really fun.

The Kill play some fuckin’ meaty grindcore. All your desired grindcore traits are here, i.e. ferocious blasts, rabid vokills and harsh production, but daaaaamnnn The Kill also brings the riffs. Case in point being the end of “Digestion”, which breaks out a passage that fucking dares you to not throw down (if I had to do one of those cringe “try not to headbang challenge” videos to this song I’d headbutt my camera into a…

Long overdue rerelease of earlier Urinefestival shits. Expect gurgling toilet water vocals with farting, spluttering burps over the top of it, against the background of the “usual” grinding bass noise and spasticated flurries of drumming. 12 minutes of per audible degeneracy.

20 minutes of intense powerviolence carnage that is sure to blow your dick off. Expect the usual blasting juxtaposition of fast and slow, from tense passages to all-out blastfests, led with rabid, barked vocals. Production-wise this holds up really well too, with a drum sound so clear that most bands in this kinda genre can only dream on it. Great shit.

Man that cover art is eye-catching as fuck. I’ve kinda become desensitised after years of listening to grindcore and death metal but there’s something about this one that just hits you right on the “disturb.exe” button (or is that “disturb.dmg”?). Anyway, this shit pares down the harsher elements of crust punk like Doom, Discharge etc and fills the void with the harsh, deep tones more associated with thrash and early death metal. The d-beat roots…

Is it just me or does Cannibal’s art just get sillier and sillier as time goes on? Haha Either way, this album bounces back a bit, not that the previous albums were bad or anything, it’s just that the songs on Bloodthirst seem to be more enjoyable. Opening with one of Cannibal’s best tunes, fucking “Pounded Into Dust” (also the shortest song on the album) absolutely smokes 99% of the bands in this style, sick…

Killing Joke argueably hit their commercial peak with Night Time, an album that contains a lot of the dissonant sounds of their earlier works but also a much more accessible style of songwriting. Songs like “Eighties” and “Love Like Blood” put these guys into the mainstream, if only for a short while. It’s odd because, well, other than the softer side to Coleman’s voice (when he’s not using his gravelly growl), none of the music…

I’m no Megadeth expert so what I can offer here is only going to be fraction of what other writers can and have already put down, so I’ll keep this brief. Thrash, innit. Rust In Peace is an extremely well produced album, to the point where you could time a watch to these songs. Even if Mustaine’s voice is an acquired taste, this thing fucking seriously rips. Production wise, the whole thing is in perfect…

(Originally written September 2022) One of the sickest things I’ve heard in ages. Taking that Entombed-core guitar sound to new depths of cavernous old school death metal darkness. Out of all the death metal that’s about right now, this has gotta be one of the best bands from the UK (they hail from Scotland).

As I’ve no doubt said before, it seems almost ridiculous to try and review all of the Revenge albums. They are so similar that it’s almost funny, but the saving grace is that every single fucking album is just absolutely fucking unstoppable. Seriously, this shit is just so fucking relentless. The sound is huge, and the music is savage as fuck. It is hard to criticise this level of consistency across all outputs.

Libido Airbag has a dank fucking sound at the best of times, but the few minutes on offer here seem extra sleazy for some reason. Maybe it is the artwork and archaic format (the CD is super fucking easy to lose as its so thin – glad to see there’s a digipak version now available). CBT of course do what CBT does best, with their bludgeoning, dry-heaving gore clashing horribly (in the best possible way)…

Now this is what I’m fucking talking about, lads! Ahhhh my life! This is how you do grindcore properly. Rooted firmily in the genus of Impetigo, Blue Holocaust takes the project’s already killer sound (2004’s Twitch of the Death Nerve is also great) and updates it 15 years later with another stupidly good album. If you like exploitation films, big riffs and toilet bowl vokills, then look no further. This shit is up there with…

Starts off really strong with the collaberation tracks, but then peters out considerably towards the end. At first I thought perhaps I wasn’t paying attention, but subsequent relistens has indicated to me that this just kinda falls apart towards the end. The tracks don’t seem to go anywhere, and by the time you get to SW’s own “To The Legions”, this release has totally lost me. Production wise, this is fairly raw but everything is…

Rawer than a cheesegrater to the balls, but more authentic for it. Don’t mistake autenticity for a seal of quality however; a lot is lost to the background hiss and flutter on this one. Whilst it does have its moments of genius, at other times it seems a bit listless. If you appreciate the art of music production, I’d avoid this one.

If I had to sum up King Of The Grey Islands in three words it would be chunky, doomy and consistent. Robert Lowe takes a little time to adjust to after the departure once more of Messiah (bye bye). King Of The Grey Islands is also one of those albums that I really enjoy yet doesn’t actually pop off the page for me with its cover art nor particularly thrill me when it’s coming out…

Prime rib pussy shit. Goddamn is this a let down compared to the other shit that came out in this era by these guys. How all of a sudden have we transitioned into this artificial boring-ass stadium rock? I mean, JP always has mainstream appeal, let’s not pretend otherwise, but this is like a fucking Kiss record. This is some cornball Alice Cooper shit. Objectively it is a well made album, in regards to production…