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The Horna material is tight as hell, and the riffs and drums are savage, at the cost perhaps of their whole session being a little one dimensional. Still, fucking good stuff. Pure are a new discovery for me, and their sound is far more obscure than Horna; there is a weird pan to proceedings, the bass rumbling beneath everything like a separate entity. All in all, really impressed with the songs on offer and would…

Colour me grey and blue and dead from exposure to subzero temperatures! That is how I feel after being exposed (finally) to the first Sarke record. It is probably quite ignorant of me to say that I feel like I’ve found a secret cache of bonus Darkthrone albums, but that’s only because Nocturno Culto has such a unique voice. After several listens of course, this narrow view disappears, especially when you’ve learnt the intricacies and…

Ah, Boondox. No amount of high profile guest stars or biiiiiig dick production can save the mediocrity that is a fuckin’ Boondox record. I mean, I don’t really know what the problem is. Boondox himself isn’t exactly a terrible rapper, he can hold his own, but there’s just something about the songs on this thing that irritate me to no end. The Harvest isn’t anywhere near as bad as some of the albums that followed…

Beautiful, stunning, dusty and mysterious old school dungeon synth. Very wobbly, both in regards to the tape quality, and that of the timing of the two players – but if anything this just adds to the charm of the record. Feels a little bit long, especially with the lack of variation, but if you’re after a particular mood or sound, you can’t go wrong with this.

Slightly rocky third release/album (I think) from Blasphemy, where the carnage of the band seems to fall over itself rather than unfold in constant reels of barbarity. Hey, it’s still great, and it’s a fun listen, but it ain’t no Fallen Angel Of Doom. That being said, this is better than most low effort bestial / war metal that gets released these days, and is still well worth checking out.

Ah, wow. Now this is just a glorious fucking mess. I mean, the cover art kinda tells you that before you even press play. Morgue Tar mix the bottom of the sewer style goregrind with d-beat , which is just glorious. I’m not talking about a bit of mince here that’s leant a little heavily into it’s punkier roots, I’m talking 100% d-beat crossed with gore. They should have called this Dismorgue.

Another one of those cases where a random listen absolutely blows me away. This is, truly, what it’s all about, why so much time is spent searching, researching, listening, reading…. it all pays off when you go “hey, that cover art and logo looks sick, I wonder what that sounds like?”, and boom – you’ve just uncovered an absolute gem. I am, clearly, late to the party with Weakling, but god damn, this is in…

For the record, if the band names are not ridiculous enough for you, this 8 way digital split is called 8 Ways For Lesbians To Indulge In Coprophagic Ass Eating. Where does a split end and a compilation begin? Either way, some small and potentially permanently damaged part of me can’t turn down a listen to a MySpace-grade bedroom goregrind / cybergrind compilation or split. It reminds me I guess of better times. Anyway, musically,…

This is really an intriguing album. The title alone promises something mystical and exciting, unknown and terrifying. The art, well, strip away three of those things, leaving terrifying. I think that word is probably the best way to describe this entire album. Like, who on earth allowed this to happen? If the man himself isn’t crooning out awkward ballads or pop numbers, he’s lending his “guitar” “skills” to a bevvy of lukewarm reggae / dancehall…

This is a great record. Real smooth, chilled out and laid back. The re-endition that is named as the title track is simply glorious, changing a big, showy song into a relaxed and horizontal affair. Attention to detail was clearly on the creator’s mind. There are so many little details to catch on relistens. Great stuff.

I look at the sleeve art for this record and I look at the name of the project and all I get are intense Annihilation vibes. Which is furthered by the project’s Bandcamp, where each release is augmented with a cryptic message for its listeners. Similarily, the music too has its own fractured, futuristic feel. Discogs has this classed under vaporwave, but I would class it as such in the loosest sense; Anomalous Planet sounds…

Volume 1 is another one of those records that got played to death in my teenage years. Listening again as an adult, it seems almost like a jumble of different sessions stitched together rather than a cohesive album, but that isn’t too much of an issue when the songs are of this quality. From the instant mega hit of the opening track, the abstract heaviness of “Rio Bravo” or “Lost In A Contraption”, or the…

Enjoyable if you’ve got brutality on the brain, but my main criticisms which I feel need airing is that this production is very dry and awkward, and it can feel like the songs are lurching along at a snail pace even when the tracks are blasting away. That, and the vocals are mixed incredibly low. Sorry to level my criticisms in such a short review, but they are pretty big drawbacks.

A gorgeous, lush mass of soundscapes. Think haunting ambient synthesisers suspended unnaturally over atmospheric backgrounds and busy yet unobtrusive samples. Surely the perfect music for reading, perhaps with something futuristic yet densely terrifying, like something by Aldous Huxley.

One thing I will say about Hellbastard is that Hellbastard live is a different beast to Hellbastard on a record. Whilst the band have always stood apart from their peers (even when they wallowed in the crust scene), there is an undeniably experimental, forward-thinking edge to the band’s bizarre mix of metal, punk and other things in-between. Granted, this experimentation doesn’t always pay off, but on the Feral record, it pays off in spades. My…

Salt Bath are a new band from the Newport area of South Wales, playing an abrasive form of back-to-basics noisemongery distilled through the blunt force weapons of choice – bass guitar and drums (with Venom Prison sticksman Sheehy on the skins). Uncomfortable Choices boasts an impressively all-encompassing production sound, courtesy of One Louder Studios, again in Newport. Imagine Big Black meets Melvins or if you want to go all out; Death From Above 1979 meets…

Closed Casket is surely the definitive Esham record – I love absolutely everything about it; the sound, the lyrics, the samples, even the artwork (for some reason). Closed Casket captures a slice of Detroit “suicidalist” lifestyle in the smog of the early 90s, during that perfect period when Esham was still dank as fuck but not dropping references to the man down below every 20 seconds. I tend to categorise Esham into two categories –…

To be fair, CODC are one of the few bands that successfully managed to mix death metal with grindcore. I bought Zero Comfort Margin when I was a teenager and didn’t really get it; the band play quite an artsy, progressive spin on grinding death metal, and also in hindsight I realise that Zero Comfort Margin probably wasn’t the best place to start with this band. But thanks to the powers that rule on the…

Another record that I have been meaning to buy for years and years and years. I finally got it cheap at Obscene Extreme (like, Obscenely cheap ;D) and whilst I was chuffed to pieces to pick up a split 12″ for roundabouts the price of a split 7″ I was gutted as fuck to find out that the material here is all live! Maaaaan, why can’t I ever research these things properly? The amount of surprises I’ve…

This song is part of my childhood! Quite a strange thing to say, considering I’m not from the streets of CPT, and that I never grew up to develop a taste for gin, khakis and mackin’ bitches. I’m partial to the chronic, however I doubt that has got anything to do with Nate Dogg’s g-funk serenading. This is a classic Dr. Dre track, and it’s a shame that he never made more solo albums; this…

Imagine how stupid I felt after shelling out for the super-ultra-mega-wicked-limited edition of this record that was ONLY available at day one of Roadburn 2012 when I found out there was actually less to it than the normal Relapse package and a few quid more expensive! Bitch please! In a European world where records cost an average of 20 Euros each I was not impressed. Never mind, I guess it is the same record regardless,…