Armchair rhetoric on extreme metal
Coprolith: PutrescenceOut 3rd July on Me Saco Un Ojo / Rotted Life Low effort death metal combines Incantation and Autopsy into a route one interpretation of death/doom, oscillating between slow and fast with no attempt to create tension and release as each transition is carefully prepared for. The album attempts to get by on the... Continue Reading →
Czechiaโs Brutal Assault just completed its twenty ninth cycle. And with festival season wrapping up, what better time to curse the nature of change by meticulously focusing on the gripes. 2026 was my fifth visit to Josefov, the 18th Century fortress in Jaromฤล that houses Brutal Assault. Itโs fair to say itโs changed a fair... Continue Reading →
A hundred death metal albums not from the USA The final period in this series is also the ultimate motivation for this little exercise. There are few who would deny that death metal peaked between 1991-92. The established narrative has it that the genre then wobbled throughout the rest of the 90s, with some bands... Continue Reading →
A hundred death metal albums not from the USA Between 1993 and 1994, death metal popped its head above the underground parapet to peek into the mainstream. From airplay on MTVโs Headbangers Ball, to Morbid Angel being the first death metal band to get major label backing with a signing to Giant Records, to bloody... Continue Reading →
Apocalyptic SteelOut 26th June on Season of Mist Underground Activists Say what you like about Nargaroth, but the guy dances to the beat of his own drum. In his earliest period Ash was simply content to write Nordic black metal fanfic, resulting in a surplus of flat, bloated material that bored more than it enraged... Continue Reading →
A hundred death metal albums not from the USA Where were you in 92? Well, I was being shepherded between various preschool childcare arrangements, blissfully unaware of the exploding death metal scene. Part I took us from the late 80s to 1991, and naturally Sweden dominated when you remove death metalโs other centre of gravity... Continue Reading →
Ultima RequiesOut 26th June on ATMF The third album from this Italian outfit relives the streaming lamentations of the Blazebirth Hall scene, but populates this infamously barren Russian style with stark features by which to navigate. Most obviously via rhythmic variation and clearly marked out phrasing, over and above the addition of rich keyboard decoration... Continue Reading →
I miss stuff. Stuff used to be everywhere. I watched The Lost Boys recently. It occurred to me that stuff clutters every shot of 80s films, trinkets, knickknacks, gumph, it clogs up the screen to the point of distraction when compared to the barren surfaces of modern television. All my life Iโve been told that... Continue Reading →
Defiled: Altered StateOut 12th June on Season of Mist The latest effort from this long standing Japanese entity offers flashes of brilliance between long stretches of uninspired number crunching. Similar to Krisiun in the sense that they champion shortform death metal. But where Krisiun โ love or hate them โ make known their urge to... Continue Reading →
A hundred death metal albums not from the USA This is essentially a housekeeping exercise I decided to inflict on other eyeballs. A broad sweep through death metalโs classical era in a hundred albums, from 1985 to 2000. If anything, the choice to exclude the US from this list is a sign of respect. It... Continue Reading →
Hate Meditations 