Armchair rhetoric on extreme metal
A Monument I Shall Raise in FlameOut 20th March on Werewolf Promotion Polandโs Deathlike Dawn continue the direction set by their previous album โNoc czarna czerniฤ otchลaniโ, extending their tendrils further into semi-chromatic, dissonant territory for this latest release, sacrificing the hazy atmosphere coating 2024โs โAmong the Graves of the Archetypesโ for a more stripped... Continue Reading →
A closer look at specific metal tracks at the granular level, this week we take a closer look at Demilich's The Sixteenth Six-Tooth Son of Fourteen Four-Regional Dimensions (Still Unnamed) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjSAi2d6HiI
Temora: DemoOut 13th March on Blood Harvest At face value this is fairly run of the mill old school death metal, delivered with a pleasing sparseness that presents as authentic as opposed to another empty pastiche. Peeling back the layers reveals a degree of pomp and playful bounce to this material. Many riffs taking on... Continue Reading →
Sette Cornici di PurificazioneOut 27th February on Masked Dead Records The third album from this Italian entity is an expansive, cinematic, and ambitious work of hyper charged melodic black metal. It manages to salvage the Cascadian style from its terminal blandness by recontextualising its open, cathartic demeanour into a more clarified, sharper expression of energised... Continue Reading →
Realms of Chaos: Torment of BelligerenceOut 14th February, self-released Precision timed, energetic death metal takes its cues from an earlier strain of brutal death metal that suppressed the hardcore influence in favour of linear, mechanistic bursts of intricately aggressive thrash. Late 90s Morbid Angel, Hate Eternal, and elements of Immolation of the same era stand... Continue Reading →
Overspace and SupertimeOut 27th February on Metal Blade Records Itโs been a slow rise for Leedsโs own Cryptic Shift. From clunky sci-fi thrash beginnings in the early 2010s to emerging as local scene darlings by the end of the decade. They were perhaps about to break into international renown by the time their debut dropped... Continue Reading →
Is AI just the next technological development musicians and producers must contend with (akin to MIDI or DAWs)? Or does it represent a watershed moment in our relationship to music? And what, if anything, should people who spend their time reviewing and discussing new music do about AIโs growing proliferation? Joseph and Shelley are thrilled... Continue Reading →
Unmother: State Dependent MemoryOut 20th February on Fiadh Productions Although not entirely terrible, Unmother suffer from the garden variety shortcomings of much RABM, in that the music appears distracted and disjointed precisely because it is being forced to serve competing agendas. In the case of Unmother, itโs a simple checklist: from London, hardcore punk background,... Continue Reading →
In a recent episode of 2 Promoters, 1 Pod, co-host and Damnation Festival organiser Gavin McInally launched what some took to be an all out assault on the music press. His contentions were three fold. That the music press no longer does โrealโ journalismโ, i.e. following up on leads and breaking stories. Secondly, that its... Continue Reading →
In an effort to catch up with current events we thought we'd doff the cap to Ozzy's passing by focusing on the part of his legacy that has impacted us the most, the first six Sabbath albums. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPuwa8NMfxU
Hate Meditations 