Armchair rhetoric on extreme metal
Morbid DesiresOut 27th March on Darkness Shall Rise Productions Being Tulus must be a thankless task. Even the promo blurb accompanying this release canโt quite muster the requisite enthusiasm, boasting โconcise mid-tempo songs performed by proficient musiciansโ, โMorbid Desiresโ is โby no means a one-dimensional albumโ and has โplenty of varietyโ. On that last point... Continue Reading →
Cruel Force: HanedaOut 27th March on Shadow Kingdom Sits at the playful end of German thrash, emphasising the melodic elements of Destruction circa โMad Butcherโ. On the basis of this material there is a clear effort to align with the rough and tumble of 80s thrash via the period correct mix and throaty vocals, but... Continue Reading →
The Last SuppurationOut 13th March on Extremely Rotten Productions/Unholy Domain/Sevared Records Protrusion punt for a mix of early 90s Floridian death metal and early Gorguts (who were to be fair, also a Morrisound alumni). This results in a pleasingly authentic rerun of percussive death metal as it augments the choppier elements of thrash into a... Continue Reading →
the pleasure machine is here: a few thoughts Big questions tend to throw us in multiple directions at once. What does it mean to live a good life? There are simply too many factors to consider. No reasonable person can be expected to provide a succinct, satisfactory answer. Thatโs why philosophers use thought experiments. The... Continue Reading →
A.H.P: Alltid Imot DegOut 21st March on Purity Through Fire Drab, pessimistic black metal lurches between torturous drone segments bolstered by little more than stumbling, slow rhythms into bursts of linear speed and open, humming guitar lines that retain a lackadaisical energy despite the blast-beat foundation. Raspy, mid-range vocals attempt to enhance the sense of... Continue Reading →
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 →
Hate Meditations 