The inventor shakes hands with the museum curator Following its initially burst of popularity in the early 1970s, progressive rock was famously subjected to a spate of overly zealous ire at the hands of punk’s utilitarian efficiency. It therefore always struck me as rather touching that only a few years later one of punk’s shabby... Continue Reading →

Plague Bearer: Summoning Apocalyptic DevastationOut 3rd March on Nameless Grave Records What do you get when you cross the grandiosity of Immolation at the height of their powers with a dash of black metal mysticism, and the raw energy of formative death metal? You get a series of descriptors that does not come close to... Continue Reading →

Thecodontion/Ceremented: splitOut 7th April on I, Voidhanger Hands up who likes their metal without guitars? This split brings together Arizona’s Ceremented and Italy’s Thecodontion, two artists capable of demonstrating the enormous versality of instruments historically side-lined within metal, but ones that have recently been taking up more room centre stage as people gradually tire of... Continue Reading →

The Evil: Seven Acts to ApocalypseOut 31st March on Osmose Productions ‘Seven Acts to Apocalypse’, predictably segmented into seven tracks each dedicated to a deadly sin, is fundamentally the work of a so-so stoner doom outfit elevated beyond their station by a very talented vocalist, one whose eclectic range brings drama and borderline symphonic weight... Continue Reading →

Sepulcrum: Lamentation of Immolated SoulsOut 17th March on Chaos Records/Canometal/Burning Coffin Support Chilean death metal! Well, there’s actually far more besides to celebrate about Chilean extreme metal in general. But the debut album from Puerto Montt’s Sepulcrum brings home the message once again that Chile is currently a world leader in the death metal field.... Continue Reading →

Yaaroth: The Man in the WoodOut 3rd March on I, Voidhanger ‘The Man in the Wood’ is a singular work of progressive doom metal. It cross pollinates Black Sabbath with the eccentric folk narratives of early Genesis. The intricate interweaving acoustic guitar and woodwind melodies bring together fragile neoclassical and English folk influences, accentuating the... Continue Reading →

Cromlech: Ascent of KingsOut 3rd March on Hessian Firm Bombastic, raw, epic, almost comedic in its sincere quest to deliver giant slabs of epic doom metal that seem to emanate from another time and place, far away over the hills. ‘Ascent of Kings’ is the second album from Cromlech, and sees them expand further into... Continue Reading →

The lads chat Burzum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcOfpuiFyLs

Hole DwellerWith Dreams of Hereafter Fresh from the fuck bunker it’s….Hole Dweller, with an album painstakingly crafted to sound utterly devoid of threat. A series of soothing vignettes that could have been scored for a kids TV show. That’s not to say that the package is basic for the fact. There’s a wistful sense of... Continue Reading →

By T Coles, 2023 One has to admire the unassuming guile it takes to release a book like ‘Death Metal’ into the wild of 2023, without supervision or shelter from the harsh weather currently ravaging the death metal landscape. This book arrives under the guise that it will reach an imagined audience of death metal... Continue Reading →