Death metal in its purest state is a surprisingly difficult element to isolate. This could be because the disparate interpretations of the form on both sides of the Atlantic based their approaches on very different antecedents – thrash, punk, NWOBHM etc. Or it could that death metal as it is understood today – a set... Continue Reading →

#34 Hod / Pious Levus Carl (Lord Necron) and Beer (Vladibeer) join from the band Hod to discuss their music. Also, some bants. Being that both men are veterans of the metal scene here in San Antonio, we went in-depth into the scene here, their other projects, and so forth.

Morguiliath: Occult Sins, New Unholy DimensionOut 26th November on Osmose Productions Old gods under new lights, this is apparently the order of the day for this French black metal outfit. Morguiliath is the solo project of one...Rats. Their new album ‘Occult Sins, New Unholy Dimension ‘ sees Rats offer up a template of raw but... Continue Reading →

Goatcraft: Sic Transit Gloria MundiOut 26th November on I,Voidhanger Records Within the milieu of metal instrumentation, the keyboard is often viewed as a means to an end, an affordable substitute for a rich array of instrumentation. For the vast majority of musicians, access to a real orchestra is well beyond budgetary means, and even for... Continue Reading →

How fitting that Eastern Europe proved to be one of the few holdouts for quality black metal just as the more world-renowned scenes began to decline at the turn of the century. In the last twenty plus years artists from Poland, Ukraine, Romania, and of course Russia were all releasing work that challenged the maturity... Continue Reading →

Ezra Brooks/Serpent Rider: Visions of Esoteric Splendor (Split)Out 22nd October on No Remorse Records This split EP provides a welcome holdout for proudly traditional heavy metal, offering many rewards and lessons for the discerning listener. Ezra Brooks is a Canadian solo act, brainchild of one Shawn Vincent, which here deliveries plenty of infectious heavy metal,... Continue Reading →

The best of death metal is notoriously fleeting, with today’s canon still chiefly consisting of releases from a brief moment in time when the stars aligned in the early 1990s. Of the two artists discussed today, there has been much speculation as to their possible artistic direction had they endured. Would they have unseated their... Continue Reading →

Conjureth: Majestic DissolveOut 25th October on Memento Mori Following two impressive but tantalisingly short EPs in ‘Foul Formations’ and ‘The Levitation Manifest’, both released in 2020, San Diego’s Conjureth emerge from the chrysalis fully formed on their debut album ‘Majestic Dissolve’. Both EPs offered new interpretations of old forms by marrying the percussive chromaticism of... Continue Reading →

If the term “gatekeeping” once served a purpose it has certainly been all but lost in the aether by now. Where once it was a disparagement thrown at self-appointed policers of culture, today its common usage has become a canary in the coalmine for our decaying relationship with art. A term that has mutated culture... Continue Reading →

Goatcraft continues to stubbornly defy a neatly marketable genre tag on these brand new tracks taken from their upcoming album 'Sic Transit Gloria Mundi'. This artist has been honing a sound between dark ambient and classical piano music for over a decade now. In placing the piano front and centre there is no finer demonstration... Continue Reading →