Smoulder: Violent Creed of VengeanceOut 21st April on Cruz del Sur Music Canadian heavy metal darlings Smoulder return with album number two, ‘Violent Creed of Vengeance’. It sees the furtherance of their strident blend of epic doom, NWOBHM, and old school power metal with perhaps a rawer presentation. The production has certainly tightened up, with... Continue Reading →

Pustilence: Beliefs of Dead Stargazers and SoothsayersOut 24th April on Memento Mori/Rotted Life A solid slab of imaginative if direct death metal out of that Brisbane, Pustilence, despite their moniker, eke out abstract and surprisingly meditative lyrical themes to accompany this diverse broth of traditional death metal riffcraft and pronounced melodic character. Chaos meets premeditation... Continue Reading →

ArcanistPoseidonis Do you ever wonder what it would actually be like to exist in the worlds depicted on dungeon synth and black metal albums covers? Artworks that speak of high adventure, mysticism, the binary moral codes of battle and the obscurantist esoterica of mysterious pantheons. These works – even those of a violent or threatening... Continue Reading →

Athanatheos: Cross. Deny. GlorifyOut 14th April on Lavadome Productions This unassuming French death metal outfit continues its preoccupation with the rise early Christianity on ‘Cross. Deny. Glorify’. This time tracking the decay of the Roman Empire following Emperor Constantine’s conversion to this strange new sect quickly sweeping across Europe out of the Middle East. As... Continue Reading →

Ayyur: PrevailOut 7th April on Xenoglossy/Hidden Room Recordings/Dead Red Queen Records/Armee de la Mort Tunisian atmospheric black metallers finally graduate into full length territory with the release of ‘Prevail’. This sees their vision of sparse, understated atmospheric music expand into a stilted, doom laden affair of low key menace punctuated by monstrosity and chaos. The... Continue Reading →

The lads chat Bathory. Forensic analysis of Quorthon's career evolves into discussion on why we no longer see his like, and who gets to determine the narratives and mores of contemporary extreme metal. "You can't make an omelette without having a frank and honest discussion with the eggs". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCz6ph60Beg

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 →