Sanctifying Ritual: Sanctifying Ritual (2020) Germany’s Sanctifying Ritual released their self-titled debut this year, and it's been a while in the making. We’re treading that familiar path into the old school, this time wearing our death metal hats, albeit with a more atmospheric, ‘evil’ aesthetic that was once refreshing in a post tech-death world. This... Continue Reading →

Flagg: Nothing but Death (2020) Finnish black metal newcomers Flagg released their debut LP this year. ‘Nothing but Death’ sees them try to revitalise the much maligned DSBM school with lightning bolts of energy borrowed from blackened grind and old school thrash. The end result is a shaky and unoriginal debut that yields nuggets of... Continue Reading →

The 1990s were still a time when regional influences had a meaningfully role in the perpetuation of musical ideas. There was a marked difference between styles from different areas and one could point out why, tracing – maybe a little clunkily at times – the genesis and procreation of signature sounds. One obvious example of... Continue Reading →

OND: Brutal Skeleton Fistfight (2020) One has to admire the audacity of OND’s new EP ‘Brutal Skeleton Fistfight’. It’s just an incredibly hard working release. It somehow manages to combine classic thrash and heavy metal licks with an undeniably progressive bent, an ethos rooted firmly in punk, and lyrics marked by a quirky sense of... Continue Reading →

One thing I don’t often remark on is the catalogue of failures that characterised Norwegian black metal artists after the release of their classic canon. It’s tiresome to mourn, after such a burst of intense creativity a decline in standards was inevitable. But looking at the big four of Norway today is like observing a... Continue Reading →

Khost: Buried Steel (2020) Brummie industrial noise doomsters Khost offer up another rendering of deadbeat urban horror in the form of 2020’s ‘Buried Steel’. Replete with their trademark jagged drone, disjointed and disorientating, Khost frontload the more driving drumbeats and bounce into this mix than on their previous effort ‘Governance’ (2017). The opener ‘We Will... Continue Reading →

As the underground was forged throughout the 1980s, an explosion wrought in the crucible of punk, it took a special discipline to go against that grain. It may have gathered a larger following of tourists in the 2000s, but back then it was doom metal was decidedly not cool. The impact this had on traditional... Continue Reading →

One curious feature of black metal’s evolution throughout the 1990s was the fact that most European scenes outside of Norway were actually peddling something relatively accessible, even to untrained ears. Throughout southern and central Europe, old school heavy metal, ghoulish melodrama, and ambitious narrative structures were being married to surprisingly catchy riffs. One comes to... Continue Reading →

Diocletian: Amongst the Flames of a Bvrning God (2019) After releasing one of the best extreme metal albums of the last decade, 2014’s ‘Gesundrian’, it looks like New Zealand’s Diocletian have been through some changes in personnel and outlook since that time. Following this masterwork up would be an intimidating prospect for any artist. But... Continue Reading →

Punk distils many of contemporary music’s virtues down to their most fundamental elements. This makes it a perfect lens by which to trace the developments in music over the passage of time. This riotous world, filled with anger, chaos, and vitriol, may seem like an odd setting for an academic study. But the crucible of... Continue Reading →