Armchair rhetoric on extreme metal
Sepulcrum: LaceratorOut 24th July on Chaos Records Chile’s Sepulcrum land the second album with ease, delivering a near perfect elaboration on 2023’s ‘Lamentations of Immolated Souls’ without over stretching themselves. If anything they are an even more efficient beast than before, expanding their expressive range whilst keeping the runtime to a crisp thirty six minutes... Continue Reading →
Sallow Moth: Hydrophilous BroodOut 24th July on Willowtip Records Surrealist brutal death metal redrafts elements of ‘Obscura’ and post 2000s Suffocation, but as with most contemporary avant-garde progressive extreme metal, it conflates stylistic incontinence with a density of ideas. Sure, for solid stretches of this album Sallow Moth work the Rubik’s Cube of tightly packed... Continue Reading →
Death is the Master of this WorldOut 8th July on New Era Productions From the mind of Jan Kruitwagen of Sammath and Kaeck fame comes this new dark ambient project. Split neatly into two fifteen minute segments, in essence what we are presented with is a re-evaluation of ambient black metal. Paradoxically by removing any... Continue Reading →
Coprolith: PutrescenceOut 3rd July on Me Saco Un Ojo / Rotted Life Low effort death metal combines Incantation and Autopsy into a route one interpretation of death/doom, oscillating between slow and fast with no attempt to create tension and release as each transition is carefully prepared for. The album attempts to get by on the... Continue Reading →
A hundred death metal albums not from the USA Between 1993 and 1994, death metal popped its head above the underground parapet to peek into the mainstream. From airplay on MTV’s Headbangers Ball, to Morbid Angel being the first death metal band to get major label backing with a signing to Giant Records, to bloody... Continue Reading →
Apocalyptic SteelOut 26th June on Season of Mist Underground Activists Say what you like about Nargaroth, but the guy dances to the beat of his own drum. In his earliest period Ash was simply content to write Nordic black metal fanfic, resulting in a surplus of flat, bloated material that bored more than it enraged... Continue Reading →
A hundred death metal albums not from the USA Where were you in 92? Well, I was being shepherded between various preschool childcare arrangements, blissfully unaware of the exploding death metal scene. Part I took us from the late 80s to 1991, and naturally Sweden dominated when you remove death metal’s other centre of gravity... Continue Reading →
Ultima RequiesOut 26th June on ATMF The third album from this Italian outfit relives the streaming lamentations of the Blazebirth Hall scene, but populates this infamously barren Russian style with stark features by which to navigate. Most obviously via rhythmic variation and clearly marked out phrasing, over and above the addition of rich keyboard decoration... Continue Reading →
Defiled: Altered StateOut 12th June on Season of Mist The latest effort from this long standing Japanese entity offers flashes of brilliance between long stretches of uninspired number crunching. Similar to Krisiun in the sense that they champion shortform death metal. But where Krisiun – love or hate them – make known their urge to... Continue Reading →
The Temples of Offal/Return of the AncientsOut 10th June on ATMF (originally released in 1991) One often forgets that - along with the likes of Massacre and Napalm Death- Absu were another Trigger’s broom band. (That’s bands whose latest incarnation features none of their original members for any none UK readers). But with this latest... Continue Reading →
Hate Meditations 