Armchair rhetoric on extreme metal
Elsinore: The Vengeful Ghost/Tombstone HexOut 5th December on Caligari Records Brief but tight EP that reminds us that death metal, even in its germinal form, was always melodic in some sense. Explicit references to early Death sit happily alongside the journeying primitivism of Celtic Frost. The presentation is cleaner than the vintage implied by these... Continue Reading →
Aurë EntuluvaOut 27th November on La Caverna Records It’s been a while for Cóndor, but I feel that with album number five this Colombian outfit have finally made a listener friendly album. Cóndor articulate a form of ambient metal with tools normally associated with melodic death/doom. A liminal, veiled quality cloaks the music, as if... Continue Reading →
Verdadero PoderOut 19th November, self-released The second offering from this Chilean powerhouse of speed metal smooths off the rougher edges of the debut, seeing a more focused, weighty, yet no less frantic entity come into sharp relief. Letalis thread the needle of maturity by employing a fatter production, tighter songwriting, and a more intentional flow... Continue Reading →
The Descent of Mortals PastOut 14th November on I, Voidhanger Records Following the outpouring of material from the Midnight Odyssey camp in recent years it’s probably about time Dis Pater took his foot off the gas with his flagship project. It’s not so much the amount of releases that was causing a problem but the... Continue Reading →
Přílišnost (Excess)Out 7th November on Willowtip Records Coming off the back of the adventurous ‘Úpal’ in 2023, the latest offering from Kostnatění is a case study in growing pains. Today’s release incontinence epidemic has rendered the difficult second album a thing of the past. There is no build up of digestive materials before the ultimate... Continue Reading →
Seven Bloodied RampartsOut 14th November on Caligari Records (originally released in 2010) This reissue of British crust oddity Bretwaldas of Heathen Doom gives us the opportunity to scrutinise what is essentially Amebix reimagined through the lens of Time Team (a twee as fuck 90s TV programme about archaeological digs, for any non British readers), and... Continue Reading →
Depths of SufferingOut 31st October on Lavadome Productions The rough presentation of this album cloaks a well oiled machine of dramatic, borderline orchestral death metal. The music’s darkness emerges not from a drab, introspective melancholia, but from a pervasive, ambient gloom, as if we were in the presence of some unknowably vast presence, be it... Continue Reading →
SAD: Fullmoon’s Bestial AwakeningOut 31st October on Purity Through Fire SAD continue their quest to appropriate generic second wave black metal sweet-nothings into what is essential punky rock ‘n’ roll. Despite the length of this album, and indeed the considerable girth of the tracks within, there is little to suggest they have expanded into a... Continue Reading →
Ialdabaoth: G.O.A.T. / S.C.O.P.E.Out 13th March on All Is Threat Lo-fi, frantic black metal pulling from the futurist undercurrent of the genre, here reimagined as a random, feral entity, defined by illogical fits of violence, laboured interludes of despair, and uncanny structuralism. Despite the demo quality production – something utterly incapable of containing the flamboyant... Continue Reading →
Christus VenariOut 12th September on Personal Records Choppy, frantic death metal channels the frenetic energy of early Deicide into an explicitly gothic darkness. Borrowing the aesthetic material accrued from more populist extreme metal strains in the form of early 2000s Behemoth, refocusing what was previously empty fanfare into an efficient, tight, yet no less diverse... Continue Reading →
Hate Meditations 