Merauder – God is I
For me, Merauder was a lost, lost band for a number of years. 2003s Bluetality was a flat, flaccid record and not representative of one of New York’s hardest bands. What’s more, I saw them at Pressure...
View ArticleTrapped Under Ice – Secrets of the World
For those not in the know, I hate to break it to you but Trapped Under Ice is not another throwback thrash band. Far, far, far from it in fact, rather, this is some of the meanest, tuffest hardcore...
View ArticleIngested – Surpassing the Boundaries of Human Suffering
It took its sweet time, but finally, the UK is finally churning out quality, quality metal. Granted, there’s not the level of innovation that graced this island in the 80s and early to mid 90s but,...
View ArticleVomit the Soul – Apostles of Inexpression
I wrote this at the same time as Ingested for 2 reasons, the first being that its slamming death metal also but also for balance because whilst it is of that ilk it is a decidedly different beast. VTS...
View ArticleConverge – Axe to Fall
I’ll come clean. I love Converge. Ever since discovering them when The Poacher Diaries came out, I became a manic obsessive, drooling over Petitioning the Empty Sky, and When Forever Comes Crashing,...
View ArticleArsonists Get All the Girls – Portals
Century Media must be stock piled with cash, absolute mountains of it I reckon. The question that keeps popping in my brain is how this has come to be? Is it thanks to their massive back catalog...
View ArticleDeath Before Dishonor – Better Ways to Die
Like death metal, if you’re into metallic hardcore, you’ve been pretty spoiled this year, what with various amazing comebacks (Earth Crisis, Kickback, Merauder), the underground churning out a...
View ArticleSteel Nation – Forever Wounded
This backs up my statement from the Death before Dishonor review, this year has been an absolute landslide in terms of quality releases for metallic hardcore, and what’s more, all kinds of different...
View ArticleWe Were Gentlemen – Living Hell
No, you’re wrong; it’s not deathcore, well, not quite. Despite the artwork, the elaborate band name, the slightly sarcastic song titles (“Cradle Your Filth?” oh Drowningman, this is what you created...
View ArticleCall for Blood – Call for Blood EP
Shall we get the gimmicks out the way? Call for Blood are a beatdown mob from Switzerland, and they have a girl singing, I know it’s unusual, but there you go, now down to business. Their self titled...
View ArticleEmpire Shall Fall, The – Awaken
This came out of nowhere. I had no idea that Jesse Leach (the original Killswitch Engage vocalist) was still making music after Seemless, and it seems like the man has been at it hard because Awaken is...
View ArticleLife As War – To Tell You This EP
Unlike their label mates Call for Blood, Life As War only have one working gimmick for them, that being they are also of Swiss origin. However, the results on this EP are more succulent but, much too...
View ArticleInterview with Ingested
The first thing, for the uninitiated, can you give us the origins of the band, what your original intentions were etc. Lynn – We started in about, I think, summer 2006, the four of the lads had been in...
View ArticleWaking the Cadaver – Beyond Cops, Beyond God
Let’s not beat around the corpse. Waking the Cadaver is a death metal band, even if their debut had detractors screaming otherwise. Believing or even promoting otherwise is absurd, and maintaining the...
View ArticleCause for Revelation – Resurrecting the Hostility
What you have is 50% hardcore, and 50% death metal, with two members from the heavy as hell Eyes to the Sky, and then two from Jungle Rot/Cyanosis (drummer and guitarist were in both bands...
View Article108 – 18.61
Ten years ago, it was fashionable to break up. After all, it’s better to leave a good looking corpse then become a bloated shadow of your former self. In the past few years though, innovators from 90s...
View ArticleA Plea for Purging – The Marriage of Heaven & Hell
It’s more than common knowledge that the third album is one of the pinnacle pressure points of a band’s existence. Getting the balance right is so important in avoiding to take that wrong turn to the...
View ArticleHell Within – God Grant Me Vengeance
When Killswitch Engage vowed to kill off “Nu Metal,” eight years ago, it was what the masses wanted to hear, and kill it they did, annihilate it in fact; as the scores of terrible bands that had...
View ArticleImpending Doom – There will be Violence
Like their label brethren, A Plea for Purging, Impending Doom are at that “difficult stage,” in their existence―namely that all important third album―which, as stressed in the APFP review, can be the...
View ArticleBring Me The Horizon – There Is A Hell, Believe Me I’ve Seen It. There Is A...
The UK has a lot to answer for with its mainstream rock/metal talent, but then again, the UK has a lot to answer for with regards to many other things. The long list of reprobates include the likes of...
View ArticleHuman Parasite – Proud to Build the Insidious Catastrophe
As astutely observed by Erik in his review of Fitcage’s Pighumanity, Soulflesh Collector Records from Russia is definitely pushing to match Unique Leader/Unmatched Brutality/Sevared/Comatose etc in...
View ArticleCephalic Impurity – Unique Brute Revival
One of the most fascinating aspects of human beings is how they progress as they grow. Some would believe that growth equals regression rather than progression and that is certainly a fact in some...
View ArticleLeptotrichia – The Repository
Soulflesh Collector’s ongoing quest to rule in the death metal underworld continues, and again, they’ve enlisted more talent from outside their homeland (Russia) to aid in their endeavor. Hailing not...
View ArticleFoundation – When the Smoke Clears
This is going to take some beating. Few albums this year in any genre have enraptured me as much as Foundation’s first proper full-length, When the Smoke Clears. I don’t know what’s in the water at...
View ArticleGutted – Mankind Carries the Seeds of Hell
The cries of heresy and treachery will go on for months, if not years, concerning the aural molestation administered by Morbid Angel’s latest abomination (not intended as a positive pun). Revisiting...
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