Is Ghost’s Third Album Their Best Yet?
They count James Hetfield, Phil Anselmo, Fenriz and Nergal among their fans. No pressure, right? Not for cloaked Swedish occultists Ghost, who should only expand their global dominance with third album Meliora.
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Frank Allain (Fen) interviewed
** UK black metallers Fen have plied the marshes of greatness since debut album, The Malediction Fields. But on new album, Carrion Skies, Fen are out of the swamps they’ve called home and they’re into the wild (dark) urban streets. They’ve gone above and beyond on Carrion Skies, reducing their ethereal qualities to bone-breaking effectiveness….
Sucker For Punishment: A Septuagenarian Stew
Metal scenesters have always had a problem with artists that “dabble” in metal. In a way, that’s easy to understand: heavy metal is an all-or-nothing style of music, one whose audience embraces as not only as a diversion but a lifestyle, and they fully expect the same kind of dedication to the music, art, and…
STREAMING: Ghost Brigade “The Knife”
Finland’s Ghost Brigade might be the best band you’ve never heard of. True, they’ve been around since 2005 (debut album, Guided by Fire, received rave reviews in 2007), but Jyväskylä-based sextet haven’t toured much and most of their respective catalog has resided on import status here in the US. And true import status means jack…
Throw Me a Frickin’ Label Hack: Texas’s Giant of the Mountain
Because every day another band records another song. Because 83% of those songs are unlistenable and you can’t be bothered to sift through the dreck. Because metal is about not giving a shit and waking your own personal storm. Because music is universal, expression is boundless, and even indie labels (whatever that means these days)…
Sucker For Punishment: Our Cup Runneth Over
Review enough metal albums, and the process can be pretty simple, especially when it comes to those bands that stick to the specific characteristics of one particular subgenre. Each style has its own specific requirements and criteria, and as a critic, you’re basically asking yourself a) if it captures the essence of what this subgenre…
VEMOD GIVES NEW MEANING TO THE WORD “RITUAL” IN A NORWEGIAN MAUSOLEUM
Rituals are a dime a dozen. Any greasy-haired jabroni with a couple half-baked tremolo riffs and a motheaten cloak can stage a ritual; extra points if he cops a wood-burning kit for Christmas and goes to town on some dirt from outside his grandma’s prayer meeting to accent the seven copies of his upteenth Garageband…
Sucker For Punishment: Return of Mega Therion
I don’t issue perfect scores to new albums very often. As Craig Hayes so eloquently wrote a couple weeks ago, positivity and over-praise is a plague in metal criticism, so much so that some publications so constantly hover in the 7 to 10-out-of-10 that a 6 is a negative rating. Ratings, to be honest, are…
Sucker For Punishment: Well, Don’t Die Just Yet
Late last year I finally came around to Portland (by way of Rhode Island) duo The Body, whose album Christs, Redeemers won me over. Yes, it followed the same direction as the lauded All the Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood, but it felt more refined, more powerful. However, the prolific duo of Chip…
STREAMING: De Magia Veterum “The Deification”
Maurice de Jong (aka ‘M’ or ‘Mories’) must’ve lived a tortured life or have continually horrific dreams, ’cause his musical output is absolutely disconcerting. I would point to his insanely prolific (and celebrated) outfit Gnaw Their Tongues (or Cloak of Altering), but this time it’s his near-decade old project De Magia Veterum, an industrial-powered, chaos-inclined…
LIVE REVIEW: Down and Orange Goblin @ Roundhouse, London
Bands always make such a big deal about playing the Roundhouse because of who played here in the past. It’s a former railway engine room, with a lot of rock ‘n’ roll history. But any similarities between the 1960s Roundhouse and today’s venue begin and end with the building’s foundations and unalterable architecture. It’s hard…
LIVE REVIEW: Marduk and Immolation – Underworld, London
The concept of faith might be diametrically opposed to Marduk’s pitch-black worldview but the Swedish fundamentalists are worthy of yours. Of all the Second Wave black metal bands who still consider their iconoclastic craft a full-time concern, Marduk are the ones who always deliver. They could be accused of lacking a sense of adventure when…
STREAMING: Serpentine Path “Obsoletion”
Yeah, it seems kind of corny to talk of a “dream team” existing in doom’s dark, colorless realm but, shit, just consider Serpentine Path’s personnel. You’ve got Tim Bagshaw, guitarist for saturnine UK doom crew Ramesses and a founding member of Electric Wizard, jamming with entire crew of the now (sadly) defunct Unearthly Trance, Jay…
Isis – “Oceanic”
Formed out of teenage jitters, a can-/will-do work ethic and long-term (possibly unhealthy) exposure to Neurosis, Swans and the Melvins, Boston’s Isis were in many respects different from what the rest of New England had to offer in the late ’90s.
Doom fans: get weirded out by Obake’s shapeshifting debut
Obake’s self-titled debut is a worthy soundtrack to finishing off a nightcap on such evenings when you’re expecting some gnarly spectral giant to visit mid-dream and inform you in disembodied tones of some uncomfortable truths, or deliver a prophecy on your soon-to-be-doomed future. Sure, when the opening riff to “Human Genome Project” kicks in, Obake…
DevilDriver’s Dez FaFara Loves Redheads!
For some men it’s unmistakable: the draw the to the color red. Like a bull to the red cape of a matador, we men are transfixed, relentless in pursuit and the feeling is strong and pure. I myself have been with a “natural” redhead for years and every day I see her, the same drop…