Cirith Ungol – King of the Dead Ultimate Edition Coming

Metal Blade Records is reissuing Cirith Ungol’s King of the Dead in an “Ultimate Edition”. The “Ultimate Edition” of King of the Dead is being remastered by Patrick W. Engel and Metal Blade is including a DVD of a 1983 Cirith Ungol live show too for bored time wasters. The original CD release from the late 90s sounded fine.

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Cathedral’s Creeping Death

Death metal had been well established for years by the early 90s. The genre was rapidly becoming an arms race of technicality with many bands attempting to use studio trickery to make records far beyond their musical ability in attempt to compete with their best contemporaries, e.g. Morbid Angel. Many brought in hired shredder studio musicians like James Murphy with drum tracks copy and pasted together onto tape from drum samples and “played” live with triggers activating those same pre-recorded samples at the slightest touch. At the same time, good grindcore bands were turning into second-rate death metal ones or worse, lame “melodic hardcore” which turned hardcore punk aesthetics into slit your wrists whine pop.

Lee Dorrian, vocalist of Napalm Death on the b-side of Scum and From Enslavement to Obliteration, was disgusted by Napalm Death writing material incorporating the worst, bouncy hit people aspects of death metal in an attempt to reach a wider audience and quit the band in 1989. He soon formed Cathedral with Gaz Jennings and Mark Griffiths over a shared love of older heavy metal bands such as Black Sabbath, Candlemass, and Witchfinder General. Demos and an album on Dorrian’s old label Earache quickly followed.

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Sanctuaire Readying Feu Sacré

French Canadian Viking-themed black metal/ambient band Sanctuaire announced on their Facebook page that they are in the final stages of mixing their upcoming record, Feu Sacré (Sacred Fire). Hopefully the band have continued improving their compositional skills which advanced from their oft pedestrian Helserkr demo collection to last year’s sometimes inspiring Le Sang sur l’Acier EP.

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Blood Enter the Studio

German grindcore gods Blood have entered their studio to record their first album in 14 years according to their Facebook page. Good luck guys!

14 looong years after Dysangelium it feels amazing beeing in the studio again. Ventilator, Satanic Taki, Destroyer Eisen, Martin Witchskinner and Evil Chuck will promise you: something brutal will come! Be warned and stay tuned…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4-C-PpbfcM

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Saltiness Over Sadistic Metal Reviews of Sentimental Albums

Old Disgruntled Bastard, one of the few quality metal blogs around, accused Death Metal Underground of writing clickbait on Facebook for our recent Sadistic Metal Reviews of older albums our staff had noticed to be inferior to the best of the past:

To Death Metal Underground: Certain albums have endured – for musical and extra-musical reasons – across decades and among generations of metalheads of diverse backgrounds, and the least they warrant is treatment with the respect they’ve earned. There is no revelation to be made and there is no current of general perception to be reversed by “raping sacred favorites”. Clickbait is distinctly unelitist and pissing in the wind for the fuck of it isn’t terribly smart either.

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