While this year may be generous in terms of good music, it has given also given us music of such bad quality that it should be made to produce such music without compensating the listeners!
23 CommentsTags: bloody sadism, car bomb, fear innoculum, funeralmortem, sabaton, sadistic metal reviews, tool, village people
One of the few great bands from the NWOBHM movement in a genre known for a few gems in a sea of stadium and bar rock bands. While never receiving the deserved praise and success of their peers, Satan nonetheless were one of the best bands coming from the scene and used Speed metal elements in creating their magnum opus Court in the Act. On “Trial by Fire”, Satan show the large number of tools at their disposition after the opening blast of notes.
11 CommentsTags: bief analysis, Court in the Act, Heavy Metal, NWOBHM, Satan, trial by fire
The band revealed on Facebook that guitarist of legendary speed metal band Artillery, Morten Stützer, died at the young age of 57.
2 CommentsTags: artillery, By Inheritance, Morten Stützer, Speed Metal
Furious melodic war metal band Sammath published its stream of its sixth album, Across the Rhine is only death, late last night. This new album shows the band integrating the streams of its influences from death metal, black metal, hardcore punk, ritual music, and war metal into a single voice.
This will delight those who think that metal lost its guts and balls, but also who are tired of melodyless and repetitively-structured three-chord “NWN/FMP” styled bands which hold zero musical interest for minds above the yeast level. You can acquire your copy via preorder. Blast it loud and make your neighbors, friends, family, and coworkers weep in terror!
15 CommentsTags: Black Metal, melodic war metal, sammath
Abyssum creator Rex Ebvleb disperses his current thinking through a series of side projects under the name El Nigromante (the Necromancer), and the latest of these has popped up (better than “dropped,” I think) as a project named Desolation with a new demo, “Demo 5: Ultimo Viaje.”
No CommentsTags: Abyssum, Black Metal, el nigromante, Rex Ebvleb, ritual ambient
Chilean speed metal revivalists Ripper tear into their fusion of Destruction and older Sepultura that makes for an energy-infused listen full of the high-contrast riff changes that defined the speed metal genre. While this continues the past influences, it shows the band developing more of their own voice while remembering to cue in enough genre conventions to address the nostalgia crowd.
No CommentsTags: ripper, Speed Metal
As much as we want to think otherwise, our reception, enjoyment and evaluation of music is not strictly dependent on the pure act of listening. A truism perhaps, but still something that is worth reflecting on from time to time. Especially for collectors of cult metal vinyl – the modern-day personification of the emperor’s new clothes syndrome (or should we say old clothes?). If you invest a disproportionate amount of time, effort and money in reading about and eventually acquiring a record – as collectors of obscure metal tend to do – your judgement is likely to get clouded to the point where it’s hard to assess the quality of the work in question. And this includes both positive and negative judgements. Case in point: the hype surrounding the Icelandic proto-black metal band Flames of Hell and their sole full-length album Fire and Steel (1987).
2 CommentsTags: Black Metal, fire and steel, flames of hell, Heavy Metal
New World Black Metal (NWBM) standouts Profanatica just dropped a new track, “Washed In The Blood Of The Lord,” from their forthcoming album Rotting Incarnation of God, due to be released October 11, 2019, on Season of Mist records.
No CommentsTags: Black Metal, havohej, profanatica
The opening song of Seven Churches starts off with The Exorcist theme taken from Tubular Bells but performed by producer Randy Burns. This emblematic introduction played on a cheap organ synth with its muddy timbre is the perfect introduction for this innovative band that managed to reconcile underground metal with the blossoming Speed metal movement into a vicious piece that carries on towards a much darker path.
No CommentsTags: brief analysis, death metal, exorcist, possessed, seven churches, Speed Metal
Donning their debut album with a medieval-styled, black-and-white cover that looks more like a qualified sketch than a finished statement, Assesor went into music history as the first underground metal band in Czechoslovakia to score a record deal. Spearhead-status notwithstanding, Invaze stays firmly rooted in 1980 death/thrash extremity rather than tapping into the burgeoning death- and black metal movements. What ultimately makes Invaze a rewarding listen is not so much a question of stylistic preferences, but how the band expand upon an established form in order to transform it qualitatively from within.
No CommentsTags: assesor, death/speed, kreator, pleasure to kill
