Quarantine descended on the West just at the point when the madness seemed too much to bear. Tax sheep in the crucible of tedium, we found that spinning plates just to keep the GDP high had lost its gleam, and now we could see life as the endless procession of documents, obligations, and smiles with gritted teeth that it was.
8 CommentsEarache Records Unveils Morbid Angel Altars of Madness: Ultimate Edition 2CD
Record companies continue digging in their vaults to release rare material and actual remasters from classic underground metal bands, bypassing the tendency for ProTools “remasters” that amounted to compression of tracks ripped from the existing CD, in an effort to appeal to Generation X as they head toward five decades.
4 CommentsTags: death metal, earache records, morbid angel
Savage Annihilation – Soumises à la procréation (2020)
When life first took over planet Earth, its initial goal was to spread until it covered every square mile of the globe. Then, it began to specialize, since all of the major variants — fish, birds, worms, beetles — had become apparent, and those now divided into different varieties to flesh out ecosystems.
6 CommentsTags: death metal, Savage Annihilation
Retrospective: Septic Flesh – Ophidian Wheel
In the modern metal lexicon, European metal has often been used to denote bands that relied extensively on Iron Maiden harmonies, keyboards, pseudo-classical melodies, female vocalists, tremolo picked riffs and overall less influence from Pantera and Metallica. Septic Flesh have come to epitomize this style despite adding a lot more Metalcore elements to keep with the times. Before the name change, the band were once an overlooked force and presented many ideas that metal as a whole was never fully able to capitalize on. Ophidian Wheel is the summit of the band’s creativity and pushes the romantic qualities of metal even further.
75 CommentsTags: death metal, Heavy Metal, hellenic black metal, septic flesh, the ophidian wheel
Century Media Reissues All Three Unanimated Albums
Century Media Records has announced its intention to re-issue all three full length records from Swedish death metal veterans Unanimated.
3 CommentsTags: death metal, unanimated
Lord Wind – The Forest Is My Kingdom
The case of Rob Darken is a symptomatic one. He is undeniably the most important (and enduring!) metal musician from Poland and Eastern Europe in history. And yet, when black metal or folk is concerned, even on his own soil he is overlooked in favor of others, like Behemoth or Percival Schuttenbach respectively, solely on basis of some external attributes of their music. It seems that for some time now Darken is trying to gain at least a bit of the recognition he deserves: the exposure in Nergal’s biography, playing live with both Graveland and Lord Wind, and now the changes in the very formula of Lord Wind on The Forest Is My Kingdom.
15 CommentsMaster Master and 1985 Unreleased Album Re-issued As 2CD
Hammerheart Records opened pre-orders for the first Master album with several versions of the same songs, making this both a collector’s item and an impossible listen for the casual fan.
13 CommentsTags: abomination, death metal, deathstrike, funeral bitch, hammerheart records, master, speckmann project
Doug Cerrito and Hate Eternal – Conquering the Throne
Hate Eternal’s Conquering the Throne is a fairly mediocre album plagued by the symptoms that were spreading across the Death metal universe at the time. The need for even more brutality was visible on one side of the spectrum while the need to rival the more overground and Rock derived bands on their terms dominated the other side of the spectrum. Erik Rutan had finished his second stay with Morbid Angel who had just failed at accomplishing any of the objectives with the juvenile Gateways to Annihilation and would then form Hate Eternal who simplified everything Ripping Corpse had done into music that attempted to be memorable and punishing but ended up being predictable and flat. Though three songs stand out on this album, showing at times a level of composition far beyond anything that Rutan could ever dream of conceiving. These would become Doug Cerrito’s last contributions to Death metal.
18 CommentsTags: conquering the throne, doug cerrito, Erik Rutan, Hate Eternal, suffocation
SMR – Overestimated Failed Abortions from the Underground
Sometimes for no actual logical reason, terrible metal bands become adored despite not having a gimmick like satanic Abba songs or a mentally deranged topless DJ as a vocalist. These bands offer nothing of interest even on initial listens and should be actively mocked for their pretentious unsubstantiated claims.
7 CommentsTags: baest venenum, seigneur voland, to bathe from the throat of cowardice, vitriol
The Meaning of Desecresy
It is customary to begin a new year with the setting of goals towards accomplishment and growth in view of the experiences had during the previous period. The present writing aims at putting forth some works that may enrich the serious would-be Hessian in their struggle to embrace an ever more complete vision of reality. As Brett Stevens has pointed out, an interest in the occult is part and parcel of the Hessian outlook as he searches for logical patterns everywhere, not allowing himself to be circumscribed by any authority. Of necessity, this interest in the occult goes beyond Judeo-Christian conceptions, even if for historical reasons a poisoned landscape of Judaized misconceptions and moralistic admonitions has to be tread through or around. Mythos, its relevance to human psychology and possibility, must be embraced, and for it to be embraced, its import must be studied through pre-history and the whole of civilizations. While the scoffers will decry what they cannot allow themselves to rationally accept, they will remain in the grips of one or another mythos. Such is the curse of the atheist, the rationalist and those who belong to the democratic crowds. Allow mythos, vision, and hunger for life unite a distant past, the present and a distant future. The way is forward, paved by the billions of skulls of the meek who would inherit this planet, ascending to the heavens, beyond the stars and into far off galaxies.
10 CommentsTags: desecresy, Finnish Death Metal, friedrich nietzsche, the mortal horizon, towards nebulae