Lords Of Chaos (2018)

In an industry crammed with anti-hero biopics, Lords of Chaos follows the self-destructive rock star trope while sensationalizing the events that occurred during the black metal movement in Norway. Instead of simplifying the story to tell a more accurate tale of actual events, it adopts the more complex and clunky Hollywood cliché of the anti-hero rockstar who must “confront his own demons” instead of the more interesting story, as happened in real life, of a clash over artistic, philosophical, and personal differences. (more…)

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Zloslut – Sahar

Zloslut is a Serbian Black metal that initially consisted of sole founding member Agnarion who had produced all the records by himself but here on Sahar, Agnarion is joined by a full band that changes the dynamic of this album compared to previous works. All the previous rough edges have been rounded out from the production all the way to the riffs themselves. While this does create a certain amount of sterility, it also allows the band the freedom to explore and to develop their own style.

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Retrospective : Intestine Baalism – An Anatomy of the Beast


Intestine Baalism are a Death metal band formed in the suburbs of Tokyo in 1991, their first full length only came out in 1997, having only released a pair of demos featuring songs that ended up on this album, it is safe to confirm that Intestine Baalism is a latecomer to a genre that had already seen it’s apex and was now slowly descending into Brutal and Technical Death metal territory. Anatomy of a beast takes advantage of the power of hindsight to successfully fusion the works of Carnage,Dismember and Suffocation against the more Heavy metal derived melodies of Sentenced, bringing to life a potent record that is at times just as peculiar as the band’s name.

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Internal Bleeding – Corrupting Influence (2018)

If we had to concoct a subgenre that would be a form of Spinoza Ray Prozak Vijay Prozak Brett Stevens sonic Hell, it could well be slam: a death metal influenced continuation of what Pantera and Meshuggah did to speed metal, giving it a bit of groove and lots of chromatic fills based on rhythmic expectation. Internal Bleeding pretty much pioneered this subgenre.

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Sortilège – Sortilège (1983)


At a time when most of the worthy metal was being produced in England with a few exceptions in Europe and America as most bands emerging were straddling the line between Hard Rock and Heavy metal or resorting to recreating the dirty rock of the early 70s in order to achieve mainstream success as there was much more to be gained financially from such endeavors. Iron Maiden had dazzled the world with Killers, Melissa and Kill ‘Em All were just around the corner and metal would proceed through a very sudden transformation with these releases. In between all this former heroes like Judas Priest,Motorhead and Scorpions were embracing the stadiums. In such a frantic period, in a country where music had never been a cultural strength. Sortilège, after studying their cousins from across the pond would release one of the greatest Heavy metal EPs of all time only for the aforementioned bands to overshadow them and relegate them to cult favorite;

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Revisiting the Classics: Fleshcrawl – Descend Into the Absurd


When one hears the name Fleshcrawl, the first thing that comes to mind is the legendary Autopsy song from Mental Funeral, yet a very peculiar German band carries that name. Descend Into the Absurd marks their highest peak musically and rightfully so. Taking more from the fully formed European style of the time that was influenced by Autopsy than Autopsy themselves. Combining Doom dirges that exude morbidity and flowing pensive phrasal riffs, Fleshcrawl create a forgotten classic and an important addition to Death metal.
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