Sadly, it looks like Jon Schaffer from Iced Earth is going to jail for the Capitol riot:
25 CommentsTags: iced earth, jon schaffer, late stage democracy, Speed Metal
Nekromanthieon – Visions of Trismegistos (2021)
So much of life involves filtering out what people tell you, which is what it is convenient for them to have you think, and getting to the core of an issue: despite being sold as a Necrophobic-style band, Nkeromanthieon instead thinly disguise Testament and Obliveon style speed metal within a death metal aesthetic.
1 CommentTags: nekromanthieon, Speed Metal
Perdition Temple – Edict of the Antichrist Elect (2020)
War metal like old intensely rhythmic death metal lives within the chromatic scale and only offsets that with bookends of broad leaps in riff, often whole tone scale with a melodic leap in the middle, to interrupt the codex of texture it unleashes to maintain a mood of energy and penetrating beneath surface appearance.
6 CommentsTags: perdition temple, War Metal
Betrayer – Infernum in Terra (2015)
Style gives voice to content, which means that the wrong style can distort content and present it incoherently, which is a problem since disorganization creates all the bad music in the world. Metalheads also suffer from popularity, since we do not understand it, so when one type of metal style becomes popular, the tendency is to incorporate it even if it does not fit.
No CommentsTags: betrayer, death metal, poland
Cadaver – Edder & Bile (2020)
For most albums, you can write a shorthand review: needed more time in the oven. That is, they have the right elements, but in the wrong order, and the transitions do not make enough sense to be powerful, which results in a chaotic feeling with moments of “wow, this is pretty good.”
5 CommentsTags: cadaver, death metal
Mekong Delta – Intersections (2012)
Speed metal never went away; it went underground and combined its many different veins. Mekong Delta mix in some Voivod with their Helstar and Coroner, maybe throw in some Slayer and later progressive old school death metal.
No CommentsTags: mekong delta, progressive metal, Speed Metal
Inquisition – Black Mass For A Mass Grave (2020)
We predicted many years ago that rock would assimilate metal and adopt its techniques, missing the point, and Inquisition comes along with a release that is half metal of various subgenres and half 1970s album-oriented rock, sure to be popular and yet, not bad at all.
7 CommentsTags: AOR, Black Metal, Inquisition
Hadopelagyal / Thorybos – Conjuring Subterranean Vortex
Most of the “new wave” of underground metal has focused on achieving a singular mood, such that you descend into it and then ride it until it stops; these two bands aim for a new yet more traditional version where songs develop in two steps, a descent and an arrival, then stop.
7 CommentsTags: Black Metal, hadopelagyal, thorybos
Carcass – Despicable (2020)
This EP could serve as a demonstration of the futility of postmodernism and pluralism, since riffs from hard rock, speed metal, death metal, and progressive rock happily coexist in these songs, but with each pulling in its own direction, songs have no center and tend to ramble between moments of clarity before drifting away.
No CommentsGravfraktal – Unhallowed Death Triumph (2020)
Metal finds itself adrift between major movements, having perfected itself with black metal, especially as the genre re-incorporated death metal influences. Morons took that back into rock with “technical death metal” and “post-metal,” and the underground retaliated by becoming hardcore punk with “war metal.”
6 CommentsTags: death metal, gravfraktal
