Ancient – “Eerily Howling Winds” (1993)

by Johan Pettersson on January 19, 2018

As previously pointed out by the editor of this site, metal demo recordings does not exist as crass commercial propositions with the sole purpose of advertising the market viability of the artist, but function — at least ideally — as independent works produced and distributed without further infringement from the recording industry. In spite of eventual shortcomings resulting from lack of budget, experience, and time, demo-level recordings remain a breath of fresh air because they oftentimes capture bands at a nascent and untempered creative stage.

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Mayhem – Wolf’s Lair Abyss (1997)

by Hereweald Cola Algar on January 18, 2018

Wolf’s Lair Abyss was the first new proposition by the remaining Mayhem line up after De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, and all the personal drama and loss that it signified.  Needless to say, the pressure upon the band on the musical level- especially of music as a dark art, as Euronymous would have it- was quite high.  Expectations after an Immortal album of far and wide reach were not at all encouraging.  The remainder of the band had to find a way in which they could work from the solid basis of the past towards a unique development that did not come off as an insult or a betrayal to all that had been accomplished.  The solution found by the band here was almost perfect, but it ultimately was only a transition whose eventual development would show if the full potential for growth would be adeptly exploited.  Still, there is much to be said about the unique identity of this brief but memorable foray into chaos.

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Sadistic Metal Reviews: Incineration of 2017 Metal

by Brock Dorsey on January 17, 2018

2017 was a shit waste of a year when it came to metal music.  Yet with a whole generation of useless neckbeard millennials frantically trying to pursue a career in metal journalism via a desperate pursuit of vindication from that $40,000 of communications-degree student loan debt we have hundreds of “best metal albums” lists every year. 

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Black Funeral – Ankou and the Death Fire (2016)

by Johan Pettersson on January 17, 2018

Counting among the longest running US black metal institutions to date, Black Funeral has given birth to a motley collection of musical works over the last twenty-five years, spanning regional adaptions of Northern European black metal, over dark ambient and archaic/industrial drones, through the Les Legions Noires-styled raw melodic approach of later years.

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YouTube Censorship Begins Targeting Musicians

by Brock Dorsey on January 16, 2018

It’s here!  YouTube’s rapidly accelerating censorship committee has finally begun targeting musicians with their Orwellian “hate speech” laws.  Pandering to the advertisers that have quietly bought the operations of Silicon Valley tech companies and the souls of all Silicon Valley employees, YouTube has begun a fascist campaign of censoring any videos that may cause trouble for any company that may accidentally place an ad on it.  So far this has primarily targeted vloggers for (conservative) wrongthink- videos portraying horrifically offensive hatred such as statistics, scientific research, or biological facts.  Yet strangely, the first band in the greater sphere of heavy music that YouTube has gone after is a modern nu-metal/rap rock band who, in all honesty, looks pretty leftist….
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Graveland Announces 2018 Tour, Releases Video For Re-Recorded “Thurisaz”

by Brett Stevens on January 16, 2018

Ethereal second-wave black metal band Graveland will be touring across Europe in 2018, continuing a series of selected dates in Germany, Poland, and Ukraine. At these shows, the band will be playing songs from its compilation of re-recorded Graveland songs with the classic feel but without the “old days” bad production, 1050 Years of Pagan Cult, which is available through Heritage Records.

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Power Trip – Nightmare Logic (2017)

by Nicholas Vahdias on January 16, 2018

Every year we are treated to an endless amount of ridiculous lists.  It seems that any individual with the ability to express their opinions is obligated to share their Top 10 or top 20 metal releases that more often than not echo the same three websites.  The bands that enter such lists tend to come in two varieties: veterans rehashing the same ideas in a more streamlined fashion and those who trick their audience via the use of gimmicks and presenting a familiar product with slightly different aesthetics as the next big thing.  In these last two years, speed metal has conquered the number 1 spot of most of these lists.  Last year Vektor’s Terminal Redux ruled the metal lists by far with it’s melody derived from Voivod and the phrasings from Destruction’s Eternal Devastation all held together in long sloppily composed epics… ultimately resulting in an above average album but a strong move for the funderground.  This year, Texans Power Trip succeed in winning the “funderground 2017 award” with their second album Nightmare Logic.  The Speed metal revival movement has finally found its idols to guide it’s path of remaining in the past and offering the most faithful reproduction of late 80s speed/thrash.

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Watain – Trident Wolf Eclipse (2018)

by Brock Dorsey on January 15, 2018

Grammy-award wining artist Watain has shamelessly assumed the mantle of “most embarrassing band masquerading as black metal” previously shared by Dimmu Borgir and Cradle of Filth. Where the downfall of those two bands was an overdose of gothic and groove influences, Watain has managed to outdo both in both parody and bastardization of black metal with their previous album’s venture into country musical territory.  With a career built on celebrity guest spots from more capable underground metal musicians, necrophiliac 1st era Bathory Worship mixed with a second rate attempt to mimic Dissection’s concluding album, and a ridiculously cartoonist theatrical performance worthy of a Broadway musical, Watain’s legacy has been secured to forever be “the band that bent over farthest to inherit the phallus of commercialization the deepest” and has effectively decimated any hope of legitimacy the sub genre might have had in the post-90s.  With a brash new attestation in the form of Trident Wolf Apocalypse the truth could not possibly be more clear to any listener with knowledge of black and death metal: Watain are the biggest joke in all of black metal history.

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Victory Over Peace

by Hereweald Cola Algar on January 14, 2018

There are those who would make us think that peace is essential for life. They demand we must reconcile all manner of disagreements and simply live happily together. In reality, what happens in a real compromise (if indeed it is a compromise) is that every one involved gets a bit of what he bargained for. It is not unlike Celtic Frost, a.k.a. the failed post-Hellhammer experiment that tried going mainstream a step at a time. By the time the band released Into the Pandemonium it was clear that by trying to bring the monster of underground black/death metal into the light they only degenerated it into a joke that no one, except masochists, want to ever hear again. The reader may want to attribute the downfall of Celtic Frost to a host of other causes, but the decision was in fact simple: give in to niceties and benefits through a compromise, or keep on fighting, towards a transcendental victory.
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