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Goatcraft – Yersinia Pestis (2016)

by Staff on August 19, 2016

Article by Lance Viggiano.

Arpeggiated minor chord melancholy culled from or composed during belligerent improvisational tirades given body by a sluggish left hand approximating power chords to provide the work a lattice to the traditions of metal. Yersinia Pestis abstains from its predecessor’s thematic coherence – an accident of writing what were essentially cover songs of a famous painter – to make marked but mishandled improvements in its individual presentations through tuneful reprisals of established Goatcraft trademarks. The dependence upon staccato and arpeggio retain the artist’s characteristic stiffness in execution which blemishes through its brutishness.

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25 Comments

Tags: 2016, Ambient, ambient music, dungeon synth, goatcraft, gothic, keyboards, review, Yersinia Pestis

On Death Metal And Nihilism

by Brett Stevens on August 19, 2016

An old interview, rediscovered, that apparently never made it to publication, so needs to find a home here.

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32 Comments

Tags: death metal, ian christe, interview, lords of chaos, metal faq, metal history, metal theory, michael moynihan, Nihilism, sounds of the beast

Sorcier des Glaces / Ende – Le puits des morts (2016)

by Daniel Maarat on August 10, 2016

Le puits des morts is a split album featuring Sorcier des Glaces and French black metal band Ende. On the first side, Sorcier des Glaces present four all new songs in their distinctive style of epic black metal continuing from their last few albums (including North from earlier in 2016) after the band’s abandoning of keyboards.

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4 Comments

Tags: 2016, Black Metal, Ende, Le puits des morts, obscure abhorrence, review, sorcier des glaces, split

Demoncy – Faustian Dawn Reissue Out August 15th

by Daniel Maarat on August 4, 2016

Nuclear War Now! Productions announced that their remastered version of Demoncy’s Faustian Dawn demo from 1993 will be out on CD August 15th with LP two months later on October 15th. The sound was remastered by Ixithra himself and a new cover created by Chris Moyen. Expect a review from our staff shortly too.

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No Comments

Tags: Black Metal, chris moyen, demo, demoncy, Faustian Dawn, nuclear war now! productions, reissue, remaster

Why Music Critics Eat Brains

by Stephen Cefala on July 17, 2016

Music critics eat brains for the same reason that zombies do, but are selective in what they eat. Zombies feast indiscriminately on central nervous systems out of pure need. But music critics eat brains by promoting the mindless and tearing down the good in order to promote themselves at the expense of the music.

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32 Comments

Tags: music, music critics, music writing, reviews, writing

Memo From Prozakhistan (07/11/16)

by Brett Stevens on July 11, 2016

Greetings, fellow metalheads,

Times seem grim. The orcs have taken Osgilliath and approach the gates of the white city. Western Civilization is still dying, accelerated by democracy and consumerism, but rotten to its core with a lack of hope. Metal once gave that hope by showing us an alternate morality comprised of effective realism and epic mythos. Many of us want to live in that time again, but it will not happen through democracy or consumerism. We must choose our leaders and then all of us participate in restoring and advancing the greatness we have known.

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31 Comments

Tags: athame, destroyer 666, gevurahel, Grave Miasma, immolation, katharsis, Mythology, mythos, noire, order from chaos, path of samsara, profanatica, radio, restoration, The Curling Flame of Blasphemy

Sadistic Metal Reviews (07/04/16)

by Brett Stevens on July 4, 2016

Why write bad reviews at all? Good music is rare, and bad is everywhere, but if you do not explicitly identify the failings of bad, most people will find it appealing because it does not interrupt their steady stream of self-centered thoughts and is easier than seeking good. If you like good music and want more of it, you must bash as well as praise, as Machiavelli would tell you. And with that, the latest installment of the Sadistic Metal Reviews…

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82 Comments

Tags: acanthrophis, asperger's syndrome, coprophagia, Dead War, fetus logic, iron maiden, kreator, led zeppelin, manilla road, mental retardation, pantera, sadistic metal reviews, sunn o))), venom, Voivod

Sadistic Metal Review: Xoth – Hostile Terraforming (2014)

by Staff on June 17, 2016

Article by Lance Viggiano.

Hostile Terraforming is the result of a lot of instrumental practice and absolutely no artistic or even musical ambition. Every moment is technically precise in the pursuit of puritanically banal phrases which fake variation by playing the same motif in a higher octave. Cyclical song structures allow the players to shred freely while never needing to establish an emotive core. The EP lasts only as long as it takes for the musicians to run through every show-off-in-a-public-space rite of passage stylistic flair which is recited in the most obsessively canned manner – essentially a musical diet of Doritos and Pepsi. Like all such outfits, the drums are produced to resemble a typewriter thus ensuring maximum clarity so the listener can hear every soulless tap and click as the performer slavishly follows the guitar around like a gimp-clad submissive. Yes, there are musical pauses to give the bass guitar its obligatory solo which has no purpose within a greater melodic arc of the song; not that the drunk dive bar crowd notices or cares.

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7 Comments

Tags: 2014, death, EP, Hostile Terraforming, sadistic metal reviews, techdeaf, The Sound of Perseverance, wanking, Xoth

Sadistic Metal Review: Blliigghhtted – Into the Cunt of the Witch (2016)

by Staff on June 14, 2016

Article by Lance Viggiano.

Into the Cunt of the Witch is grainy fatalistic pap embellished with agonizing atonal voids where music should exist. When the haze clears just enough for a melody to become audible it possesses a character of passivity and reception but is always intensely grating in its pointlessness. The tired corpse of speed metal and heavy metal drags lethargically through chromatic sections that form the locus of this work. Lightly struck syncopated rhythms are relied too heavily upon and flatten into a sterile ticking that results in a pure time keeping effect not unlike a distraught prisoner tallying his cell wall; tracking his sentence until his song merely ends – a fair metaphor for the experience of this record. Individual songs are parts of four whole works and do not stand well on their own; ending abruptly without proper conclusions before jumping into the next section in a greater cycle. Vocals operate in two essential modes: an apathetic crooning within artificial caverns as well as a faux-distraught occult street preacher reminiscent of contemporary orthodox/occult black metal.

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30 Comments

Tags: 2016, Black Metal, Blliigghhtted, female vocals, hipster bullshit, Into the Cunt of the Witch, modern metal, sadistic metal reviews, women in metal

Sorcier des Glaces – Snowland MMXII

by Daniel Maarat on June 14, 2016

Artistically bankrupt metal bands typically rerecord their early material after milking the revenue streams dry through reissues, remasters, anniversary tours, and boxed sets. While the original recordings typically aren’t pristine productions, all charm is lost in the sample-replaced, quantized, digitally-reamped, and phase-butchered retreads shat out by an obsessive tinkerer’s digital audio workstation. All enthusiasm in the performances is butchered by years of alcohol abuse and aging journeyman musicians collecting just another paycheck, e.g. Sodom’s The Final Sign of Evil, Manowar’s Battle Hymns MMXI, and Bolt Thrower’s “World Eater ‘94”. Snowland MMXII is one of the few exceptions to this rule of rehash.

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5 Comments

Tags: 2012, Black Metal, rerecording, review, Snowland MMXII, sorcier des glaces

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