Condemner pursues more of an explicit war metal sound that merges Havohej with touches of Demoncy and Beherit along with ancient death metal like Mythic and modern war metal like Kaeck. It grinds, it establishes a primal and intolerant logicality, and then it expands into mystical texture.
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What Is Art?
Writing about a dead genre can be exhausting. You search through ten thousand bands looking for the few that grasp what the genre was always about — its newer incarnations are meaningless — and despite enjoying this, find that the good is drowned out by the mediocre.
103 CommentsTags: art, Black Metal, Heavy Metal, Satan, underground metal
Unholy Craft – Saa Mørkt, Saa Mektig (2024)
Unholy Craft builds in the style of later Darkthrone with the pacing of Mayhem, delivering an enjoyable journey through melody meeting noise and pummeling d-beats and blast beats, which although somewhat fungible manages some unique riffs based in compelling rhythm accented by melody.
36 CommentsTags: Black Metal, unholy craft
Pestilence – Levels of Perception (2024)
Attempting to create continuity between older and newer works, Pestilence re-recorded a selection of “greatest hits” that leans hard on the more recent albums, as such compilations always tend to do. This proves an intelligent idea since it creates an album that sounds internally consistent and gives the band a chance to give these songs a more aggressive edge.
16 CommentsTags: death metal, pestilence
Unleashed – Before the Creation of Time (2024)
Before the moniker Goat found me, friends called me Sven because after a few bonghits my conversation tended toward praise of Swedish death metal. The Swedes perfected death metal, working in melody as structure and turning rhythm into a primitive but nuanced weapon.
61 CommentsTags: darkness shall rise, death metal, Sweden, Unleashed
Interview With Eli Azrael
As our longtime readers know, this site started out in the hacker days of the 1980s as a type of free speech protest designed to expand the various Overton-style Windows through shocking, disturbing, blasphemous, gory, apostatic, and sodomitic propaganda. We dislike censorship.
9 CommentsTags: bandcamp, censorship, eli azrael, soundcloud
Judas Priest – Invincible Shield (2024)
Judas Priest came out of the era that melded Black Sabbath with Led Zeppelin and came up with some of the most creative guitar riffology in history, raising the standards by which any new album will be judged, and Invincible Shield tries to balance their past with multiple career peaks.
56 CommentsTags: Heavy Metal, judas priest, NWOBHM, power metal
Interview with Yosuke Konishi of Helios Press
The news filtered down through the grapevine the other day that Yosuke Konishi of Nuclear War Now! Productions had entered into a new venture named Helios Press which will manufacture vinyl records in Brady, Texas. This hopes to serve the rising vinyl market which has not only not fizzled but continues to gain strength:
34 CommentsTags: helios press, nuclear war now! productions, vinyl, yosuke konishi
Haserot, Sacrocurse, Trenchant, and Sammath Live in Houston (February 24, 2024)
Some shows define an era, and the assault of Sammath on Texas revealed where underground metal is going now: doubling down on what made it great, injecting new creativity, and fleeing from the dual pitfalls of three-chord nonsense and elaborate “progressive” stylings.
104 CommentsTags: Black Metal, death metal, haserot, houston, sacrocurse, sammath, trenchant, War Metal
Sammath in the Midst of Worldwide Texas Tour
Hybrid death, war, and black metal band Sammath is currently raging across Texas as part of its worldwide Texas tour. Clubs are 21+ but seem perfect for intense underground shows.
47 CommentsTags: Black Metal, sammath, texas