Hi Point 4595: Following the paths of our ancestors.

The modern carbine hearkens back to the days of the American frontier when the man in the saddle needed both a sidearm and a rifle but could not be encumbered by the logistic complications of two types of ammunition; his rifle and his six shooter fired the same ammo. Various modern carbines are available in various modern pistol calibers: .45, .40, 9mm, .380. Hi Point makes carbines in all four of those calibers and is currently introducing one in 10mm.

(more…)

43 Comments

Tags: , , , , , ,

Crawl/Leviathan

Hipster celebrity and accused tattoo gun rapist Wrest from Leviathan returns with a new sidekick in an attempt to restore some underground credibility.  This is a common gimmick used in rap music whenever an artist has faded from the mainstream but wants to continue making money off the young kids consuming the underground’s newest flavors.  Unfortunately for Leviathan, they were never respected in the underground and Crawl displays very little potential to make any sort of impact.  The split is one twelve minute song from each artist that both manage to be terrible but for very different reasons.  Wrest promised “Aural Mizery” and has ironically maintained that promise.

(more…)

6 Comments

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sammath Releases “Godless” Live Track

Furious Dutch black metal band Sammath have issued forth a live recording of “Godless” featuring founder/guitarist Jan Kruitwagen on vocals. The band takes a high-intensity old school approach to this track, emphasizing the multitude of death metal and black metal influences on this band, but with technical aptitude making the song flow together in the style of later black metal.

(more…)

5 Comments

Tags: , , ,

Reverorum Ib Malacht – De Mysteriis Dom Christi

Dark ambient and raw black metal have always held a close relationship in shared attempts to create dark, haunting and visceral music experiences. Euronymous once claimed Abruptum were the ultimate perfection of the black metal sound despite the band being more accurately defined as a venture into the mysterious world of dark ambient. This trend continued onwards over the years as we’ve seen black metal musicians venture into dark ambient projects such as Stallagh or Moëvöt.  Yet despite many years of this alliance, no band has ever formulated as perfect a marriage between black metal and dark ambient to create a chilling, epic masterpiece in the way that Reverorum Ib Malacht has on their 2014 work De Mysteriis Dom Christi.  And- much has their title suggests- they did so by boldly defying everything dark music was known for.
(more…)

7 Comments

Tags: , , , , ,

[EXCLUSIVE] TRANS-OCALYPSE HERE: 1ST ALL-TRANS METAL BAND DECLARES WAR ON BLACK METAL

BREAKING:  On the last day of 2017, our editor predicted that a trans-gender wave of metal bands would arrive in 2018.  We are already getting our first dose of this a with “pink metal” pioneers PEOSPHOROS–  the world’s first all-trans metal band (excluding Cradle of Filth).  Destined to become the new face (and genitals) of metal and new heroes of progressive liberal metal scenesters everywhere, Peosphoros have immediately made their presence felt by declaring war on the most dangerous and anti-human genre of all: black metal.  It takes guts to take pioneer a foray into metal, the most masculine of all music genres, but how does Peosphoros’s trap-metal fare musically?

(more…)

28 Comments

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

SHAARIMOTH Temple of the Adversarial Fire

Well crafted and nicely produced, Temple of the Adversarial Fire by Shaarimoth , appears to be a nice mixture of 90s black metal fun.  This is more in the epic vein, rather than underground sounding.  Lets face it: the first two songs are great.  There is a nice mixture of riffs and beats, with short phrasing.  It is a bit heavy on vocals. They can get tiring at points.  Bands I hear as influences here include Emperor, Morbid Angel, early My Dying Bride, and Bal Saggoth. Making my way through the album, song 3 leads with annoying vocals (minus 1 star), over a slower heavier riff.  In song 4, am waiting for the album to get its mojo back. It does, with a European blast beat that has a sick lower grinded guitar counterpart. A fun, evil Samael style rock riff emerges from that. Some of the vocals still are iffy, but the guitar playing is growing on me. Why is the album so choppy though?

(more…)

9 Comments

Tags: , , , , ,

Sin and Despair in Deathcrush

At the truest heart of metal lies a voice embodied, somewhat childishly, somewhat ineptly, but no less clearly and latent with potential, by Mayhem’s Deathcrush. The re-inversion of all values that metal enacts starts with the embracing of what modernity would see as its sickness unto death. The despair and sin of sickness unto death become vital active elements in the morbid minds of those who would vanquish dogmatic preconceptions in the Sky God Religions and their secular humanist counterparts.  Being, in essence a way of connecting back to itself, the ideological blockages set up by this dead-end society had to be faced head on.  Herein lies the relevance and meaning of the present album.  Despair is converted into pure energy, the rules disavowed, the road of sin is tread fanatically as a method of purification —a negative unity of evil towards the beyond, away from human-ness in its modern form, away from mundanity.  For the burgeoning underground, as seen from Mayhem’s perspective, primacy would placed on being and its dark discovery of self, against the presumption of knowing, and the oppressive, futile impositions from above.  All knowing, all value of music, would come from this ‘being’, from a dark exploration of the soul possessed by a cosmic force of destruction.

(more…)

14 Comments

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Imperial Reign of Emperor

The most technically and musically gifted band of the Norwegian black metal scene, the legendary Emperor are also the most well known outside of the documentary-level engagement that plagues most who know of Burzum and Mayhem.  Formed in the small rural town of Telemark Norway as a side project to a soon-forgotten death metal band, the group overcame the imprisonment of 75% of it’s lineup to deliver the most grandiose album of early 90s black metal.  Though Emperor’s career was far from perfect, it made a profound impact on the young genre and ultimately proved it’s limitless developmental possibility.
(more…)

11 Comments

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

NIGHTMARE: LORDS OF CHAOS MOVIE COMPLETED, PREMIERED AT SUNDANCE


It’s actually happening.  After decades of “will they” speculation, directors picking up and dropping the project, rumors of Twilight actors playing Varg Vikernes, and a boycott by virtually every member of the original scene the Rory Culkin led bastardization of Norway’s finest Lords of Chaos premiered at Sundance this week.  In the ultimate defeat, death, and burial of Norweigian black metal- a movement opposed to everything commercial, financial, and mainstream- we will soon see a polished Hollywood narrative of this beloved movement pollution theaters across the globe.

(more…)

42 Comments

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Classic reviews:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z