Hepatitis C or HIV?
22 CommentsTags: alternative rock, Barús, beansidhe, black 'n roll, blackened death metal, Christian, Christian Metal Isn't Metal, crypto-indie, death 'n' roll, deathcore, gojira, nothing left, sadistic metal reviews, spellcaster
Coming soon to a used CD bin near you!
64 CommentsTags: acanthrophis, Age of Agony, Aggressive Mutilator, Arktogäa, beer metal, Black Metal, blackened death metal, Cranial Engorgement, Dawn of Disease, Dead War, deathcore, folk metal, Garroted, gothenburg metal, Hardcore, Hardcore Punk, hipster bullshit, In the Court of Nyarlahotep, melodeaf, national socialist black metal, nsbm, nu-metal, pseudo-prog, pseudo-progressive, sadistic metal reviews, sludge, stinking shit, techdeaf, tek-deth, Tennger Cavalry, Victorian Whore Dogs
All metalheads secretly want the return of early 1990s death metal and black metal. Instead we get nostalgia bands who prey on our desires by delivering aesthetic imitation of the past, but with none of its depth, and by doing so, make a mockery of the underground as desperate metalheads embrace this stuff.
20 CommentsTags: 2014, blackened death metal, crust, crustcore, death metal, noise, review, teitanblood, War Metal
Acanthrophis has completed its debut, Twilight of the Vanquisher’s Reign, of blackened death metal in the style of Dissection with NWOBHM and progressive metal influences. The album will be available to the public in physical form at the first show the band will play, which will be June 25, 2016 in Milwaukee, WI with House of Atreus and Khazad Dum.
4 CommentsTags: acanthrophis, blackened death metal, jerry hauppa, jim becker, joe getse, NWOBHM, progressive metal
The Sadistic Metal Reviews are were we squeeze all the empty calories out of our guts into easily digestible packages for readers’ amusement. The leftovers are distributed to starving third world children to hasten their Malthusian death through infection with the type of drug-resistant bacteria that can only thrive in a Honey Bun.
10 CommentsTags: Above Aurora, Behind the Shadows, Betrayal, Black Wisdom, blackened death metal, Grey Heaven Fall, Harakiri for the Sky, hipster bullshit, melodeaf, metalcore, modern metal, power metal, sadistic metal reviews, screamo, Slammin' Thru, stoner rock
Swedish blackened death metal band Vanhelgd announced the release of their fourth album, Temple of Phobos
6 CommentsTags: Black Metal, blackened death metal, dark descent, dark descent records, death metal, Pulverised Records, Sweden, Temple of Phobos, Vanhelgd
Article by Corey M.
Irkallian Oracle make a conscious effort to sidestep many death metal conventions on Apollyon. They have been paying attention to the state of death metal over the last twenty years and noticed how many bands have traveled down the dead-end paths of “tech” and “slam” in pursuit of ever-more-extreme brutality. Irkallian Oracle eschew the brutality while trying to retain the creepy, morbid expression.
11 CommentsTags: 2016, Apollyon, Black Metal, blackened death metal, boring, death metal, Irkallian Oracle, nuclear war now! productions, nwn, review
Modern death metal is a cesspool. Riffless atonal texture and rehashed generic riffs combine into a poppy carnival of random boring bullshit to feed the typical underground record label ponzi scheme. Rare was the new release anything worth the attention of any older fans even over a decade ago in 2005. Coming years after their heroes in Morbid Angel, Incantation, and Immolation stopped releasing worthy or even interesting material (but before they went “radikult”), Dead Congregation’s debut EP, Purifying Consecrated Ground, showed a powerful potential that awed many into submission.
26 CommentsTags: 2005, Black Metal, blackened death metal, Brutal Death Metal, dead congregation, death metal, EP, Martyrdoom Productions, nuclear war now! productions, Nuclear Winter Records, Purifying Consecrated Ground, review
Sarpanitum’s Blessed Be My Brothers was one of Death Metal Underground’s rejected albums for the Best of 2015. The album initially showed promise. The introductory track, “Komenos”, presents the audience with Sarpanitum’s combination of chromatic death metal riffs, melodic heavy metal leads, Unique Leader Records brutality, and Emperor-like use of a melotron to approximate medieval polyphony to anchor the concept album’s theme of the Crusades.
“By Virtuous Reclamation” surges forth with soaring, harmonized guitars calling for the conquest of the Holy Land continuing into an Immolation style rhythm riff. A break starts the counterpointed dissonant riffing in the Unique Leader style that variates logically enough for Pope Urban II to call for crusade against the heathen Saracens with a metalcore scream, providing a harbinger of the randomness to come. The band returns to the opening riff minus the accompanying lead. The lead’s eventual return signals the start of the Emperor melotron. A sudden slowdown for a cheesy emotional solo continues into the original riffs, climaxing into a polyphonic blend of every musical element and texture. The song barely avoids falling on its face on the way to to the finish line.
The second real song, “Truth” opens directly with Unique Leader riff salad. The Emperor worship is only to plant listeners in a Western European medieval mindset to distract them from the fact the tension built up by the dissonant riffing is never appropriately resolved. The emotional stadium rock solos are just as disconnected from the death metal as the Emperor aping. “Glorification Upon the Bones of the Sundered Dead” better glues the riffs together but still resorts to emotional, Slash-style solos to impart the triumph of the Siege of Jerusalem.
If Blessed Be My Brothers had ended there, it would have been a disparate but listenable concept album. Instead Sarpanitum use the second half to tell the Muslim side of the later Crusades through similarly flawed but less effective songs. This isn’t just a 180 degree change in perspective: the band added another of their heavy metal heroes to the blender. Ersatz Gorguts riffing plus even more masturbatory glam rock solos leads distract from the effective atmospheric and brutal elements. The songs turn even more so into senseless technical deaf metal with Emperor rendered down into pop hooks.
The drastic changes of viewpoint and influence betray the album’s semi-successful first half. The atmosphere of Western mysticality established using Emperor to approximate a polyphonic medieval choir is wrecked by the hippie drum circle interlude, “I Defy For I Am Free”. Blessed Be My Brothers is a postmodern, apologetic Frankenstein. Wikipedia “neutral point of view” metal for meek liberals is antithetical to Emperor’s classical triumph and heavy metal’s “Compassion is the vice of kings: stamp down the wretched and the weak,” virtus.
Listen at Willowtip Record’s Bandcamp
Better yet, just listen to In the Nightside Eclipse again instead.
3 CommentsTags: 2015, blackened death metal, christianity, cuckrock, emperor, islam, medieval metal, melodeaf, metalcore, mithras, modern metal, orientalism, random, review, sarpanitum, tech-deth, techdeaf, Technical Death Metal, tek-deth, the crusades, unique leader, wikipedia metal, willowtip
