Thy Catafalque – Vadak Review
A common criticism of progressive or avant-garde music is that it’s too busy, too clinical, too academic, too self-indulgent. And if that criticism is itself a somewhat lazy cliche, it nonetheless also has the virtue …
Nekromantheon – Visions Of Trismegistos Review
Traveler, welcome. I can see by the tokens you carry that it has been a long journey and a hard one to find your way to [my ancient realm]*. A fey and hardy sort you …
Obsolete – Animate//Isolate Review
An incomplete list of things I do not particularly enjoy: – The Doors – Kohlrabi – Toxic masculinity and systemic racism – Thrash An incomplete list of things I very much enjoy: – Yanni – …
Wharflurch – Shitslime Review
Some are born gross, some achieve grossness, and others have grossness thrust upon them. With apologies to ol’ Bill Shakespeare, Florida’s brilliantly named Wharflurch may as well have knocked down all three of those grossness …
Wampyric Rites – The Eternal Melancholy Of The Wampyre Review
Is black metal real? Sheath your quills and hold your emails, please. Yes, of course black metal is real in the sense that it is comprised of actual sounds, rhythms, melodies, vibrations of the tympanic …
Fractal Generator – Macrocosmos Review
Fast Rites: because sometimes brevity is fundamental. No matter how comical the idea seems to anyone not already accustomed to parsing half-step pitch variations in toilet-puke vocals like a sommelier mouthfeeling the ever-living shit out …
Best Of 2020 – Dan Obstkrieg: Only Kindness Matters
For reasons largely unknown, I gave myself precise word limitations for the blurbs which follow. For those of you playing along at home, this means that I wrote 100 words exactly for each metal album, …
Grayceon – Mothers Weavers Vultures Review
Because they belong to San Francisco’s diverse and recombinant music scene, Grayceon is hardly alone in making genre-agnostic but undeniably progressive heavy metal. They are, however, almost singularly adept at summoning big, unguarded emotions with …