Spectral Lore – Sentinel Review
Although one-man black metal acts have seemed unusually ripe for mockery over the years, it’s not entirely clear to me why one dude singing songs about Satan, suicide, hobbits, dragons, or suicide by Satanic hobbit …
Dan Obstkrieg’s Best Of 2012 – Reeling In The Dawn
At the risk of stating the embarrassingly obvious: There’s a lot of music out there, out in the dim distant land just outside our individual reckoning. And well, really, that’s a comfort. If you’re a …
Sacred Guardian – Sacred Guardian Review
Sacred Guardian’s debut album is a case study in the importance of managing listener expectations. Take a minute, if you will, and examine that cover art. Warrior standing atop a crumbling castle wall? Check. Fierce-looking …
Cradle Of Filth – The Manticore And Other Horrors Review
It should be relatively uncontroversial to suggest that Cradle of Filth’s finest days are almost certainly in the past. That’s not intended as a withering indictment of the band’s recent output, but one imagines the …
Stagnant Waters – Stagnant Waters Review
Everyday usage does great violence to language’s origins. Case in point: the term ‘avant-garde’ originally developed in the context of battlefield strategy, and later became influential in the theorizing of revolutionary political movements. Loosely translated …
Neurosis – Honor Found In Decay Review
The eleventh album from the Oakland-based shamans in Neurosis is an hour-long answer to the question, “When is ‘tired’ not tired?” You see, on Honor Found In Decay, Neurosis sounds weary. Now wait, hear me …
Early Graves – Red Horse Review
It was always going to be a hell of a thing to listen objectively to the first Early Graves album since the tragic death of the band’s vocalist Makh Daniels in a bus accident in …
Converge – All We Love We Leave Behind Review
One of the drawbacks of being a venerated institution in extreme music is that you can never just quite write a damn album and leave it at that, y’know? Find some riffs hanging around, kick …