Reverse Polarity – Take The A ‘Trane
Welcome, intrepid reader, to the first in what will be an ongoing editorial series highlighting albums and artists well outside the realm of heavy metal that might still make the seasoned headbanger pause their recently-unearthed …
Azarath – Blasphemers’ Maledictions Review
Long-running Polish death metal outfit Azarath has returned to bloody action with fifth album Blasphemers’ Maledictions. The sound may be quintessential Polish death metal, but Azarath plays it with an intensely occult black metal focus …
Myrath – Tales Of The Sands Review
Tunisia’s principal metal export Myrath is back with another album that wallows in a bland lather of Orphaned Land’s Middle Eastern progressive metal and fairly standard if muscular power metal. The ripping neoclassical/medieval power metal …
Atriarch – Forever The End Review
Forever the End is a superbly-realized first effort from Portland, Oregon’s Atriarch. Summoning a thick, melancholy doom metal that drinks deeply from the wells of black metal and ‘proper’ gothic rock (think Bauhaus, not corsets), …
Beneath Oblivion – From Man To Dust Review
From Man To Dust is the second album from Cincinnati, Ohio’s Beneath Oblivion, and it offers more than ample evidence that the Rust Belt remains a potent source of crippling rage and desperation. All in …
Caïna – Hands That Pluck Review
By the time Andrew Curtis-Brignell started Caïna in 2004, one-man black metal projects had already earned themselves a sterling reputation – fairly, in many cases – for laughably rudimentary songwriting, glass-shards-being-flushed-down-a-toilet production, and all-around foolishness. …
Avichi – The Devil’s Fractal Review
At what point is black metal too nice? Orthodox black metal basically begs this question every time it rears its ever-so-serious head. The paradoxical beauty of much of this movement of the past half-decade or …
Midnight Priest – Midnight Priest Review
Move over, female-fronted occult doom/rock, there’s a new old thing in town, and its name is obnoxious throwback NWOBHM (or should that be OTNWOBHM, then?). (Sidebar: the fact that Christian Mistress neatly evades both of …