Category: Reviews
…And Oceans – Cosmic World Mother Review
The evolution of …and Oceans from an excellent but fairly standard symphonic and melodic black metal band in the late 90s to a group incorporating plenty of industrial and avant-garde influences was not entirely unlikely …
Paradise Lost – Obsidian Review
As I write this, it’s early May 2020, and for all intents and purposes, the world is ending. A new plague has killed hundreds of thousands of people the world across; in hard-hit areas, hospitals …
Earthbong – Bong Rites Review
On April 20th, I wrote a lot of words about Bong Metal, a very arbitrary but surprisingly expansive subgenre of stoner metal. Many people have said that I wrote too many words, questioned the entire …
Ulcerate – Stare Into Death And Be Still Review
Anger. It’s one of the unifying themes of extreme metal. Anger against authority is perhaps most common. Anger at parents, anger at priests, anger at politicians. Anger against certain particular non-authority people comes up now …
Devangelic – Ersetu Review
[Cover art by Nick Keller] If you’ve been paying attention to the goings on here at Last Rites (but why would you?), you might have noticed that we’ve had a rebirth of brutal death metal. …
Destroyed In Seconds – Divide And Devour Review
From Destroyed In Second’s Facebook “about” info: Band interests: Disrocking your fucking face in. D-beats. Personal interests: Stomping out ignorance, fascism, racism, greed, organized religion, proud boys, patriots, and MAGA culture. Well, then… Sign me …
Cryptic Shift – Visitations From Enceladus Review
If you wander over to the Bandcamp page for Cryptic Shift’s full length debut Visitations from Enceladus, you’ll easily glean the expected bits of information: genre tags (death, thrash, progressive, technical, etc.), location (Leeds, UK), …
The Tower Of Cirith Ungol: A Personal Journey, A Band Primer, And A Look At Forever Black
My first encounter with Cirith Ungol occurred approximately 34 years ago. Yes, that means I’m old enough that daylight savings now causes a unique form of jet lag, but it also means I was lucky …