“‘Be careful what you wish for, yo,’ they tell me. Well, they, and everybody else, also tell me to smile more, to not swear so fucking much in front of the children, and to stop stealing money from the holiday party collection jar to buy cigarettes and scratch tickets… take a wild guess how that’s going.” Scratch tickets and violent hands.
“What is the heaviest album of all time? While you’re running off to the comments to tell me, I’m going to stay here and admit that I have no clue. I don’t even know what the heaviest album ever would sound like. It could be blazingly fast or crushingly slow, or some combination of the two. Or it could simply carry an intense emotional weight from its subject matter, but the point is, heaviness is a hard concept to define when it comes to music.” Heavy as a two-ton thing.
“Carnifex released their best record to date in 2016’s Slow Death. What happened? Mick Kenney of Anaal Nathrakh was credited with production, programming, and writing. This was an interesting development: deathcore had been creeping into Anaal Nathrakh’s sound over the years, and now Kenney was directly influencing the genre which influenced his main project. Kenney is credited for vocal recording on World War X but is not credited as a writer. Nonetheless, Carnifex continues wisely down the path of deathcore influenced by the Anaal Nathrakh material influenced by deathcore.” Positive influences.
“Australian deathcore stalwarts Thy Art Is Murder have joined the Big Deathcore Moment Club as of 2012, with the “I am the purest strain of hate” smackdown on “The Purest Strain of Hate.” It seems they’ve joined the big leagues—and, to top it all off, they’ve even been reviewed here on Angry Metal Guy. These dudes are truly a big deal in deathcore, so the release of Human Target is surely exciting for at least some of our readership.” Die for art.
“Every now and again we at AMG receive promo that defies genre classification. Out of those, one or two make us crazy trying to decide whether we even like it or not. This review marks the first time I get to experience said phenomenon firsthand. Black Passage, a “metalcore” quintet out of Bay Area, CA, are releasing their debut LP The Veil at the tail end of July.” Pigeons without holes.
“If you’ve read any of my reviews, you know that my taste in music is highly suspect, so it should come as no surprise by now that a deathcore album has a decent chance to impress me. In fact, when I heard “Divinity,” the first single from God Hand, I initially thought that I might have stumbled upon a gem.” God smacked.
“I am ashamed. Why? Because I almost let this badass record slip through my greedy clutches. You see, my good friend (who we know as Septic ’round these parts) randomly pops in now and again to apprise me on some of his choice metallic discoveries. He introduced Irish/German/Dutch quartet Ascend the Hollow to me and I was instantly hooked. Like, so fast my head spun. I needed to share my excitement for Echoes of Existence with as many people as possible, but how? It would’ve been grand if we received promo, I thought. Then, all of a sudden I received a virtual sucker punch while rooting around the bin—the thing’s been sitting there since the end of April! How in the actual heck did I miss that??? And lo I experienced great embarrassment. I nearly neglected one of the coolest new bands to materialize out of absolute nowhere this year.” Finder of nearly lost things.
“Distant is a curiously subtle and vague moniker for a deathcore band with slam death leanings. Describing themselves specifically as downtempo deathcore, whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean, the Netherlands outfit bring their down-tuned grooves and pig squealing brutality in typically boneheaded style with the subtlety of their chosen name certainly not translated into their musical template. That’s all good and well, yet with an increasingly stacked year of quality metal releases, does Tyrannotophia deliver to the expected standards of brutality and songcraft on their debut full-length?” Short armed.
“I realize I use the phrase ‘ad nauseam’ too much, and I also apologize a lot. I took two years of Latin in high school, which was pretty cool in ways I didn’t foresee. So you would think I would have the basic knowledge to tell you what ‘ad nauseam’ means, but I had to Google it only to be embarrassed by its obvious meaning: ‘to nausea’ or ‘to a nauseating degree.’ Just like deathcore!” Down with the deathness.
“Well, I guess the Pope is a zombie now. Admit it, you all saw that coming. A religious leader, let alone one that wields as much influence as the head of the Catholic Church? Come on. Whatever, that’s a tangent for another time. For now, let’s talk about the second full-length album by Mental Cruelty, named Inferis.” Popecore.
