“Suspiciously, only one other goregrind review exists on AMG, and it’s kind of shitty. If you follow the genre, you know that acts like UwU may squirt out 3 or more opuses in a year. As an organization, we are very much behind on showcasing this putrid genre of goregrind, so to rectify this oversight, I thrust myself upon GUINEAPIG’s latest bucket o’ blasts, Parasite.” Small but nasty.
“Part of the Unique Leader staple, The Last Ten Seconds of Life drop their self-titled album on the masses, bringing a nu-metal meets deathcore hybrid to the table. On closer inspection, the Pennsylvanian crew has been alive and kicking for over a decade, releasing a steady stream of albums, culminating in this sixth LP. Combining two of the more divisive metal styles of the post-millennium era takes balls.” Get your balls out of the Hall.
“Here at Angry Metal Guy and His Amazing Super-Friends, we’ve all seen our fair share of one-person black metal. Seemingly every January, they all come out of their cocoons, sprout wings, and greet us all en-masse like the loveliest and most rewarding of locust swarms. But one-person funeral doom? Now that’s a treasured rarity, and not something that makes its presence known or felt all that often, if ever. And yet Lorthar, former guitarist for Greek black metallers Order of the Ebon Hand, felt that his prior band didn’t quite satisfy his needs, so he ventured off on his own to form Ember Sun, handling all duties and offering us On Earth and Heaven. Enter sad man.
“Getting dibs on albums is pretty rad when there’s a cool band with a new release I forgot about: a mini-Christmas in the otherwise lifeless dregs of the promo bin. That was my initial thought when I saw Portugal’s Irae new release. Last year’s Lurking in the Depths, while not terribly original, was a jolly fun batch o’ blackened tunes. It blended raw-ish tendencies with a healthy dose of groove for a subtle and consistent listen that perhaps held more promise than delivered but was good enough for my heart to leap at the newest installment. Does Dangerovs Magick Zpells from the Mesziah of Death deliver?” Dangerovs toyvs.
“During my latest sojourn through the tepid waters we writers wade through to scoop up our latest promo, I encountered Stormbringer, the latest from French black metal outfit Conquerors. Confronted with Witch King-esque cover art, a Slayer-inspired logo and the knowledge that this was the band’s third full-length album, I was more than willing to give these Fenriz lookalikes a chance. Curse you, expectations.” No storm, no conquest.
“Let me introduce you to Eggvn, self-professed “Satanic Death Industrial Metal.” Sporting some obvious black metal influence, I was expecting an ominous ambient album among the ranks of Moëvöt or Velvet Cacoon, but the Mexicans’ sophomore full-length La Era de la Bestia is more akin to a bizarre combination of Psyclon Nine, Brokencyde, Angelspit, and Nine Inch Nails. Featuring pulsing beats, cold industrial flourishes, dark ambiance, and harsh barks, it has its moments of listenable plagiarism, but is comically marred by a club-footed collision of its influences.” Alert the Egg Council.
If you’re about my age, you probably remember being a teenager and being rather surprised by Arch Enemy’s “Nemesis” video. For those unfamiliar, a speedy melo-death riff kicks the song off and we see a girl dressed like a Hot Topic version of Britney Spears in the “Oops, I Did it Again” video. She lets out a scream, and everyone watching goes “whoa, I can’t believe a girl can make those sounds!” The novelty wore off quickly despite my efforts to like the band because I liked Michael Amott’s work in Carcass. The Angela Gossow version Arch Enemy was inoffensively boring, and the band has since deteriorated into being offensively boring in the current Alissa White-Gluz iteration. The takeaway here is that Arch Enemy at their most popular is bland and uninspiring, and I’m lost as to who would take musical inspiration from that sound. Enter French death metal band Akiavel.” Archetypes.
“Fragmentum want to be famous so bad. By the beard of Johan Hegg, they want to be famous so bad. On top of their own homepage with the hip and cool .zone domain, the promo package includes a list of no less than 9 social media and related pages, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Bandcamp, Bandsintown, Spotify, Soundcloud and Apple freaking Music. The package also has the very stylish modern (and generic) band logo in 4 different formats and no less than 11 pictures of the 3 man band (5 of the band, 2 of each band member individually. The promo text, which is so masturbatory it may as well have been handwritten in man-brine, speaks of “a well known Belgian diverging metal band,” trying to squeeze the formation into the genesis of a new subgenre, whatever the hell ‘diverging metal’ is supposed to be. So the trio has everything it needs for its break into metal stardom, right?” Vexed and perplexed.
“Album length is a point of contention at AMG Headquarters. So around the office cooler one day, the illustrious Carcharodon revealed that his promo was a honkin’ two-hour commitment. I now realize that “Mine’s a nine-minute grind EP! Sucks to be you!” was the wrong thing to say. As a dear Lavagirlbitch to the Sharkboy, he used his power to punish me pick a promo for me. Please direct your hate mail to him for the awkwardly named Everture. I was immediately horrified at the phrase “modern metal” that greeted my eyes.” The Everture will continue until morale improves.
“Here at AMG.com we have instituted a firm “no re-release policy” which precludes new reviews of old albums. The typical use case is a physical release by a label of an album previously self-released digitally by a small band. We do this a) for consistency, b) to narrow the almost-unlimited range of music we could review, and c) so that our reviews remain relevant to what’s buzzing in the scene. It’s important we take this step. So anyway, here’s a review of a 2017 re-release.” Protocol havoc.
