“Two years ago, Athenar released perhaps his best album in Let There Be Witchery. And it’s one that I continually return to again and again. But this year’s Hellish Expectations strips everything back, delivering ten new songs in the shortest runtime of Midnight’s career.” LESS IS MOOOOOOAAAARRRRRR!
“When a band draws so clearly on an aged aesthetic, the results can be hard to parse as pastiche, worship, or otherwise. Even moreso in niche corners like the epic heavy metal crowd, where soaring vocals of varying qualities—all hoping to stick in your mind regardless—triumph alongside thick kicks, thicker riffs, and battle-tested builds, worshippers of the riff conflict with worshippers of the riffers. Enter Kontact, a young Canadian troupe whose 2022 release, the cheeky-titled EP First Contact, played tightly on the ideas set forth by the idiosyncratic but ever-mountainous Manilla Road, but with enough of their space-bound palette to paint a few stripes of their own.” Bad touch.
“On Heaven into Dust, Knife have done what many bands refuse to do: grow. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still heaps of Motörhead and Venom worship; plenty of gang chants and blackened vocals; oodles of speed metal chugging, heavy metal galloping, and thrash riffing; almost everything endearing about their debut still applies here and the changes are relatively minor, but they’re impactful.” Stab or prod?
“Well, well, well. How time flies. On 7 November 2018, my first ever review, under the unassuming alias of Nameless_N00b_17, was posted for The Grand Manifestation by Sweden’s Third Storm. Almost five years on, despite various spates of chronic overrating and hopefully showing some improvement in my writing, I am still here to see Third Storm return with their sophomore album, The Locust Mantra.” Bugnado.
“Grindcore, powerviolence, noise, all modes of expression which, unless your name is Beaten to Death, toss aside any resolution or melody in favor of speed, loudness, and sonic expulsion. But guess what? Constant Hell does all three.” The power and the fury.
“I invite you to observe the album artwork for Eternity’s third record, Mundicide. I was immediately struck by its painfully and laughably literal depiction of humanity’s interaction with its planet, especially with the cute little arms physically sticking out the earth. In fact, it was for the reason of the art that one of my esteemed colleagues chose this record for my review. Eternity proffer Norwegian black metal with roots intertwined with black metal’s innovators,” Malaise is kvlt.
“Nearly ten years to the day Intöxicated blearily burst forth with their debut, the Germans stumble back up to the bar with a new singer in tow for follow-up Sadistic Nightmares. Intöxicated have tried buying Pedialyte in bulk; they’ve tried the greasiest pizza your town has to offer; they’ve tried cocooning themselves on the floor of a windowless bathroom. But the only way to cure this decade-long hangover is with another ultra-tight package of metal, murder, and mayhem.” Hammered and hammering.
“Before we dive headfirst into today’s induction, I want to address the impressively large, off-salmon-colored pachyderm that’s currently occupying a large space in the corner of the room. Black metal, especially in the late nineties and early 2000s, wasn’t all that terrifying, despite what their chief songwriters would have you believe. Behind all the church arsons, bullshit posturing, literal back-stabbing, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and murder, the music didn’t even come close to attaining a faint whiff of what they were trying to achieve aesthetically.” And then, transformation.
“In a crowded market of goat suppliers in the metal scene, Scotland’s Hellripper stands above the mob. Their infectious blend of speed/thrash/black metal offered me a lifeline back into a thrash scene that was boring me in the 2010s. 2020’s The Affair of the Poisons was a typically rambunctious affair and very comfortably hit my year-end list. But I have most recently been experiencing the company of Warlocks Grim & Withered Hags which reaches even further north towards Orkney, an archipelago north of the Scottish mainland.” Put a goat in your moat.
“You don’t know shit until you read this. It’s not opinion; it’s science.”
