“”There is nothing new to be discovered here.” So reads the promo copy for Disfuneral’s debut full-length, which… look, Promo Copy Sir or Madam, we’ve all struggled with writer’s block, but let’s strive to keep things professional. Your job is to claim this album improves on both Left Hand Path and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony; ours is to throw cold water on such claims so Steel will toss a few scraps of Mystery Meat our way come mealtime.” Tentacle Elmo.
“I scoff at the idea of curses, but things have been dicey since I let Concilivm’s dark magicks into my life. My hated rival Grigori Ilanovich got the promotion I’ve been vying for, there’s a strange shadow on the bedroom wall that seems to be creeping closer each night, and my credit rating has been lowered to “Shoot on Sight.” Can A Monument in Darkness’s forty minutes of blackened death metal really be the source of all this bad mojo? Spin the debut offering of this duo from Chile, and you too might find yourself consumed by the encroaching blackness. It may well be too late to save me, so I’ll set down this record of my findings.” Dark deeds done dirt cheap.
“Here’s one that stands astride the world like a colossus. With Adorned in Ruin, Golgothan Remains birth a slab of death metal massive enough to register on the Richter scale. Four years after their initial effort Perverse Offerings to the Void landed the coveted Kronos Seal of Approval, these Aussies stomp back over the horizon line with a sophomore offering that builds on the promise of their debut.” Ruined by death.
“The only issues you’re likely to hear about in a metal song are those involving Satan, Vikings, or, in certain cases, giant cosmic slugs. The genre generally avoids engaging directly with current events–even an oldie like “War Pigs” gussies up its anti-war themes with spooky tropes. Metal is happy to borrow techniques and attitude from hardcore and punk, but for the most part it leaves the explicit protesting to its cousins and fellow outsiders. Long Island thrashers Extinction A.D. whip up a chant of “hell no” to all that, waving the equivalent of ten hand-markered cardboard signs at you for the duration of Culture of Violence.” Thrashing the news.
“Nasty things can happen in the blink of an eye. A stroke, a car accident, a sucker punch that leaves you concussed and picking up teeth like so many spilled Tic Tacs… now feel free to add the songs of Cryptivore to that list of fleeting but brutal mishaps. Celestial Extinction delivers ten tracks in twenty-seven minutes, each one of which wastes no time beating your ass bloody and then fleeing the scene before anyone can hold it accountable. This is mixed martial songwriting, a blitzkrieg of techniques and styles designed to probe your feeble defenses until something yields.” You are what you beat.
“”Doom” plus “shoegaze” equals “doomshoe.” Wait, sorry–with Vexier, Switzerland’s E-L-R releases their second platter of so-called doomgaze. The sound, as you might guess from the tag, combines echoing, reverb-soaked vocals with riffs that repeat to the point of near-hypnosis. The heavier elements are closer to post-metal than they are to doom, with a psych-rock vibe that often recalls a late-era Kylesa.” Shoes of doom are dropping.
“What we have here is the devil’s own bar band. After a seven-year layoff and a slew of lineup changes, Bastard swaggers back onstage with sophomore full-length Rotten Blood. These four likely parolees mine a vein of blackened speed metal and thrash that will be familiar to fans of Nifelheim, Goatwhore, or, more recently, any of your finer bands ending in the suffix “-er” (Bütcher, Bewitcher, Hellripper, Demiser, etc.). The album is all Motörhead riffs played at 78 rpm and mad-lib lyrics that pay homage to Satan or whatever–mostly, it seems, because cozying up to Old Man Splitfoot is the fastest way to get your hands on the good whiskey.” Bastards, bourbon, Battlestar Galactica.
“These here boys ain’t right in the head. UK duo Slob graces the world with a debut that dares to ask the question: “What if the hayseed rapists from Deliverance started a brutal death metal band and wrote a whole bunch of songs about sodomy?” It would be tempting to nickname these gentlemen “Gay Panic: The Band,” except Slob isn’t just interested in the kind of sodomy practiced belowdecks in the Royal Navy. Instead, they present us with an expansive and all-inclusive vision of the act.” Sodomy, sodomyou.
“”Only that man who has offered up himself entire to the blood of war, who has been to the floor of the pit and seen the horror in the round and learned at last that it speaks to his inmost heart, only that man can dance.” So goes a notable passage from Cormac McCarthy’s bleak masterpiece Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West. It’s a brilliant and endlessly quotable novel that serves as the source material for An Evening Redness’s debut offering of Americana-tinged drone/doom.” Harvester of Moon.
“Listen to this record and it might just put a baby in you. Not by the traditional means, interesting though it might be to imagine those mechanics. Instead, Arizona’s Embryonic Autopsy debut with a concept album about the experiments, designed to birth human/alien hybrids, that may or may not have been performed at Area 51. With songs like “Telekinetic Insemination” and “Craving of the Mutated Fetus,” these gentlemen have a very specific kind of breeding on the brain. The sci-fi milieu, and some elements of the music, put this offering of brutal death metal squarely in Artificial Brain territory.” Newgenics.
