“Death metal was my first love. It began with a steamy night with Morbid Angel’s Domination during my freshman year of high school. Lust blossomed into torrid love, as I violently consumed everything the first decade of death metal had to offer. In recent years, something changed. The fire of my passion flickered as I watched the wrinkles form on old-school death metal’s face.” Death and rebirth of the fanboy.
![Gloson – The Rift [Things You Might Have Missed 2022]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/a3076198733_10-768x768.jpeg)
“Most sludge is boring. Repeating chords for an hour doesn’t make you ISIS, just like playing a 16-string guitar at 65,536 bpm doesn’t make you Archspire. Excellent post-metal requires even more self-control than other genres, since it needs to be repetitive but not dull, simple but not lazy, and creative but not flashy. Enter Gloson.” High glos.
![Ultha – All That Has Never Been True [Things You Might Have Missed 2022]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/a1659643731_10-768x768.jpeg)
“By happenstance, I first listened to All That Has Never Been True while reading Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. It was a match made in Hell. I breathlessly followed Eleanor Vance into paranoid insanity in the presence of sounds without a source, inexplicable events, and a house whose angles aren’t quite right. Ultha grabbed me by the ears and led me on a similar journey.” Drag me to Ultha.
“That title is great advertising. The details are even better. Feelingless is a nonprofit side project of Hugo Markaida from Spanish melodeath band Rise to Fall. Feelingless and record label Noble Demon have pledged to donate all proceeds from debut album Metal against Animal Cruelty to animal shelters in Spain and animal welfare charities abroad. I wasn’t familiar with Markaida’s other work, and reviewing a record that straddles melodic death metal and metalcore is risky business. But after reading that blurb, I couldn’t help but be intrigued.” Up with animals.
“I was hoping that Sarcator would be short for something cool like “Sarcastic Alligator” or “Sarcophagus Emasculator.” Sadly, it’s just an unforgivable portmanteau of Sarcófago and Kreator. I trudged on undeterred, enticed by the description of Sarcator’s Alkahest. These Swedes bill themselves as blackened thrashers inspired by ’80s German thrash, a shortcut to my listening queue. And it’s exciting to review albums by teenagers; they may be hit-or-miss, but nothing warms my shriveled heart like hearing youngsters trying to drive metal onward.” Young, dumb, full of Sodom.
“Xentrix may not be a household name, but it should be. The band’s magnum opus For Whose Advantage? had the misfortune of coming out in 1990, a banner year for thrash. It wasn’t as impressive as Megadeth’s Rust in Peace, as seething as Forbidden’s Twisted into Form, as aggressive as Morbid Saint’s Spectrum of Death, as memorable as Artillery’s By Inheritance, or as blasphemous as Exhorder’s Slaughter in the Vatican. Still, For Whose Advantage? packed a punch, with berserk riffcraft that went straight for the jugular.” Age and experience advantage.
“I was overjoyed when Tankard asked me to pose for this lovely album art. Metal fuels my mind, and beer fuels my body; it’s a match made in heaven. Tankard realized this before I was born. These inebriated Germans have been around since the early days of German thrash, and their 1986 debut was released within months of Sodom’s Obsessed by Cruelty, Kreator’s Pleasure to Kill, and Destruction’s Eternal Devastation.” Beer drool.
“After hearing the first few seconds of “Survive in Obscurity,” I knew I wanted to review Enveloping Absurdity. Infectious death metal riffs, raw energy, palpable fuzz – the song had everything I could ask for. Enveloping Absurdity is a debut, but Phobophilic has an EP and a split with Sedimentum under its belt, getting picked up by Prosthetic in the process. These Fargo natives play death metal that is as gruesome as Fargo but much less distinctive, preferring to dwell in the darker corners of old-school death metal.” Death from the cold.
“Before listening to The Great Mist Within, I thought I knew a thing or two about Ayloss, the prolific mastermind of Spectral Lore and Mystras. Ever since Spectral Lore’s III swept me off my feet in 2014, I’ve been an avid follower of his work. Ayloss has described his new project Auriferous Flame as a 90s black metal act, a “continuation of many of the ideas and music styles in Mystras” minus the folk influences. This description made me suspect that The Great Mist Within would be digestible but unimaginative,” Mist predictions.
“The Route of Haeresis gave me a rare opportunity to nab a band that earned praise from the mighty Grier. The angrier doc gushed about Mimorium’s second release Blood of Qayin in 2020, comparing it favorably with Dissection’s classics. Mimorium is back with another album of energetic melodic black metal that tries to scratch the same itch as the iciest Swedish bands of the mid-90s. Many have tried this, and few have succeeded.” Theft in the autopsy suite.
