Desaster has been around forever, perpetually rocking their slobbering, Neanderthal variety of berserk, blackened thrash. Their sound is defined by an unswerving dedication to excessive over-the-top-itude that few bands could rival. By taking the classic Darkthrone sound and welding it together with Motorhead, old Destruction, Autopsy and Slayer, a squirming mass of belligerent bellicosity is unleashed.
This is a remarkable record… and I mean that in a good way this time.
Finnish doom sensations Swallow the Sun are back. The morose Finns (that’s redundant) have returned in 2012 with their fifth full length record and most gargantuan release to date. Indeed, having discovered that all their music is put out on compact disc, Swallow the Sun has embarked on a quest to fill the whole damn thing with their plodding, thick doom metal. Unwilling to edit themselves, they instead have produced 67 minutes worth of new doom for the consumption of their adoring fanbase. This massive work, entitled Emerald Forest and the Black Bird has spent a long time in my Review Gestation Chamber™ due to being so much music that I have been incapable of listening to it in a single go.
In the opening stanza of the title track, legendary death gurgler Martin Van Drunen proudly proclaims “This is true death metal, you bastards!” Well, Mr. Drunen, you had me at “this.”
Honesty in band promotion is about as common as happy, uplifting Finnish music. Despite this dire paucity, Lanfear keeps things refreshingly real. Their website bills them simply as “underrated metal” and I couldn’t agree more. These German prog-power champs have some impressive albums under their belts, but they aren’t as known or as appreciated as they should be. Herein, Steel Druhm dissects The Harmonic Consonance which is out worldwide now!
Wykked Wytch are based in Miami, Florida, have been active since 1994. The band was founded by vocalist and frontwoman Ipek, who has helmed the band artistically and remained the one static member for almost 15 years. The Ultimate Deception is their fifth full-length record. The first thing that struck me about The Ultimate Deception is the jagged, clumsy hybrid that is the sound, composed of a death metal backbone, meaty black metal riffs and blasts, and aching hardcore vocals with a smattering of synth and symphonic elements.
Rage has been around for fucking ever. If you consider that this is the band’s 21st record (I’ll bet you could’ve never told from the name), that means that these guys have been one of the most productive bands in the history of metal. Where other bands seemingly get to the point in their career where they’re putting out an album every four or five years, these guys have just continued being productive. However, just because they’re productive doesn’t mean that everything they’re putting out was golden. One can think about the drop off from 2006’s Speak of the Dead to 2008’s less than stellar Carved in Stone. But, of course, the band recouped and put out Strings to a Web with all the gumption a band of their caliber should have. So now here we have it, the band’s 21st record, named for the event, and coming out in just a few days.
Corrosion of Conformity fans can generally be divided up into two teams: aging hardcore guys who only enjoyed the band’s first few records from the early ’80s, and metal dudes who prefer the band’s more recent incarnation with Pepper Keenan on vocals. These two teams don’t like each other, and Team Hardcore really doesn’t like latter-day COC. This conflict has been going on for decades, but the battle lines shifted recently when the three founding members of COC decided to reunite, sans Keenan, to record new music as a trio for the first time since 1986. Would the band finally deliver some crossover thrash to satisfy the old-schoolers? Or will they continue along the sludgy path they’ve been traveling since 1994’s Deliverance?
I’m a fan of Pharaoh, have been since their 2003 debut After the Fire. These Philly fanatics are the present and future of the new retro wave of traditional heavy metal (NRWOTHM) and over their short but solid career, they’ve fused retro ideals with prog and enough thrash sensibility to kick the required ass quotient.
My oh my, doom is getting more and more epic (read as long-winded) and it seems the genre is increasingly stricken with chronic Metallica-itis (inability to edit or cull songs). With bands such as Pilgrim and Swallow the Sun releasing albums loaded down with mega-long, droning numbers, attention spans everywhere are being tested and found wanting.
