“2018’s EP Pain WIll Define Their Death showcased an act hellbent on utter annihilation. The band’s merciless modus revels in a perpetual motion so vicious it actively raised my heartbeat. Those three tracks have blasted wide the cut and made it on to debut To Bathe from the Throat of Cowardice. But context is key. What resounds as a roar in the confines of an EP may whimper in the expanse of an album.” Throatbather.
“In which we waste your time always searching for those blunder years.”
“It is easy to underestimate Denmark’s contribution to death metal, especially in the face of America and Sweden. But from early days of infancy, through trembling years of youth, long murky middle-age and final hours long in the tooth. Denmark is the hundred names of terror, creature you love the least. Now picture its name before you and exorcise the BAEST.” Get in its belly!
“Anyone who’s read metal reviews for a while knows the two major intro paragraph fallbacks for popular and/or established metal bands. The first is to call them “the AC/DC of [subgenre]” and conveniently using a tautology to describe the sound, i.e. Cannibal Corpse sounds like Cannibal Corpse. The second is invoking the shadow of the band’s crowning achievement and asking rhetorically if the new record will beat it. Entombed A.D. isn’t established enough to be an AC/DC band, and Entombed simpliciter changed their sound more than once.” Bowel movements.
“In which you decide which song is Entombed and which song is Entombed A.D.”
“I won’t go so far as to say album promo sheets are useless, but only because they’re often an indicator of how badly a band (or their PR people) misjudge their own sound. We’ve all had the never-been-heard-before braggadocio of a Bathory/Venom mash-up, the new heights promises of the perennial 2.5 bands, or that metalcore act that thinks they’re prog metal. Not one of us would bat an eye that Firespawn, the most meat and potatoes death metal act this side of modern Bloodbath, claim their third album Abominate ‘explores new ground that not many death metal bands have before.'” Lies, untruths and death metal.
“The concept of the virtual band is hardly a novel one anymore. The first was arguably Alvin and the Chipmunks all the way back in 1958, though it was Gorillaz who popularized the concept. Metal has dipped their toes in the idea a few times as well, most notably with Dethklok from Adult Swim’s Metalocalypse cartoon. Yet something just feels different about Belzebubs, a new virtual band formed around the webcomic of the same name by Finnish author JP Ahonen. The comic is high quality in and of itself, mixing black metal tropes, an Adams Family theme of a dark and weird yet loving family, and a Calvin & Hobbes sense of adorable bubbly slapstick. But comics and music are extremely different media. How serious can we take an actual album by the bumbling ink-drawn band?” Anime to the Nightside Eclipse.
“One of the big things I look for in music is a sense of being taken elsewhere, of stepping aside from the real. I work a stressful tech job, and the next best thing to ditching my desk and marching off into the woods is music that makes me feel like I’m adrift in an ancient forest. This means I’m a big fan of ethereal, folksy influences in my music. Esben and the Witch’s Older Terrors established itself as one of my favorite records ever, and I enjoyed Hexvessel’s first few releases for similar reasons.” Let treedom ring.
“When I think “German death metal,” I usually think of names like Muhammed Suiçmez, Lille Gruber, and Christian Münzner. Innovators in technicality and brutality, all three of them have left their mark on metal despite the drowsy German death metal scene. Every so often though, the sleeping snore, and the cause of the rumble today is a different trio with a different take on death metal. Deserted Fear pay homage to their boreal neighbors via a chunky synthesis of Björriffs and Viking simplicity, and even if their fourth album, Drowned by Humanity¸ won’t awaken Teutonic death metal, it stirs the body enough to delay a death pronouncement.” Oh, the Humanity.
“When I was a boy, busy putting my beleaguered vertebrae through a heavy metal crash course in brain surgery, there were a few records that would stay with me forever. On the death metal spectrum, my friends and I loved nothing more than realigning the atoms of our necks to the dulcet tones of Consuming Impulse or Realm of Chaos. Malevolent Creation’s first two albums, The Ten Commandments and Retribution, were also prime influences in our quest for spinal reconfiguration. I even rather enjoy the much-maligned Stillborn, despite its horrendous production. But, of course, this isn’t a retrospective of death metal’s classic era, it’s a review of Malevolent Creation’s newest offering and the first since the untimely passing of frontman Brett Hoffmann.” Altered beasts.
