“When the band’s highly anticipated Deathhammer came out in 2012 it became and remains one of my favorite metal records of the 2010’s. Now Incoming Death is upon us, and these death-doom peddling Dutchmen are back to slay ultra-loud once more.” Back to the rack!
“Though billed as a technical death metal album, Monument has little to do with The Faceless-core being oozed out of southern California every few months. Instead, Carnophage plays a not unsophisticated mix of early-’00s influenced death metal, taking cues from Suffocation and Hate Eternal. It’s not a fantastic formula, but the band follows through, and there’s surprisingly little to complain about on Monument.” I’m sure we’ll find something.
“The immense advertising campaign inadvertently carried out by certain English street signs notwithstanding, Dead End is a strange and largely uninspiring name for a death-doom band. A name like Paradise Lost brings to mind Milton’s epic poem about the Fall of Man, Katatonia suggests an inescapable numbness, and My Dying Bride evokes a mental horror show. Dead End, on the other hand, brings to mind seeing a sign that means I have to make a three-point turn before I reach the end of the road I’m driving on. I don’t exactly enjoy three-point turns, but they certainly don’t fill me with dread.” Fear the cvl-de-sac.
“Last year Christian Alvestam (ex-Scar Symmetry, Torchbearer) and his Solution .45 project dropped the first installment of a double album that went by the name of Nightmares in the Waking State – Part I. As expected, it was grounded in the same metalcore-tinged melo-death Alvestam’s been associated with throughout his music career. It had a few strong highlights but as a whole it was nothing earth-shaking. Almost a year later he’s back with the second installment of his double creature feature, but should you care?” Caring is sharing.
“Worry not my child for the balm to salve your festering wounds exists in the form of a split from Demonomancy and Witchcraft. Bestial, coarse and outright evil, this 26-minute payload of blackened death offers a brief respite for those needing an outlet for their rancor.” Now available at AMG – Rancor relief.
“One of the things I love about death metal is that I always find it appropriate. Walking to work? Absolutely. Working out? Yes please. Spring cleaning? Why not? Volturyon, Swedish purveyors of all things death, are a band clear in their understanding of this and eager to churn out an absolute riff-fest to facilitate any and all spur of the moment gym sessions… or vacuuming.” Make that carpet BLEED!
“Advice is a tricky thing, really. I try to give only when asked and take only what’s given freely, but the general advice economy moves much faster than I like to. So instead of giving advice, I prefer to just point out issues and have people come up with their own solutions. This works well when you’re reviewing music since most of the job is explaining why that music isn’t as good as it could be. A case in point would be the last album from Inanimate Existence, A Never-Ending Cycle of Atonement, an album about which I had many complaints.” Is this an atonement?
“Just in case there was any ambiguity following the above band name and album title, yes: Aum are kvlt as fvck. Social media is unworthy of their presence. The supplied photo does that stupid intentional enigma thing. I cannot locate any information about the band besides their French nationality. Their exploration of Buddhism through the medium of blackened death metal seems confused.” Putting the K in kvlt.
“One of my friends, a classicist and lover of classical music, has a few favorite metal bands he’s never heard. It’s not the music that makes him love Necrophagist or Abominable Putridity; it’s just the absurdity of their names, the contortions of language that must occur for brutality to surge forth. Unfathomable Ruination is a band he can get behind. And well he should, because it would be foolish to try to get ahead of them.” Unfathomable fanboyism.
“The heart of the black magic cast over Pyrrhic is its sound. Now I know this appears a redundant observation but this goes beyond melody, instrumentation or structure. Or maybe it precedes these. What I mean is that it sounds evil. Oppressive. Monstrous. A cloying sense of darkness bleeds from its every orifice and it’s quite unlike anything I’ve heard before, despite compositionally not falling far from Chthe’ilist or Blood Incantation.” Into the heart of darkness.
