“Sunlight can cleanse or heal, but it also burns. The scouring properties of light sear their way into the foreground on Benighted Desecration, the debut full-length from death-doom entity Cadaver Shrine. Just look at the corpse on the album cover, face pointed upward toward the source of its demise. A halo of oppressive brightness envelops the nasty music on this latest of many side projects from Maurice de Jong of Gnaw Their Tongues infamy.” Cult of the Sun.
“Infusing the traditional Black Sabbath-style doom with smoky desert vigor, El Camino de la Serpiente (The Path of the Snake) rocks and rumbles rambunctiously. There’s a pleasing looseness to the music, a cool devil-may-care swagger that makes it impossible not to move along to the many, many riffs packed into the 46-minute running time.” On this rock, they will build their doom.
“Why do we find ourselves in the midst of a nu renaissance where bands like The Offering throw down like it’s ’03 and genres like slam can shamelessly quote groove under the guise of gore? Well, it seems that some also grew up to incorporate their first loves into their art. Elyose, an act of that breed, urges you to embrace your inner jumpdafuckup with a French language tour-de-force of alt-rock meets gothy vibes with nu and industrial accouterments on Déviante.” What’s olde is nu.
“Listen to this album, and witness Carnosus use every part of the tech death buffalo to document the rise of a “totalityrannic empire” bent on repopulating the world with a race of “cadaverine-like beings.” You won’t be thinking about the concept much, though, not while these nine thrash-inflected songs scramble your central nervous system.” Carne asunder.
“One thing I discover in the promo sump every now and then is the longevity of random bands I’ve never heard of. While many one-man black metal projects working out of their respective mom’s basements rear corpse-painted faces, I certainly did not expect a metalcore band to fall into this category. It is a bit of a coincidence to me that Newburgh, New York veterans All Out War comes on the heels of my last 2022 TYMHM, Geneva’s Nostromo, because all the hallmarks are there.” Eternal war (core).
“In 2020, a very well-regarded black metal album generated some waves that… completely passed me by. That album was Snare of All Salvation by American black metallers Häxanu. For a debut, it was praised for its stargazing atmosphere melded with violent hysteria. The combination of multi-intrumentalist A.P. and vocalist L.C. appeared to have hit upon a winning formula which meant that a generous amount of buzz greeted the announcement of the follow-up, Totenpass. With influences and collaborations running the spectrum of black metal, and a cool early single, I was intrigued. Was a new USBM voice upon us?” Hype and tripe.
“After submerging myself in copious death metal throughout January and early February, Steel‘s well-seasoned body needed a soak in the soothing tides of funerary doom-death. And so I happened upon the sophomore release by Portugal’s Oak. The side project of Gaerea lead guitarist/vocalist, Guilherme Henriques and featuring various current and former Gaerea members, it attempts a style far afield from what that black metal outfit is known for. This is classic funeral doom death across the boards, though it has a fair amount of blackened elements bubbling up as well. The gimmick here is that Disintegrate is but one 45-minute track.” Counting the rings of tragedy.
“As far as the reviewing and the heavy music game is concerned, 2023 has been a slow start out of the blocks for yours truly. Already with a backlog of neglected albums to catch-up on from January, it is finally time to tackle my first review of 2023, from familiar deathcore band, Distant. Hailing from the Netherlands, previous experiences with Distant have been mixed to say the least. Their self-described downtempo deathcore has potential, however, up to this point Distant has been unable to truly capture interest across an album’s worth of material.” Distant but present.
“Caught somewhere between a groovy progressive death summoning and a thrash-empowered melodeath drill, Black Water Sunset resurrects classic sounds in a tightly performed package, complete with a session drum appearance by veteran kit crusher George Kollias (Nile, ex-Contrarian).” Black Water and Parks Department.
If you had told me three weeks ago that we were going to get a new In Flames record I would have asked you “Who cares?” But after listening to Foregone for a few weeks, they’ve got my attention.
