“Alternative metal has a colorful history, running parallel with some of metal’s greatest upheavals and residing at the crib of nu-metal’s short but terrible reign. Nowadays the term is practically a relic, but every now and then a band comes along that hearkens back to that no man’s land between ‘true’ metal and radio rock. Antirope is such a band.” Alternative to what?
“As Angry Metal Guy’s resident funeral doom metal kitty, it’s usually my responsibility to clench my grubby murder mittens on all things slow and murky. Lately, though, due to forces outside my control, all the good stuff is usually grabbed by the time I even get to our promo sump. This time around, Vama Marga, the third album by German funeral doom quintet Adversvm, was staring me in the face with no takers! Funeral doom… with the keyboardist of Evoken, no less!” Morose opportunities.
“A Hill to Die Upon represents the steepest improvement between two albums that I encountered during my overextended employment at AMG Torture Racks and Surgical Paraphernalia. After the disappointing sophomore slump that was Inferis, I assumed the German troupe responsible for the mighty Purgatorium, a veritable clinic on killer slam riffs and technical prowess, burned too brightly too soon. But A Hill to Die Upon gained a well-deserved rating upgrade and remains one of my most revisited albums in the entire deathcore pantheon.” Hill kills.
“A confluence of circumstances made this review an eon late. Napalm sent us a late stream, and none of my lazy co-writers checked if we’d gotten a promo until I did so last week. But I was happy to save the day, as usual. Germany’s Thulcandra has been freezing up a melodic blackened death storm since 2003, and their past work earned high marks from the Ape Himself, but we’ve mysteriously missed their last twelve years of material.” Ressection.
“Craving have been around since 2006, managing to fly under just about everyone’s collective radars. After the release of their third album in 2016, the band basically split, leaving guitarist and vocalist Ivan Chertov to reform things. Which (surprise!) he did. Although you’d be hard-pressed to notice, given the band’s aesthetic has barely changed over the years. Craving play an entertaining blend of hyper-melodic black metal, mixed with folk and more than a hint of power metal.” Attractive nuisances.
“Twenty-twenty’s follow-up, Phanerozoic II: Mesozoic | Cenozoic, dragged us through the Triassic and Jurassic periods, bringing us to our current epoch of existence—the Holocene. Ending that album with ‘Holocene,’ the closer stood out among the rest. Its lavish textures and feel-good beauty separated it from the violent cacophony of the back-to-back ‘Triassic’ and ‘Jurassic.’ An approach that the band takes for almost the entirety of Holocene. Switching gears ever-so-slightly to a softer approach, this new epoch in The Ocean’s journey embodies birth, growth, and life. But does Holocene capture the true spirit of this final leg? Is it worthy enough to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Phanerozoic I and Phanerozoic II? As with all great things, only time will tell.” World building.
“I love Mystic Prophecy. What do I love about them? Everything. I love the excessive machismo of their aesthetic, the over-the-top badassery of their album artwork, their delightful ESL lyrics, and the way the band shoehorns the words “hell,” “devil,” “demons,” “Lucifer,” and any number of similarly sinister subjects (not to mention album titles from their own past and classic album titles from other greats) into said lyrics. But most of all, I love that Mystic Prophecy is hell-bent on keeping heavy metal fucking heavy.” Wicked Mystic.
“The last record from Non Est Deus, Impious, impressed me. I’ll admit, not to quite the same degree as Leiþa or Kanonenfieber, the other two projects from Germany’s black metal maestro, Noise. Still, it scored a highly respectable 3.5 and, really, my complaints were minor quibbles. When I recently sat down to interview Noise, he explained to me the concept for the fourth Non Est Deus platter. He took stories from the Old Testament and, essentially, imagined what would happen if you took God or the Holy Spirit, or whatever you want to call it, out of the equation. Answer? Everything goes to shit.” God’s away on business.
“The band’s 2015 debut record, The Future Is Now, is a predictable platter of one-dimensional black/thrash riffs with gravelly vocals and the occasional Slayer pig squeal. That album flowed like one thirty-eight-minute track, barely allowing you to process a song before throwing you into the next. In general, the album is standard-fare black/thrash. Eight years later, the band returns with a new outing in the form of Visions of a Parallel World. But, this time, the production is far superior to its predecessor. The rawness is still there, the vocals are lower in the mix, the guitars rule the roost, and the dynamics are pleasing to the ear. The only thing that remains is the songwriting.” Speed kills ladies of the evening.
“One gloomy evening in early April, I sat down for a Zoom call with German black metal machine, Noise, the mysterious creative mind behind Kanonenfieber, Leiþa and Non Est Deus. As something of a fanboy—Kanonenfieber’s outstanding Menschenmühle was my 2021 Album of the Year and this year’s Leiþa scored ROTM for January—it would be fair to say I was excited.” Noise exposure.
