“Hello, it’s me. I was wondering if, after all these years ov atmoblack reviews, maybe you’d like to meet something different? After rolling in the deep end of our promo bin’s blackest, mopiest waters for so long, it felt appropriate to set fire to the reign ov black ‘n boo-hoo bands and send my love to a new genre.” Muppet grinder.
“Ahh, religion. Bane of metal’s existence, religion has been the genre’s punching bag since its dawn. Many songs wove stories of people killing, raping, and pillaging for God, with some of their own followers (past or current) calling them out as well. It’s all with good reason, of course; you do good deeds just for the sake of helping someone or something out, not to look good in the eyes of others. Don’t even get me started on the excessive hoarding of expensive gifts or getting away with dubious activities in the name of God. That’s where international noise outfit, Their Throats Are Open Tombs, comes in with their second full-length helping of electronic grindcore.” Repent less.
“My first review under my own moniker here at AMG LLC Sole Proprietorship & Sons was for an unholy mix of plodding sludge doom and breakneck hardcore. If you can remember lo those many weeks ago, I concluded that however much you enjoyed each individual component, the combination never truly gelled. Well, if there’s one thing I’ve learned about metal, it’s that if a hybrid style exists at all, someone out there is doing that shit right. I submit to you now Plague, the second full length from misery making monsters Mastiff (Muppet, meet thy match) who play just such a mix.” Dog bites metal.
![Infernal Coil – Within a World Forgotten [Things You Might Have Missed 2018]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Infernal-Coil-Within-a-World-Forgotten-Cover-768x768.jpg)
“I have not seen the sun for ten days except through a haze of ash. A fire the size of Chicago has been burning for as long upwind of me. Every day I am breathing as dust the lives it destroyed. The fire will not reach me, but it will not stop burning soon. There has never been a fire like this one before. I can do nothing about it even though I fueled a tiny part of it every day of my life. I cannot stop the next fire. I cannot know when or where the next horrible thing will happen. But this has happened, this will happen, and this will get worse. Amid my guilt and powerlessness, I seek art that reflects life. Nothing could better match the ash entering my lungs than Infernal Coil’s Within a World Forgotten.” Music for days of fire.
![Wolf King – Loyal to the Soil [Things You Might Have Missed 2018]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/WolfKing-LoyaltotheSoil01.jpg)
“Wolf King’s impressive debut LP Loyal to the Soil dropped back in April and marked the young Californian band as an act to watch. Vitriolic blackened hardcore sits at the core of Wolf King’s sound, with sludgy beat-downs and whiffs of grind fleshing out their confident and aggressive formula. Although by no means a pair of peas in a pod, there’re certainly some aesthetic and tonal similarities with Germany’s Mantar, with Wolf King arguably having the upper hand when comparing their 2018 releases.” Wolf King can do anything.
“When I think of grind, the last place to which my mind takes me is Italy. But here I am, in the Piedmont region of the beloved boot-shaped country, whiplashing my upper vertebrae to smithereens with Cripple Bastards. This is their seventh full length since their inception in 1988, but along the way these bastards have also released one single, one live album, seven EPs, and more splits than would grace the stage at a drag queen lip sync competition. Cripple Bastards deal a chaotic brand of grind, unsatisfied with adhering to a single formula. While the band has embraced different influences successfully more often than not, the constant mutation Cripple Bastards undergo makes for an inconsistent discography. The goal, then, is for La Fine Cresce da Dentro to beat Cripple Bastards’ best album: 2008’s Variante Alla Morte.” Wow, he traveled to Italy just to listen to this band? These n00bs are dedicated as hell.
“It’s 6:50 PM on a cold Saturday night. I’m tapping my foot impatiently, waiting for my lovely girlfriend — a few months my elder, and perhaps a bit slower moving, therefore — to come out from her room. ‘Come on, darling,’ I say, double-checking my tie in the mirror, ‘we’ll be late if we don’t leave soon.’ I hear the door open, and expect to be floored; she always looks so good in dresses, and this is a formal event. I turn around and do a triple-take — she’s wearing a strawberry onesie. I’m left confused as to what her intentions were, and I may perhaps never figure it out. May as well make the most of it, right? This ethos permeated my listening time with the Finnish band Vuohi’s debut full-length Witchcraft Warfare.” Kitchen sink-core.
“Few bands can pull off having “fucking” in their name. Total Fucking Destruction is definitely fucking one of them. This Philadelphia trio were formed in 1999 by Brutal Truth drummer Richard Hoak following Truth’s breakup the previous year. True to grindcore’s punk origins, the band have released a bevy of splits over the years but been pretty sporadic about putting out full-lengths, with only three released in their near-twenty-year history. Nevertheless titles like Zen and the Art of Total Fucking Destruction and Our Love Is a Rainbow show TFD harbor a cheeky sense of humor alongside their frantic and eclectic riffing. Apparently they’re now also running for public office, as fourth full-length #USA4TFD possesses both a Twitter-ready title and an album cover I’ll definitely be sharing with my friends, if only to see if they can make any fucking sense of it.” Vote TFD.
“Whenever a band like Terrorizer drops an album, I always wonder if their material gets by on individual merit or on legacy alone. World Downfall is rightly regarded as one of the first and greatest examples of death/grind and has remained a staple in any worthy metalhead’s collection. Unfortunately, nearly thirty years after that seminal record, the re-formed band’s quality has been spotty at best.” The Founding Fathers of Grind are back with a state of the union.
“2018 marks an anniversary year of sorts. On November 11th, it will mark one hundred years since the end of World War I, a war that was supposed to end all wars, but instead introduced trench warfare and chemical weaponry, forever changing the landscape of combat to this day. To give attention to this, British duo Anaal Nathrakh, themselves celebrating twenty years as a band this year, crafted an album that gives respectful tribute to the writings, poetry, and the sheer terror that World War I brought to those who survived to tell it.” Dead in a ditch.
