“Mithras is finally back with fourth full-length On Strange Loops – an album reportedly six years in the making and probably the last with longtime vocalist/bassist Rayner Coss, who left the group earlier this year. Strap in, sit tight, and set phasers to ‘fuck yeah’ as we explore what’s likely to be the best death metal record of 2016.” Let’s get loopy!
“Don’t be surprised if this is the first you’ve seen of an album from Internal Suffering. The long-running Colombian brutal death metal band has been silent for the past ten years, shuffling from city to city without releasing so much as an EP. And I’m fine with that, seeing as much of their previous output was not to my liking. 2006’s Awakening of the Rebel was naught but a smear of blast beats to me, and the continuous aggression of their music largely defeated itself. Cyclonic Void of Power, however, is a step in the right direction.” Is this the dawn of Vagabond metal?
“I’m a sucker for bands who incorporate their country’s cultural sounds into their music. Whether it’s Orphaned Land’s Israeli instrumentation, Chthonic’s weeping erhu-induced Thai melodies, or Nile’s violent riffing recalling the war-torn sand dunes and ancient pyramids of their home country of South Carolina, peppering your music with your country’s native sounds can make things a bit more interesting.” Think globally, listen locally.
“In my almost three years of reviewing for AngryMetalGuy.com, very few things surprise me anymore. Yet, while doing research for This Burden Is Mine, the second album by Indian one-man project Demonstealer, I hopped onto their Facebook page, and realized just how prolific one Sahil Makhija, aka The Demonstealer, is. Not only is he the guitarist and vocalist on here (as well as in his main band, Demonic Resurrection), but he also runs his own eponymous record label (which is also India’s first extreme metal label). He also has his own online cooking blog. In fact, the first thing I saw on Facebook was was a link to a YouTube video for making bacon cake. I didn’t know such a concoction of magnificence even existed on this lowly plane, proving that magic does indeed manifest on Earth.” Bacon cake impresses even the jaded staff of AMG.
“Despite being dubbed the “Chameleon of Rock” for his ever-changing style, the late David Bowie didn’t agree with this title. “For me a chameleon is something that disguises itself to look as much like its environment as possible,” he once said. “I always thought I did the exact opposite of that.” But fret not, you fanatical herpetophiliacs out there, Canadian blackened-death trio Necronomicon is proof positive that musical chameleons do, in fact, exist.” Those who deny the existence of musical chameleons may be musical chameleons themselves. Trust nothing.
“I’ll be honest with you; the only reason I’m even passingly familiar with Entropia’s existence comes from their commendable decision to sample a few lines of dialogue from the excellent (and yes, very brutal) Christopher Nolan film, The Prestige. The late David Bowie’s tempered portrayal of an eccentric and misunderstood Nikola Tesla living out his days in a quasi-exile in Colorado Springs brings a wistful sort of conscience to the film’s dueling protagonists, and a story of such single-minded self-destruction couldn’t be more suited for a metal adaptation. That’s just low hanging fruit, metal bands, I’m doing your work for you here.” And we don’t get paid to do PR!
![Sarpanitum – Blessed Be my Brothers… [Things You Might Have Missed 2015]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Sarpanitum_Blessed-Be-My-Brothers-768x799.jpg)
“Sarpanitum is now over a decade old, which is terrifying because it seems like only yesterday that I first stumbled on them in Zero Tolerance magazine’s Death Metal Special Part II (featured alongside yours truly, believe it or not). That was in 2006. Identified as promising UK death metal hopefuls, both they and I have since amply justified that tag with our prolific outputs of… one full-length record each.” Slow and steady wins the death race.
“There are times where I suspect that this website exerts some sort of observer effect on the bands we review. AMG writers have had several interactions with musicians that likely influenced their output, and at least one band that seems to have reunited for no reason other than being in a 90’s Metal Weirdness column here. This brings me to international tech-death collective Serocs, whose album The Next was critiqued here a couple years ago.” Respect our authoritah!
“If 2015 has been skimping on anything (other than good death metal), it’s spheres. Whereas I researched for months in order to compile a list of 2014’s roundest and most symmetrical album art, we haven’t seen enough roll past this year to play a game of nine-ball with. They’re so infrequent that even semi-spherical album covers, like this one for Apotheosynthesis, the debut of Canadian tech-death outfit Fractal Generator, have started to ping on my radar.” Sphere today, gone tomorrow.
“Angry Metal Guy hates this album. He hates it so much that he won’t even deign to put to paper how much he hates it; and thus has commanded me to do so in his stead. Given how bad At The Gate of Sethu was, I was sure it wouldn’t be difficult to do so but was nonetheless displeased.” When AMG gets hostile, Kronos gets busy.
