Tiamat

Bloody Hammers – Spiritual Relics Review

Bloody Hammers – Spiritual Relics Review

By Steel Druhm on September 17, 2013 in 2013, American Metal, Doom Metal, Heavy Metal, Reviews, Soulseller Records, Doom Metal, Heavy Metal, 3 comments

Well, this is a bit of a surprise. I never heard of Bloody Hammers until I reviewed their self-titled debut in February, and now they’re back with a follow-up a mere seven months later! Talk about productivity! While I liked aspects of the debut and their Hour of 13 and Witchfinder General meets Danzig approach to retro “occult rock,” things felt a bit underwhelming as a whole and suffered from inconsistent songwriting.” With so little time between releases, is it realistic to expect big improvement on Spiritual Relics? Steel Druhm is here to prep your expectations accordingly.

Lake of Tears – Illwill Review

Lake of Tears – Illwill Review

By Steel Druhm on June 13, 2011 in 2011, 3.5, AFM Records, Doom Metal, Gothic Metal, Heavy Metal, Reviews, Swedish Metal, Doom Metal, Heavy Metal, Progressive Metal, 5 comments

In the Whack-A-Mole game that is genre pigeonholing, Lake of Tears pop up all over the board, defying you to anticipate their next move. These Swedes have been around a very long time and have always defied easy answers as to what style they actually play. Generally described as gothic metal, they’ve wandered between psychedelic doom, goth-rock, quasi-thrash and pseudo-death over the years. Each album had its own unique flavor and approach while always keeping the distinctive LoT sound. Here on Illwill, their eighth album, they keep the guessing game alive while delivering a strange mix of styles, but it all hangs together somehow and works well. With parallels to Paradise Lost, Cemetary, Charon and Type O Negative to name a few, they run all over the place but it’s always dark in tone and plenty melodic.

Sarke – Oldarhian Review

Sarke – Oldarhian Review

By Steel Druhm on April 18, 2011 in 2.5, 2011, Heavy Metal, Indie Recordings, Norwegian Metal, Reviews, Heavy Metal, 2 comments

This is an odd one indeed. Basically, Sarke is a side project for Thomas Berglie (Old Man’s Child, Khold) and he handles all the instruments here. He recruited Nocturno Culto (Darkthrone) to do the vocals and together they released Vorunah in 2009 and now they’re back with Oldarhian. Although both men come from black metal backgrounds, Sarke is not a black metal band. Instead they play a mix of traditional heavy metal, Cemetary, Tiamat and new Darkthrone with some extra punk tossed in for good measure. The music is very stripped down, simplistic and not exceptionally heavy. At least for Nocturno, this material isn’t a big departure since it’s similar to Darkthrone albums like Circle the Wagons and F.O.A.D. Keeping their sound fairly consistent with the Vorunah album, Oldarhian offers more of their basic metal-punk fusion and while it has some enjoyable, rocking songs, it doesn’t completely work for me as a whole.