If the only way metal can innovate is to stop being metal altogether, it will go the same way as mainstream rock—it will die. Chapel of Disease are not Imagine Dragons of course. OR ARE THEY?
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Drowned – Procul His Review
Drowned play a blend of primarily death metal mixed with some doom metal elements that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Spectral Voice or a Mortiferum album. But how does this all come together? Semi-drowned?
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Nightmarer – Deformity Adrift: Reformed
The concept that the band might want to re-engineer and partially re-record such a well realized album before it is even a year old is at once intriguing and baffling. Can the deformity go even more adrift? Let’s see how well Nightmarer float with the anomalies.
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Terra Builder – Solar Temple Review
At its best, Solar Temple has some novel ideas: the title track combines a Morbid Angel sounding riff with Grindcore intensity and “Dead Celestial” features a tremolo riff throughout that works well with the forward charging groove. So at least you could say that they’re a good Trem Builder.
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Alkaloid – Numen Review
Alkaloid have not changed much of their formula of Morbid Angel meets Yes in 2023. New to the mix is a slight push towards Heavy Metal leads that crop up here and there, as seen in “A Fool’s Desire” that opens with some acoustics recalling Caprae Idolum’s Matches EP before mixing and matching Heavy Metal with Death Metal outbursts. It doesn’t have any viola da gamba though.
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Massen – Gentle Brutality Review
A hazard of venturing into deeper waters of dissonance and the more extreme ends of Metal is that these genres have a hard time impressing on that end as they have to balance melody and heaviness. Despite this I still enjoy melody, groove and selectively catchy material but drift away from things that mix in overt aspects of Pop melody. Bands like Massen are instantly fighting an uphill battle for my interest, then. But impressively, this Belarus duo bring some serious skill to the format. Massenive skill.
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The Night Eternal – Fatale Review
Finding good Heavy Metal amongst the modern output is hard. In the most classic genres of Metal it is harder to hide behind novelty, thus tight songwriting and performances matter become more important. The Night Eternal seem to know this as they write very melodic songs with a slight Gothic bend. Nothing new really, but does Metalligatorrr find any Fatale flaws?
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The Ocean – Holocene Review
Trip-hoppin’ in the ocean.
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Omnikoloss – Wandering Through Concrete Valleys Review
Black metal band finally bores Cosmo! Read all about it in today’s issue!
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Crypts of the Unknown: Khonsu – The Xun Protectorate
