As metal subgenre hybrids go, mixing up black and death metal is one of the most natural and challenging pairings out there. It’s natural in that musicians gravitate towards taking the more extreme genres and blurring the boundaries between them to try and push things further, but therein lies the challenge too. If you do too little, you don’t stand out in a crowded field; do too much and it just becomes over-dense and loses its edge. Anti-Peat might just be telling you to edge into the kraken’s butthole with Skaphos though. Dive in!
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Shrieking Demons – The Festering Dwellers Review
Shrieking Demons namecheck Death and Autopsy as their comparables. In terms of style, that’s pretty accurate as long as we’re talking about those bands in their earlier, rawer eras. The Festering Dwellers is all malevolently melodic riffs and pounding rhythms. Is somebody gonna match their shriek?
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Pillar of Light – Caldera Review
The second a band chooses to use a Lewandowski painting for their cover, they set a certain expectation. Ever since his association with Bell Witch’s seminal funeral doom album, Mirror Reaper, this decision implies a certain confidence in quality. Detroit’s own Pillar of Light should know this. With the quiet-loud formula brought to bear on their debut album, Caldera, they make the case that they earn this monolithic cover through sheer emotional heft. It just might blow your top off.
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This Week In Metal, 2024 Week 46
Another week, another round of metal reviews in the bag. Words are tough, so we assembled the highlights. And if you want to read the latest reviews for the new offerings from Eldingar, Black Curse, Ploughshare, Veilburner, and Carnosus, you can do that too!
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Veilburner – The Duality of Decapitation and Wisdom Review
The number seven often holds special significance in western culture; a significance that goes beyond intra-number cannibalism. Artists have at times tried to transport this mystique to musical composition. As standard Western musical scales already hold seven individual notes, many artists seem to have tried their hand at incorporating the number seven into their rhythmic framework. But has anyone ever tried cutting off its head?
Read moreThis Week In Metal, 2024 Week 42
Another week, another round of metal reviews in the bag. Words are tough, so we assembled the highlights. And if you want to read the latest reviews for the new offerings from Whores., Typhonian, Blood Incantation, and Dawnwalker, you can do that too!
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Typhonian – The Gate of the Veiled Beyond Review
I haven’t heard bands worshiping Unleashed, specifically Across the Open Sea era before, so that was a nice surprise upon pressing play and listening to the first proper track after the intro. However, this is not a short album, and while the music is largely serviceable, not everything works.
Read moreThis Week In Metal, 2024 Week 36
Another week, another round of metal reviews in the bag. Words are tough, so we assembled the highlights. And if you want to read the latest reviews for the new offerings from Grendel’s Sÿster, Evilyn, Fleshgod Apocalypse, and Dark Tranquillity, you can do that too!
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Evilyn – Mondestrunken Review
How would a painter handle sound? Pretty damn well, it turns out. Mondestunken’s most defining feature is Alex Weber’s bass, a dynamic center-point which leads the songs on a drunken stroll, calling to mind the style of Aseitas or perhaps even the jazzy all out war of Sarmat’s debut album with its technical dissonance. But for all its flash, does it have its own style?
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Crypts of the Unknown: Blunt Force Trauma – Vengeance for Nothing
