As I struggled to keep this site going in the recent past, today’s email from Krishna gave me enough strength to muster up a new post at midnight. Although this isn’t the most original material in the world, this song caught my attention mainly because of the clean vocals.
It certainly reminded [...]

Granted I’ve never been a huge Rotting Christ fan, but I’ve had a weak spot for some extreme greek music for some time now. Theogonia has still not sold me 100% either, but there are undeniably songs that really impressed me in this 2007 release.
Sakis delivered some hooks that forced me to keep replaying [...]

There are so many levels of dynamism on this record that provoked a variety of feelings. I was overwhelmed. Upon more listens, I personally feel that the intelligent musical arrangements allow for this massive amount of sections and sound to flow naturally without being “too much” to cram on a single album.

Back in January I wrote about how Sweden’s Carnal Forge perfectly compliments any bad attitude. Their aggressive music, violent lyrics and vocal style have earned them a cult following, including myself. I also noted how vocalist Jonas Kjellgren had left to join the quickly rising melodic death metal band Scar Symmetry, forcing the band to find a new vocalist for their soon to be released new album.

That new album has finally arrived under the title “Testify for my Victims“. As mentioned previously, Carnal Forge had more or less stuck to an extremely similar musical formula for every album: aggressive and razor tight death/thrash metal. “Testify..” is without a doubt the biggest progression the band has ever taken and I welcome the changes with open arms. The songs are much more melodic and I dare say more accessible. That’s not to say you’ll ever hear them on your local radio — but the abrasive qualities which defined their earlier material has mostly given way to a more polished sound. Most of my friends have expressed their distaste for the bands new direction, explaining: “it doesn’t sound like Carnal Forge,” and hinting that the band made a step towards a musical field already crowded beyond capacity.

Sweden’s Watain have produced the best black/death metal album I’ve heard since the mid 90s. There, I’ve said it.

Of course, I won’t pretend it topples classics such as Dissection’s “Storm of the Lights Bane” or “Somberlain,” but it follows brightly in their paths. Besides melodic Swedish death metal, the hybrid of black/death metal is probably one of the most over populated metal genres in the past decade. There are literally too many bands who strove to mimic or recreate the template which Dissection designed. Unfortunately 99% of these bands failed to create anything inspiring, or even interesting and caused (in my eyes) the scene to swallow itself in sea of mediocrity.

As far as I can tell, Marcus Norman doesn’t get nearly the recognition he deserves. He is one of a few individuals who have a seemingly endless torrent of top-tier metal (in a variety of styles) to contribute to the world. From the black/doom metal project Ancient Wisdom, to retro-thrash kings Bewitched, to gothic rockers [...]

It seems to me that split EP’s were much more common a decade ago. It’d work something like this: two bands would agree to submit two previously unreleased songs for a single release. One side of the vinyl was one band, the other was another band. There have been numerous occasions where I’d buy a split for a band I was already into and would end up getting into the other band as well. Maybe I’m not paying attention, but they seem to be a rare phenomenon nowadays.

The 3rd and the Mortal. Norway has never had a shortage of highly experimental metal bands and The 3rd and the Mortal were no different. Their debut album “Tears Laid in Earth” pushed about all the boundaries you could think of at the time. The album wasn’t afraid to tenderly explore all corners of melancholy and held no limits to the amount sparse effected clean guitar and meandering leads as they saw fit. To top it all off, The 3rd and the Mortal were one of the first bands in the European scene with a female vocalist (many bands including The Gathering claim them as an influence). While the bands early material was often described as ‘doom metal,’ it’s clear their approach was more from the Pink Floyd direction than any classic metal bands.

Swedish Death Metal has been one of the most successful genres of metal within the past 15 years. Some of the most influential bands in the recent history of metal are part of this genre and released numerous classic albums in the mid 90s. Early In Flames and At the Gates, among many others, helped define this genre. Eventually, most of these bands either became defunct, or diverged into unwelcome musical territory (at least in my eyes).

Sometimes you just want the most aggressive, in your face, “fuck the world” music to compliment your mood. When that mood strikes, nobody delivers quite as well as Sweden’s thrash/death metal kings of misanthropy, Carnal Forge. Sure, there are plenty of testosterone fueled metal bands out there, but few combine the brilliant technical thrashy riffs, razor performance and hate-fueled lyrics with absolutely no subtlety like these guys.