Nolentia are a three piece death grindcore band with plenty of technicality and raw musical ability to make their debut album noticeable. As expected, the music is heavily drum focused but there is a lot of technical guitar work as well. Vocals are bellowed or shrieked but it is the drums that are really stealing the show. Some tracks like "Oyster"...

03/04/2010

Violated's debut, "Only Death Awaits", is the ultimate tribute to Slayer. The riffs, the melody, the drumming, and even the vocal styles sound just like something yanked from "Reign In Blood" or "South Of Heaven" with just a tinge of Metallica. It's thrash galore, and fortunately isn't a total rip off or too poorly produced. The music is certainly...

03/04/2010

Enthral have been around since 1995 and ever since their 1997 debut, "Prophecies Of The Dying", they've been trying to carve out a foothold in the black metal world with their mid paced music combined with venomous vocal assault. Now they grace us with a very short EP with only three tracks, but the music is good enough as a mainstay for now till t...

01/04/2010

If you like melancholic metal with just enough catchiness to keep your attention enthralled, then In Mourning's "Monolith" will certainly appease. Hailing from Sweden, the band has released several demos and a full length debut before releasing this album. What fans can expect to find is a very complex, progressive doomy death metal opus. There's a...

01/04/2010

Seita may call themselves death metal, but that's a little misleading. From the sound of their debut EP, "Imprint Forever", the sound is a much more aggressive metalcore thrash type, like Pantera on steroids. The riffs are catchy and relentless, as is the drumming. Vocals are bellowed in that Pantera-esque howl minus the melodic singing. A lot of t...

01/04/2010

Shining (and this band is not to be confused with the depressive black metal one from Sweden) started out as an acoustic jazz band before blending their progressive, electronic jazz music with the metal genre. "Blackjazz" certainly reflects the idea of being hectic and schizophrenic in the sense it sounds a lot like industrial black metal with jazz...

31/03/2010

Ov Hell is a what one could call a 'supergroup duo,' meaning two of black metal's biggest starts coming together to create what they would hope is a masterpiece. Black metal fans should be excited that Dimmu Borgir's Shagrath is taking vocal duties while King of Gorgoroth handles bass and some guitar and Techloch of 1349 handles the guitar as well....

30/03/2010

Pure Evil grants listeners the third chapter of the one and only Kryth's Satanic legacy. Many become skeptical at how well one man can perform his instruments, but it's obvious that Kryth has no problem painting a demonic picture with his music. The very first thing fans will notice is the guitar work and vocals; they sound an awful lot like Vital...

30/03/2010

Sick Drummer Magazine is an organization that glorifies the extreme drummers of the music world, similar to how GuitarWorld does the same for the guitarists. So listeners should expect anything that comes from Sick Drummer to have an extreme focus on drums. Unfortunately, that is about all their second chapter in the <em>Brutal Beatings</em> series...

30/03/2010

Norway black metal rockers, 1349, gave listeners quite a shock with their album "Revelations Of The Black Flame". Many fans were not expecting the slow, ambient passages that broke up the album amongst the blistering music they were used to, and the fanbase was divided. For those who hated the ambient parts, I'm sorry to say that "Demonoir" has not...

27/03/2010

<em>Universal</em> is Borknagar's eighth studio album, and it still holds true to the style that the previous albums were done in (not counting the acoustic "Origin). Those who are new to Borknagar will find that the band is a progressive black metal band using lots of layered harsh and clean vocals, tons of keyboard and flute melodies combined wit...

27/03/2010

Norway's In Vain deliver some more melodically crushing doomy progressive black metal with their second studio album, Mantra. As expected, the songs are longer than most, but the music is very enriching for the most part. The guitars have a very mournful, black metal strum to them for the most part (though on the first track there is a very interes...

27/03/2010