By Dingram's impeccable waistcoat, what in the house of blue FUCK is this majesty?! Down Among The Dead Men never fail to deliver a blinding album, their death metal-meets-crust punk sound automatically trims the fat and gets right down the meat of things; heavy, catchy, intense riffing in short bursts. It's a fucking perfect formula that's serv...

21/03/2018

...It's, uh... it's really not that bad. In fact, it's pretty good. No, I'm fucking serious! Machine Head's latest album has been subject to nothing short of universal ridicule prior to release; the borderline emo album art, nose-wrinkling song titles, a frankly <i>bizarre</i> selection of pre-release singles (more to say on that later) and t...

30/01/2018

Wow. It's been a prolific year for me, eh? ...Okay, it hasn't. I've slacked like a motherfucker this year when it comes to writing articles for Brutalism, but between releasing a <a title="New album Vindicator" href="https://vindicatoruk.bandcamp.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">full-length album</a>, writing <a href="https://nefasturris.band...

21/12/2016

Mixing influences is something that bands simply don't do that much anymore. Whether it's down to a lack of imagination, an asinine fear of alienation from their peers ("durrr that's not true metal" etc.) or simply because they're just too crap, it's painfully common to witness many bands stick to a tried-and-tested formula that we've all seen a th...

15/12/2016

Huh. Didn't see this one coming. Some of you may remember my 2015 summary, in which I berated Sodom for leaving the fans high and dry with nary a release in sight after a promising teaser in the "Sacred Warpath" EP. Welp, they've announced a new album - entitled "Decision Day" - and they've bestowed upon us yet another supplementary EP to tide u...

06/07/2016

<i>It's that time of year again! Another year, another slew of releases, another article from Dingram. It's been... turbulent for me, to say the very least, hence why there are a lot of releases on this list that I haven't written reviews for yet. But rest assured, they'll be up in due time; alas, I actually made a bit of an artistic effort this ye...

20/12/2015

It's no secret that I thought Slayer's previous release, 2009's World Painted Blood, was an utter abortion. It's also no secret that in response to my scathing 2/5-score review, I received death threats for a solid eight months after the article was published - well, all of you die-hard Slayer fans/psychotic wankers can deactivate your caps lock ke...

06/09/2015

Down Among the Dead Men's debut album was a breath of fresh air. After so many years of death metal devolving into a mess of technicality and tryhard attempts to come across 'brutal', it was exhilerating to hear a record that put more of a focus on short, crust-ridden bursts of energy than overlong displays of ego-wankery. Hell, they even managed t...

06/09/2015

Isn't it curious that just when you think you know something or someone inside out, they still manage to surprise you in ways that you never expected? Hellbastard are a band I've grown up with from a rather young age, and though I'm a fan, they never seemed like much more than an excellent genre-coining crust band until their last release. Sons of...

13/07/2015

I'm going to be very blunt, here: Cavalera Conspiracy's last record was a trainwreck. It boasted some good ideas and a tiny smattering of decent tracks amidst a whirlwind of mediocrity and inconsistency that left a really foul taste in my mouth after the band's colossal debut, so I'd pretty much written the band off as a one-trick pony. Soulfly's '...

11/06/2015

You might recall me singing Endeavour's praises in my 2014 summary a few months ago with the promise of a full review to back my shit up. Welp, despite being a good six months late (starting a new job really fucks you for time), here it is; From the Darkest Grounds is one of the greatest releases to come out of the British metal scene in years. Buy...

11/06/2015

Anihilated are a fucking class act. Their last album, iDeviant, was so good that I even awarded it my second favourite release of 2013 - an accolade that isn't easy to get from yours truly! So it goes without saying that my expectations of Anihilated's followup were extremely high, almost unrealistically so... how can you top an album like i-fuckin...

25/04/2015