The words `cult’ and `underground’ sprang to mind the moment I started listening to "Doomsday"; it’s certainly one the most barbaric and primitive demos that has ever crossed my path. Recorded by five French troglodytes in a dark, damp cave, this is the first ever release by Herpes. I guess up until now they were too busy gnawing on animal bones......

27/12/2010

Forget metalcore, forget tech-death, forget nu-metal, in fact forget every daft trend that happened in metal in the last twenty years. American underground cultists Gravehill are like a blast of foul air from that period in metal when hair was frizzy, jeans were tight and you were either metal or you weren’t! This release is an immensely enjoyab...

22/12/2010

Once again, the good folks at BRUTALISM.com have dredged the darkest caverns of the underground, all in the name of metal. This time, they have unearthed a gem by Swedish, I mean Spanish death metal purists Graveyard. With a deliberately old-fashioned production courtesy of Dan Swano, in Sunlight Studios no less – this couldn’t sound more like a cl...

14/11/2010

Believe it or not, this is the fourth studio album from unusually-named German death metal `Last Action Heroes’ Jack Slater. Although relatively unheard of here, these guys have been going since 1995, and have managed to crank out four full length albums and a host of demos and EPs. This should go some way to explaining the incredible, mature and o...

22/10/2010

The team at BRUTALISM have been donning their hard hats and heading deep into the mines again, to bring you the most underground metal imaginable, this time from an obscure source in Poland. This two man band from S’upsk in northern Poland seems to know a thing or two about dark, grim atmospheres; you could almost imagine that they live in a cave n...

19/06/2010

'Primordial Cruelty' is a perfect description for this album – the second from Polish death metal fanatics Ferosity. As is the way with a lot of underground bands, it took Ferosity many years to establish themselves as a working band, and I think they have certainly benefited from not rushing things – this is a finely crafted album of face-melting...

27/05/2010

Czech death metal fanatics Sepsis seem to have spent a long time paying their dues, releasing a stream of underground demos and split EPs – but finally we have a full–length release to contend with! This indeed a brutal and intense release – the production alone could strip wallpaper, and the first few notes of `Unsufferable Nightmare’ leap out...

04/05/2010

This is the very first demo from German underground death fanatics Obscure Infinity, released in 2008. Since then there seems to be no news about any more recent releases as far as I can tell, but as these guys seem to be operating deep underground (somewhere near the earth’s core I’m guessing!) in some very dark place, news probably travels very s...

24/04/2010

This is the third full-length release from Dutch death metal crew Devious, and what a great slab of dark, heaviness it is. Like a finely matured slice of Edam, this is an extremely well-balanced affair – tasty but not overpowering, filling but not sickly (sorry – I had to get a Dutch cheese reference in there somewhere!). How a band of such qual...

09/01/2010

This is an impressive debut album from these brutal Danes – although it’s not all that surprising considering the band contains ex-members of Exmortem, Panzerchrist and various other Danish underground death metal bands. It’s a face-pummelling affair from the start, walking a fine line between intense brutality and headbanging grooves. The produ...

06/01/2010

With a name like `The Rectum Satans’ you’d be forgiven for thinking that English was not the bands first, second or third language… but you’d be wrong! These purveyors of so-called `Brown Metal’ hail from Pennsylvania in the United States and are without a shadow of a doubt, a joke band. It’s also a rather puerile, tasteless joke too – all six trac...

13/12/2009

This release is about as un-commercial as it’s possible to get. This crushing release from the Swiss experimental doomsters contains a single track, `Monochrome’ which runs for just over 35 minutes, and was developed in collaboration with other musicians for an audio-visual project. The band named themselves after a sub-species of whale, one of...

12/10/2009