O.K. First off -- the bad stuff. On certain tracks of the newly released "Burning Down" the singer from Forgot sounds like Popeye the sailor man on vocals, and I mean really, more than a little bit. The guitars are out of tune almost throughout, and it's drum machine all throughout as well. Not a whole lot of variance going on there in the rhythm s...

26/02/2009

Coldworker is grinding death metal that comes at you fast without giving you time to catch your breath. The band is a relentless war machine. The drum blasts fill you with lead like a gatlin gun. The highly-flammable guitar riffs and burning leads will scorch you like a flamethrower. Complete the attack with intense snarling vox that deliver lyrics...

26/02/2009

This is a solid death metal act. I would compare them to U.s. hardcore acts such as Hemlock and Pro-Pain. Very heavy thrash riffs with groove. The sound of their music is raw and firey. The songs on this EP were done in 2005 and two of the three are to be included on the soon to be released full-length "Storm The Walls," which should be a skorchin...

26/02/2009

Dorn is symphonic black-death metal, elements of folk thrown in there. Teutonic black metal of the diabolical variety -- who do they sound like? Rammstein meets Falkenbach - I don't know. Maybe I'm the wrong person to ask but that's what I'm hearing. The album "Spiegel der Unendlichkeit" is the fifth full-length album by Dorn which began as the...

26/02/2009

Black metal of the old school variety but with a twist. You've heard this type of thing before -- but not comin' from Southeast Asia, am I right? Hearing the raw distortion skorching through your skull like blasphemous flames burning through the black forest -- sure hope there wasn't a church built there -- feeling the hot hiss of serpent's breath...

26/02/2009

Guitarist Curran Murphy is a former member of Nevermore who now has his own project Shatter Messiah in which his guitar virtuosity is given the opportunity to really shine. "Never To Play The Servant" by Shatter Messiah is a well-produced hardcore death metal album with melodic flare and plenty of technical briliance to boot. Shatter Messiah vocali...

26/02/2009

Powerful guitar riffs interwoven with bittersweet melodies and somber piano accompaniment, beauty and beast passionately vocalizing tales of love and loss, war and peace -- that is the sound of Draconian. The Burning Halo is a mixture of doom and goth that serves as a brilliant follow-up to their previous release "Arcane Rain Fell" from 2005. This...

26/02/2009

H.407 are another of these new Polish death-metal bands that as soon as you hear them, you go berserk and fly into a frenzied, spastic fit of legs kicking and arms flailing, throwing windmill punches at your shadow and your neighbor's shadow (you hope that was just his shadow for his sake!) head jerking back and forth so hard that your glasses come...

26/02/2009

Yeah, I think it's real nice Quiet Riot are back. Back in the early 80's QR were selling ersatz insanity and resurrecting old Slade tunes. Now in 2007 they are selling modern maturity and sober living. The lyrics to the new tunes on "Rehab" deal with some heavy life lessons from being burned in relationships, excessive partying, the corruption of t...

26/02/2009

The County Medical Examiners are a rather sinister brand of goregrind who have a knack for giving listeners the feeling of being toe-tagged and body-bagged!!! The good doctors are heavily influenced by early Carcass and one of them is rumored to be a former member of the band Exhumed. The musicians in TCME go by pseydonyms and their true identities...

26/02/2009

Awesome tight as hell percussion, and intelligent use of the whole drum kit, vox that are a storm of gastro-intestinal malaise and heavy riffage, all the better to bludgeon your nervous system with. Parricide are a fine example of brutal death-grind at its brutal finest. There is a lot going on in every track to keep you from getting bored upon rep...

26/02/2009

Mourning Dawn is black metal with dark doom ambience. Walls of dramatic guitar tremolos accompanied by howls of anguish, morose narrations and monolithic drums that have all the charms of the natural disaster of your choice, very My Dying Bride or perhaps Bethlehem. This band began as the solo project of Laurent from the band Inborn Suffering wh...

26/02/2009