Ultra-Violence – Privilege To Overcome – Album Review (Punishment 19 Records)
Thrash is back! You know how we know this? Well, that’s because the respectable journalists of the world have told us it is so. And because they tell us it is so, record companies have given some of their precious Deathcore dollars to some lucky, and plucky, musical speedsters to unleash upon the world through [...]
Entrails – Raging Death Album Review (Metal Blade Records)
As a journalist of the Metal variety, one is expected to use such adjectives as “bludgeoning” and “crushing” or “grinding” or possibly even “demonic” and one may even garner praise for such brave insight. One may even succumb to the odd passage of alliteration to the rapturous ejaculation of readers still convulsing in the erotic [...]
Hatriot – Heroes Of Origin Album Review (Massacre Records)
One finds it profoundly interesting that the best track on Testament’s Darks Roots Of Earth, “American Hatred” the only good thrash song on the album, was in fact written by their former member, Steve Zetro De Souza. In crime television shows and movies, the prosecution talks about means, motive and opportunity. Ignoring the debates about [...]
Eternal Rest – Prophetic Album Review (Deepsend Records)
Released in April through Deepsend Records and, like so many bands that ply their trade in a social media infested landscape, Prophetic by Australia’s Eternal Rest will escape the notice of so many. An undeserved fate if this release is anything to go by. Which it will have to, for obvious reasons that may not [...]
Atrocity – Okkult Album Review (Napalm Records)
They’re German. Their name is Atrocity. You know who they are. You don’t? Then why are you here? If you are here then you may have stepped through our virtual doorway tentatively, the name Atrocity compelling you forward but warily as knowledge of a chequered output of quality throughout their career rightfully suggests caution. But [...]
Cryptopsy & Cattle Decapitation – Underworld, London – Saturday 4th May 2013
And they sit resigned to tonight’s theme, breathing in an imposed fate, sowing dismal grand narratives, sizzled by the glow of an all-seeing wasteland. Down by the stage, dark and dusty, tethered by will to the bowge cradling them, the fans look blankly ahead. The stage is bare. The sounds are of chitchat, not [...]
F.K.U – Rise Of The Mosh Mongers Album Review (Napalm Records)
Sometimes, nothing new is brought to the ideas table. [This is not yet a business-ism yet as far as I know and, therefore, it is now copyrighted to us] But that is ok. Anything is better than silence, right? Well, no. It still needs to be a good idea. Not perfectly relevant or profoundly original. [...]
Album Of The Month: Gloryhammer – Tales From The Kingdom Of Fife (Napalm Records)
A monumental statement like “Album Of The Month” should be something that is carefully considered; but not in the traditional way. The idea of better is often fleeting and always subjective. It is a concept that cannot be valued by the abstract and petty control systems that shackle creativity. Instead, one must look to certain basics and, upon [...]
Cerekloth – In The Midst Of Life We Are In Death Album Review (Hells Headbangers Records/Hammerheart Records)
Cerekloth’s In The Midst Of Life We Are In Death released through Hell’s Headbangers is a death metal release with healthy mixture of the groove and melodic that entertains rather than frustrates like many of those who have tried such a recipe previously. Cerekloth have an edge on this particular melding in that they are [...]
Beyond Mortal Dreams – Dreaming Death Album Review (Lavadome Records)
Is it possible to say, “Boo!” to someone and still expect them to be visibly shaken fifteen minutes after the initial shock? Should Paramedics be called to issue blankets and hot mugs of coco (the drink not mugs of blacks if such a thing were possible) to reassure the victims of such shock? What is [...]
Amorphis – Circle Album Review (Nuclear Blast Records)
Lacking a definite form or clear shape. This is the meaning of amorphous. This is also what clearly describes Finland’s Amorphis’s ability to exist within the overlap of genres, to draw from each what is more than adequate enough to bolster their excellent song-writing. Their new album, Circle, breaks away from the traditional lyrical content [...]
Flotsam and Jetsam – Ugly Noise Album Review (Metal Blade Records)
Historians of Metal need not be graced with an introduction to this band. We all know you used to be in it and that they were one of the leaders of the Thrash movement. Movement. Something that goes so far and then stops. An action of finite distance or time. The ideals of a movement [...]
Helloween – HMV Forum, London – Tuesday 16th April 2013
Darkening lights and explosions. Ever darkening, more and more, the background shining illumined. Citizens pressing to the bar as notes of music flare up. A tingle of anticipation and the beginning has passed. Musicians roam stage-bound, instruments breaking silences imposed from the past. Faces declare familiarity and contentedness. This is the gig. Hello London! We [...]
Kaledon – Altor: The King’s Blacksmith Album Review (Scarlet Records)
It was bound to happen. Destined, even. Scarlet Records were doomed to provide us with a release that wasn’t all that good. Well, our faith is not diminished despite the poor quality of this latest offering from Italian Power Metal veterans, Kaledon. Altor: The King’s Blacksmith is exactly what you would expect from an Italian [...]
Avantasia – The Mystery Of TIme Album Review (Nuclear Blast Records)
What? Is this Flash Gordon? I thought I put on a CD? Checks remote. Furiously pressing buttons repeatedly. STOP. PLAY. Nope. Definitely sounds like Flash Gordon. – One almost wishes it was Flash Gordon. Epically terrible but stylistically iconic. Flash Gordon the movie not that latest Avantasia album. This is an album that one should [...]
The Modern Age Slavery – Requiem For Us All Album Review (Pavement Entertainment Inc)
Let us begin with a conclusion: this is quite a good album. Now, to present our evidence. The first (and major) positive for The Modern Age Slavery’s Requiem For Us All is the incredibly short introduction within the first track, “Requiem For Us All.” A short build-up to a pummelling and pacey middle and end. [...]
Sahg – Underworld Camden March 2013
The soul of Metal is at threat. Atheists stand your ground. We are not talking about an actual soul. Rather the fight for the intangible but evident. This fight involves the focused and truly believing against those that wish their names associated with anything. Literally anything. Or those that seek the comfort of fame within [...]
Hypocrisy – End Of Disclosure Album Review (Nuclear Blast Records)
Hypocrisy have been around for a long time. They have a new album out. This is our review: Keyboard-dominant and, as the second song suggests or reveals, spineless. Spineless, yes in that it doesn’t actually feel like an actual Metal album of creativity. It feels safe and almost loveable. Why? Well, it borrows much from [...]
Finntroll – Bloodsvept Album Review (Century Media Records)
Being English (barely; a Northerner I be so the geographical qualification is limited to just that; geography) it is nigh on impossible to grasp what is the meaning behind Blodsvept and, the financial cyberpunk state of affairs created by the greedy rich being what it is, I can’t afford a translator to illuminate me further. [...]
Pyrithion – The Burden Of Sorrow (Metal Blade Records)
Tribalism. A weakness of man. The greatest crutch of Earth’s most destructive species. Look within the tribalism and take away the reasons for tribalism and one will see an example of the deconstructionism of flesh in operation. We hate. We hate anything that surrounds us. This is the greatest and worst asset of our species. [...]
GloryHammer – Tales From The Kingdom Of Fife (Napalm Records)
Well, this is certainly an album to provoke questions upon first glance, the most urgent of which might be “What’s the deal with this?”. Admittedly, the front cover might escape deeper scrutiny until the song titles are, um, encountered, at which point the more inquisitive amongst us might re-examine the front and conclude that it [...]
Revel In Flesh – Manifested Darkness Album Review (FDA Rekotz)
Revel In Flesh almost sounds like some Satanic or evil priest sermonising on the beauty of the tasty organism known as humanity. Taken metaphorically, one can also see the relevance to the sermons of the most fundamentalist of American preachers; preachers, ostensibly of hate; revellers in the misery of flesh that is not white. It [...]
Album Of The Month: Feared – Furor Incarnatus
March 2013 has brought to our attention the multitude of talent that enriches the lives of the downtrodden masses. There were a number of great releases this month but the one that really stuck out as being that little bit special was the release, Furor Incarnatus, from Feared. Here’s a taster of what we had [...]
Seven Kingdoms – The Fire Is Mine Album Review (Nightmare Records)
Nightmare Records really should change their name to something more suitably Power Metalish. There is nothing terrifying about the uplifting harmonies of Power Metal. They are, however, on a roll at the moment with Seven Kingdoms’ The Fire Is Mine another fine release to add to the roster. One wonders how they manage to find [...]
Hatchet – Dawn of The End Album Review (The End Records)
Does anyone who reads metal magazines and reviews know how long an aeon or an age actually is? Is it longer than a couple of years? A decade? A generation? (We know what it is but, for the sake of this point, humour us momentarily?) The subject of time has been discussed by philosophers and [...]
Deicide – Underworld, London – Wednesday 20th March 2013
Dear Metal, Oh holy abstraction, we offer upon you our praise, our deepest longings transmuted into worship. We kneel at the altar, salivating noisily, awaiting your dictation through sounds and fury. Days stop and we stand still in the tuneful glow of your acolytes. Our interpretation knows no bounds. Sex novels are paeans to musical [...]
Scent Of Death – Of Martyr’s Agony And Hate Album Review (Bloody Productions/Pathologically Explicit Recordings)
Scent Of Death are from Spain and, unlike the Spanish economic outlook, are not devoid of hope. When one conjures the word brutal in the mind one would immediately think of a punch in the face. In slow motion this violent act is immensely gratifying to watch in all its shocking glory. Now speed that [...]
Scelerata – The Sniper Album Review (Nightmare Records)
It is interesting to note that one of the world’s poorest and largest countries, Brazil, is continuing to produce such a high level of talent. Of course, statistical analysis could point out the most obvious reasons why but it is still a relevant point. The country is also large enough for success within their own [...]
Feared – Furor Incarnatus Album Review (Self-Released)
Feared. The very utterance of the word conjures something primal and terrifying or, at the very least, makes that lizard part of the brain somewhat wary of what is to transpire after the merest mention of the name. Despite many people’s insistence that the world of Metal gives them strength, that the gross and the [...]
Six Feet Under – Unborn Album Review (Metal Blade Records)
This new LP from Six Feet Under follows on the heels of some lineup changes in the band, so perhaps it should not come as a surprise to find that it isn’t very much like the previous album. This is clear from the first track, which starts off in slower territory before departing into an [...]
Job for a Cowboy – Underworld, London – Wednesday 6th March 2013
It’s an enduring, albeit sarcastic fact that London’s Metal community is always on time. Everything else gets eschewed in the name of Metal. Time needn’t exclude the obsessed from their fix, and early hours are just another sacrifice in a long line of notable achievements in the expression of loyalty, another rubber stamp of five [...]
Album Of The Month: February 2013 – Heavatar – Opus I: All My Kingdoms
Heavatar – Opus I: All My Kingdoms Album Review (Napalm Records) Okay. This month was a little closer than last with Rings Of Saturn’s Dingir and Heimdall’s Aeneid real contenders for Album Of The Month but February’s esteemed accolade, a gong so prestigious that the organisers of the Grammies are thinking of committing suicide (please, please do [...]
Tellus Requiem – Invicuts (The 11th Hour) Album Review (Nightmare Records)
One could be forgiven for thinking, at the beginning of the second track “Red Horizon” that you had accidentally put a Firewind CD in for a moment but after a brief moment of confusion you are presented with some heavy prog Metal. Scandinavia’s latest export, Tellus Requiem are a little different from the normal Northern [...]
Lifeless – Godconstruct Album Review (FDA Rekotz)
The cover art for this CD shows a cathedral of the damned, twisted and organic, its entrance yawning open as a pair of flanking, pontifical figures gesture us inside, and the somewhat ecclesiastical feel continues with the chanted, medieval-feeling intro, which establishes a nicely atmospheric context for the old-school death which is to follow. The [...]
Hardcore Superstar – C’mon Take On Me Album Review (Nuclear Blast Records)
Seventy years. Just seventy years to make one’s mark on a floating rock hurtling through space. Or half that if you are a true drug-addled star of the rock’n’roll variety. Not long to make an impression but time enough to be remembered in the minds of overawed acolytes. But what impression have Hardcore Superstar made [...]
HARDCORE SUPERSTAR – SPLIT YOUR LIP Album Review (Nuclear Blast Records)
Have the ravages of Rock’n’roll excess finally gotten the better of Sweden’s most famous export since Abba, or more recently Sven Goran Ericsson? Or maybe the brush with European and global acclaim since the release of their eponymously-titled album has stifled their desire to produce quality hard-edged thrash-infused sleaze? Whatever the reason for the obvious [...]
DGM – Momentum Album Review (Scarlet Records)
A funny fact about DGM: they take their name from the initials of the founding members, none of whom are still in the band. This is not the only spectre of the past that haunts DGM. Listening to Momentum, their new album, one thing is immediately apparent: the menace of influence, audible in every song. [...]
Heavatar – Opus I: All My Kingdoms Album Review (Napalm Records)
Once again, it is time to press play on the stereo; ignore more important and weighty matters that really affect humanity in favour of the selfish. Everywhere one looks around the world, one sees news stories about the atrocities committed on a daily basis on other flesh and blood beings, theft on a mass scale [...]
Infernal Tenebra – New Formed Revelations Album Review (Massacre Records)
Introduction: Infernal Tenebra are a heavy Metal band. They play a style of Metal firmly in the category of Death Metal. They come from Croatia. They are a band. They play instruments. Standard intro over, what does the album, New Formed Revelations offer to the world? Something that is very enjoyable that’s what. It is [...]
Lecherous Nocturne – Behold Almighty Doctrine Album Review (Unique Leader Records)
Ok. How do we start this review? Where’s the checklist? Ah, there it is. Ok then: Brutal? Check. Fast? Check. Sufficiently Metal-sounding track and album names? Check. Three things that every Metal fan needs. After beer, crisps and boobs. A recipe for awesomeness. (Brutal, fast and metal names, that is.) So why has this recipe [...]
Demented – Across The Nature’s Stillness Album Review (Klonosphere Records)
The intimate marriage between brutal technicality and beauty can only be understood by those steeped in a higher knowledge of appreciation; the appreciation of complication and the aesthetics of complication itself being beauty. For those who know, a mere nod is approval and recognition. That infinitesimally small movement communication enough for a book filled with [...]
Devourment – Conceived In Sewage Album Review (Relapse Records)
Devourment have been treading the hallowed boards of the mythic Death Metal stage for quite some time now. Veterans of the genre if you will. Conceived In Sewage is the Texan’s fifth release upon an unsuspecting world. The first two tracks have a slower groove that predominates which offers very little other than the feeling [...]
Heimdall – Aeneid Album Review (Scarlet Records)
Scarlet Records, take a bow. You have confirmed yourselves magicians of Power Metal promotion. First, Thy Majestie then Secret Sphere and now, Heimdall. No Heimdall are not a Viking Metal band from the snowy tundra of Northern Europe but a Power Metal band from the shores of Italy. And, judging from their fifth album, a [...]
Sacred Steel – The Bloodshed Summoning Album Review (Cruz Del Sur Music)
It is February already. It seems only like yesterday that one stared out of the window at the New Year revelries with a look of scorn. The furrow in one’s brow has not lessened however and it is up to Sacred Steel, whose new album The Bloodshed Summoning, is released on 15th February 2013 to [...]
Vader – Underworld, London – Friday 8th February 2013
Personal space knows no realisation in the pokey Underworld. Its cramped confines are a pit of inertia when sold out. Thus follows the usual indelicacies: somebody’s foreskin is snagged on a passing keychain, while one man’s shart is another’s ruination. The stairs swell with human presence, a silent Ganges flows off sight. The back bar [...]
Thyrfing – De Ödeslösa Album Review (NoiseArt Records)
The last Thyrfing album, Hels Vite, saw the band release a much slower, considered and ultimately more atmospheric approach shorn of the obvious traditional Viking Metal Folk-inspired orchestration and adopt a much more overtly Black Metal sounding album. Longer songs enabling the band to build up the mood and heighten the experience where the Viking [...]
Rings Of Saturn – Dingir Album Review (Unique Leader Records)
“There in the narrow hall, outside the bolted door with the covered keyhole, I often heard sounds which filled me with an indefinable dread—the dread of vague wonder and brooding mystery. It was not that the sounds were hideous, for they were not; but that they held vibrations suggesting nothing on this globe of earth, [...]
Album Of The Month: January 2013 – Bob Katsionis, Rest In Keys
So, a New Year and already one month of it is over. Whilst the market hasn’t been saturated with reasons to starve the kids because there is just too many albums out that you just must buy, there have been one or two that have piqued our interest. After careful consideration, the most enjoyable has [...]
Voivod – Target Earth – Album Review (Century Media Records)
This new album from the now-reformed Voivod is, essentially, a return to an earlier era of the band’s existence. Their output from the mid-90s onwards became more obviously and directly heavy, whilst the more experimental aspects of their prior sound were, though not entirely dispensed with, increasingly subsumed beneath the mutation in their style. Many [...]
Blockheads – This World Is Dead Album Review (Relapse Records)
It would appear that turning up the volume while listening to Blockheads’ This World Is Dead causes the speakers to move across the table and the neighbours to perfectly time their wall-banging pleas for silence. An excellent start to any review but is there more subtler substance the grindcore on offer here? Not sure what [...]
Lightning Swords Of Death – Baphometic Chaosium (2013) Album Review
Divisive and at once derisive to many, Black Metal is an enigmatic scene in the Metal landscape that exists in its very own darkened state. Those versed in the history and the vibe will see the menace behind the theatrics but the music itself is often overlooked in favour of the image or controversy . [...]
Helloween – Straight Out Of Hell Album Review (Spinefarm Records)
There is a clear line of decline of artistic output that is commensurate with age; one need only look at everything Metallica have produced in the last ten years and beyond or the inconsistent output of Megadeth since Mustaine stopped using drugs and became a Christian. (Although, this does make for great comedy) A lack [...]
Aeon – Relentless Garage, London gig review – Wednesday 16th January 2012
No metaphors of ascension. No grand transcendence to a better plane. Just a room sitting above Holloway Road. This is the Relentless Garage’s bastard sibling, the upstairs penetralium that picks up low profile acts and new starters, industry dregs and violated oldsters. Up crusty stairs, through grey double doors, this is a crawl space masquerading [...]
Nightfall – Cassiopeia (Metal Blade Records) Album Review
Let’s see, what jokes do we have about Greece? Fiscal irresponsibility? Nope, done that already. Decline of a philosophical civilisation? Bugger: done that one, too. Fresh out of material, perhaps you, loyal reader, would prefer to read something of more relevance? This review should be limited to these words and these words alone: upon first [...]
Bob Katsionis – Rest In Keys (2012) Album Review
This introduction will be short… “I’m On My Own” sounds like a subconscious jumping into the air of an oppressed husband whose wife has left him at home for the evening while she is out partying: “Yey! She’s gone! I can do what I want! Yey!” Unfair? Probably that would be how it would sound [...]
Christmas, Bloody Christmas gig review – Lorient, Linkoping, December 2012
So begins another review; the final review of 2012. Not content with the terrible weather of England, we set sail (well, flew to be more precise) for the Viking shores of Sweden to witness the efforts of unheralded warriors of Metal. Lorient in Linkoping is predominantly a restaurant that at night, sloughs off the dashing [...]
Iced Earth – Underworld, London – Thursday 20th December 2012
They brought their own lines of dialogue. Twenty minutes of rambunctious chitchat and a myriad of painful decisions. How to approach the task at hand? What routes of wordsmithery might yield something? Comparative analysis? Grandiloquent reverence? Modest description? Annual update? Or the complete collapse of the critical faculties, every organ of thought thrown into disarray [...]
Sulphur Aeon – Swallowed By The Ocean’s Tide (2012) Album Review
Christmas. That time of the year when people gleefully spout a constant stream of bile about their own selfish generosity. That time when people care about nothing other than the acquisition of more stuff usually made by poor, overworked slaves in countries with the sanitation concerns of Amy Winehouse on a needle-binge. That time when [...]
More bands added to Hellfest 2013
As promised, here is the second announcement of 36 more bands, in addition to the first 50 names … The new confirmed bands are : ZZ TOP HELLOWEEN – SAXON – KREATOR – IMMORTAL – AT THE GATES 3 DOORS DOWN – ABSU – AMORPHIS – ASPHYX – CAPTAIN CLEANOFF – CEREMONIAL OATH – CLUTCH – [...]
Macabre & Obituary – Relentless Garage, London – Wednesday 5th December 2012
“What about a man cuts off his penis and cooks it for dinner?” “Happened.” “What about a chess genius murders people and records the acts on a chessboard?” “Happened.” “What about a man keeps his victims’ corpses in order to create a zombie army? Surely that’s make-believe?” “No. It happened.” “What about a human stew? [...]
Vile – Rare Tracks – Album Review 2012 (Hammerheart Records)
Picture the scene: I am sitting at my desk reviewing another band that sounds like their guitarist is a retarded mutant with the hands of The Penguin when the technical and the brutal suddenly go up to a level that, not only wakes me from my doze, but also knocks everything down within arms length [...]
Luca Turilli’s Rhapsody – O2 Islington, London – Monday 12th November 2012
‘We tunnelled beneath the village, escaping the clutches of the Gangorions, stealing through the night to the river, to salvation, to reach famous new glories, fabled places where kings would regain the throne and power would be reclaimed.’ These were the notes in the toilets, scrawled up the walls. It was as if someone was [...]
Secret Sphere – Portrait Of A Dying Heart – Album Review (2012)
So… you have come to here to listen to our opinions, no? Your digital journey has led you down a possibly meandering path of apathy and automaton clicking to be bathed in the glory of our esteemed words? Perhaps you have heard, via the binary grapevine that criticism is a respected art here? Whatever your [...]
Aeon – Aeons Black – Album Review (2012)
Once again Christmas approaches and once again our darkened hearts seek the solace of hate in Death Metal. Thousands of Christmas shoppers have been saved by listening to fifty minutes of Aeon’s new album, Aeons Black. They will never know quite how close they came to being my first victims, choked to death on their [...]
Kamelot – HMV Forum, London – Wednesday 7th November 2012
Take from me the gothic cape and wrench me free from the keyboard melody. Lift the damnable air of melancholy and release the ravens already. Let that man through, he’ll lighten the mood. Peel back the sticky paste of angst and pitch leather and steel chains dropping noisily, clanging, beneath the sternum. Their cries, their [...]
Evile & Wolf – Relentless Garage, London – Sunday 28th October 2012
“It was good.” “It was bad.” “I agree.” “I disagree.” So the sayings ignite. Words in the aftermath, flowing like rivers. These are the terms of the dialogue, paths of discourse so well-worn we slide across them easily. We slip slaloming on skis of cliché. With insight miles out of range, we heed no [...]
Death – Spiritual Healing Reissue Album Review (Relapse Records)
The time is 1990 and as many short-haired and short-brained yuppies awake from the eighties with a marching-powder hangover, a revolution of such quiet yet monumental influence begins. A revolution that spanned the globe before the idea of globalisation was brutally forced upon the world by the Chicago School of Economics acolytes; acolytes of a [...]
Grand Supreme Blood Court – Bow Down Before The Blood Court Album Review (2012)
Ok, before I take this review any further, there’s something I want to get off of my chest, which will probably cause some level of offense to anyone anticipating this release, but tough shit and fuck you, as this has to be said: This is probably one of the most annoying band names I’ve ever [...]
MARDUK – DARK ENDLESS (REISSUE) Album Review (2012)
The world you see around you is just an illusion, created by your mind to keep you from going insane. And so begins (after a suitably sinister piano introduction) the opening track to criminally under-renowned Dark Endless, 1992 debut album of the Black Metal war machine known as Marduk, re-issued and re-mastered for your listening [...]
Abiotic – “Symbiosis” Album Review (2012)
This slice of grind-influenced hyper tech-death is an excellent example of the genre, boasting many good ideas which are implemented with extreme technical prowess. In general, although the rhythm work features some classically-evil sounding death metal riffs, and much other variety besides, it often returns to stop-start, rhythmically pummelling passages over which the inventive and [...]
HOLY KNIGHTS – Between Daylight And Pain Album Review (Scarlet Records)
This slice of symphonic power metal seems to defy simple categorisation despite being easily described in those three words. Looking at the cover, which shows a statue in the foreground with the background split into two realms of polarised light and darkness or good and evil, with the statue reflecting this polarisation, it’s difficult to [...]
ANTROPOMORPHIA – Evangelivm Nekromantia Album Review (2012)
There’s something oddly Catholic about the cover of this LP, which, consisting as it does of a cloaked, mutilated young lady having sex with the pallid corpse of another mutilated young lady whilst a triumvirate of crimson-robed skeletons look on, as another purple-robed (and, presumably, equally skeletal) figure glides ethereally towards them, its face turned [...]
Sonata Arctica – Stones Grow Her Name Album Review (2012)
As an artist should you really and truly care whether your fans like your music? Should not the important thing be to pursue a creative direction to its fullest extent? To force the mind to break boundaries and shatter preconceptions and expectations with a timeless work of art that has relevance? This Utopian idea of [...]
Wildestarr – A Tell Tale Heart Album Review (2012)
A media-centred outlook to society creates legends and heroes from the simplest of human actions. A sensationalist reaction to create drama where there exists only duty. Plagued within the Victorian structure is our very notion that the merest act is heroic and not merely an act that is required of a decent human. Biological systems [...]
Malevolent Creation – Underworld, London – 10th April 2011
There’s comfort in the familiar. Whether it’s a piece of music or a pair of socks, the formerly-touched and caressed has a certainty missing from everything foreign and mysterious. The ominous den assumes a new colour once it’s been entered, just as a repeated venture is approached differently after the first instance. There’s safety in [...]
Ihsahn – Electric Ballroom, London – Thursday 19th August 2010
Lateness spells defeat. But too quick an approach hastens the end. These are words that echo asCamden High Streetrushes past, one long smear of smoke and concrete. Two metal warriors, ironclad racers, hurtle over pavement, knocking over bins and tin cans, maintaining a balance that may escape them at any time. One, a moustache wearing [...]
Helloween – HMV Forum, Kentish Town – Sunday 5th December 2010
By the time we approach the venue, moving quickly to the repel the cold, we’ve heard tonight’s signature sound a dozen times. These animalistic mating cries unite the sole walkers into single bodies that coil through the grimNorth Londonmurk. Any intruders are warded off by levels of pitch that cannot be read or consumed. [...]
Hanover Choir – St Stephen’s Church, Gloucester Road – Saturday 11th December 2010
It was with open minds, overactive curiosity glands and a lust for mince pies that we stepped into the church. The pews had already filled up and soft choral music radiated from the front. The arches hung in the air, touched by a breeze sent in fromGloucester Road. This was a strange setting, a non-place, [...]
Enslaved – Underworld, London – 22nd April 2011
There’s something extremely nice about listening to Black Metal on a summery spring day. It rubs antagonistically up against all the displays that accompany the weather: sun hats, laughter, shorts, frolics. The bland predictability of the British sunshine, with its routine trips to the park and ice cream-fed fat children, has a sickening lack of [...]
De Profundis & co – Unicorn, Camden, London – Saturday 15th January 2011
We are led to believe that price is a means for signalling worth, that monetary value reflects some intrinsic, indelible, transcendental property. The ideology of the market underscores the fallacy: expensiveness equates to quality. The exchange of cash is our access to worthwhile objects and experiences. Capitalism’s sly touch renders this process very subtle: there [...]
Dark Tranquillity – Underworld, London – Tuesday 28th September 2010
Even though it’s a Tuesday night, and some of us presumably have work tomorrow, the Underworld is completely full. Both over near the stage and at the bar there are masses congregating. Every darkened space reveals a picture of overpopulation: young twink metallers sipping hops from jars, jolly leathern titans cavorting with lithe jezebels, [...]
Hardcore Superstar – Electric Ballroom, London – Friday 1st April 2011
Ursula Le Guin wrote The Left Hand of Darkness as a way to explore the trappings of gender in our society. In the novel there’s a distant planet populated by a human species all but identical to us except for one fact: they are without gender. They work, travel, socialise, live normal lives, all without [...]
Chthonic & Evile – Underworld, London – Friday 18th March 2011
Back at the Underworld once again. Rarely does a month go by without a visit to the oasis at the heart of Camden. Metal hotspots may mark other vistas of the city, other regions hosting the play of Metal, but they are generally few. To many, the Underworld is the stand-out provider of Metal in [...]
Cattle Decapitation – Monolith Of Inhumanity Album Review (2012)
This band always has such great, inventive album covers – beautiful, horrifying, and drenched in meaning. Cattle Decapitation never just pick a generic image or use a random gory picture – there is genuine thought invested in the creation of an image which has a message or represents an idea. Somewhat unusually, they always relate [...]
Cavalera Conspiracy – Blunt Force Trauma Album Review
For years we mourned the loss of Sepultura. Time elapsed as we sought solace in the treasures of the past, forever ensorcelled by Beneath the Remains. We tried to turn our heads from the present, from the tribulations of a band once admired, ignoring the truth. But it was too hard. Their downfall began with [...]
Blood Red Throne – Purple Turtle, London – Monday 2nd May 2011
At Mornington Crescent, a short walk from Camden Town, there are two venues. One is a palatial Grade II listed building with a long history as part of the British cultural fabric. It boasts Doric pillars in its blanched stone exterior and a dome high above its summit. The interiors are ornate and regal, a [...]
Kamelot – O2 Islington, London – 28th April 2011
It would start off like any other Saturday morning cartoon serial. A voice-over speaks to us as the camera floats down from the sky, entering a bedroom window. “Wilber was a normal schoolboy until one day a freak accident melded his mind and body to the music he loved – and he became…Power Metal Man.” [...]
Firewind – Relentless Garage, London – Friday 7th January 2011
Familiar sounds surged upon the senses when we entered the Relentless Garage. Any of the comfort usually afforded by the familiar appeared to be denied from the off. Here our wish to preserve the present, to seek a hardy musical bliss from the eminent Greek headliners, burst almost immediately. We trudged off the gum-specked boulevard-run [...]
Marty Friedman – Underworld, London – 6th May 2011
The bar was empty. The foyer, if you can call it that, was empty. The merch tables were also empty, like deserts bearing expensive t-shirts and oases of factory-reek CDs and posters. Where were the folks? Usually this area is swarming with loiterers and urchins before the bands arrive. Had everyone opted to see Katatonia [...]
Blind Guardian – Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London – Sunday 26th September 2010
It takes only ten seconds to wipe Steelwing from the collective memory, to effortlessly scrub them off the minds of all present at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire. We knew a support band would wither and die tonight considering the epic force succeeding them. They were predestined to exist as mere memories, the sort kicked and [...]
Atheist – O2 Islington, London – 23rd April 2011
Atheist are a Death Metal band from Florida. They formed in the 1980s. They have released four studio albums and one live album. Last year they released a new album, Jupiter; now they are touring it. So begins the clichéd review. It continues: they played London, they played these songs, they were good, blah blah [...]
Arch Enemy – HMV Forum, Kentish Town – Saturday 27th November 2010
Shit hit the fan. It was a throwback to a bygone era, the travails of old come back to haunt us. Or perhaps more: perhaps a demonstration of societal frailties that go unconsidered. The romancers saw it as nostalgic; the hapless victims saw it as irritating. April 2010 began as expected, a solid chunk [...]
Annihilator – O2 Islington – Saturday 20th November 2010
We stood in the thoroughfare looking anxiously upward at the revellers spilling out of the Wetherspoon’s upstairs. They cast us accusative stares, to which we returned smirks of indifference. The usual Saturday night urchins strolled past. Over to one side the HMV flashed offers of discounted consoles and ultra-special Special Editions, tired old cinema fare, [...]
Sigh – Underworld, London – Tuesday 10th August 2010
Through hazy, rain-splashed windows, passionate remarks fly between a doppelganger and his original. On the inside, perched atop a table, empty bottles shaking precariously, the first shouts manically at the opposite, gesturing wildly to confirm his ire, a fist shuttling words into the glass. On the outside, wrapped in yards of leather lest the clouds [...]
Ancient Ascendant – Scream Lounge, London – Thursday 10th February 2010
After an arduous train journey and a lengthy trek through the depressing streets of Croydon, we finally came to the Scream Lounge. By this point our patience had worn thin, battered by train delays and bastard maps full of lies. We yearned only for liquid toxins with which to banish the suffering and a smidgen [...]
Korpiklaani gig review– Relentless Garage – Thursday 28th October 2010
They ensnared us and walled up the exits. They hindered our egress and watered our eyes. An hour ago we were ripped from the tarmac ofHolloway Roadand imprisoned within the confines of the Garage. Now Korpiklaani lumber onto the stage, bringing to an end a painful wait, the cheers eliminating any grumbles that once chose [...]
Alestorm & Sabaton – Electric Ballroom – Thursday 14th October 2010
Gearing up for the narcissist’s convention across the road, he wraps the pink headband around his peroxide hair and strides away from the tube station. Two steps over the tarmac and he sees his kin. They stand waving leather-clad arms, their feather boas moving in the wind. He moves towards them. Then a foreign presence [...]
Sophicide – “Perdition Of The Sublime” Album Review (2012)
Anti-intellectualism is a real thing and it is something that has been around for a long time. Richard Hofstadter’s 1963 book, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, described America’s anti-intellectualism as “older than our national identity.” Henry A. Giroux says that we are living in a time that “might be appropriately called the age of the disappearing intellectual.” [...]
Follow Us!