Author: Matthew Elliot
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Nest – S/T EP
Like a gratuitous steel-toed punt to a prone skull, NEST kick the shit out of restraint and then some with an overdriven, relentlessly brutal 2-man black-hearted doom beat down straight from the KEEPER/PRIMITIVE MAN/FISTER school of glacial extremity. Pummelling, ponderous drums wrestle with ursine-heavy guitars and some apropos samples on this raw, dynamic self-titled EP…
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Ramlord – Crippled Minds, Sundered Wisdom
Since unleashing the self-described “opus to [the] inherent filth of mankind,” Crippled Minds, Sundered Wisdom, blackened crust comrades RAMLORD have focused on fine tuning their attack. They’ve embarked on an ongoing series of split releases (including last summer’s crust-meets-USBM collision with Krieg), which have honed the trio into a truly formidable agent of sonic depravity.…
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Desolate Shrine – The Heart of the Netherword
So apparently the folks at Dark Descent Records (home of THANTIFAXATH, HORRENDOUS, & LVCIFYRE, among others) don’t want to give hapless metal scribes even a brief respite. Feels like we’re barely out of year-end review season (and into the new year) and they’ve already dropped yet another hands-down triumph. Hailing from the Nordic climbs of…
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Atten Ash – The Hourglass
Three-piece NC atmospheric death doom combo ATTEN ASH bear deep roots in the scene, despite only becoming an entity in 2011; Barre Gambling & Archie Hunt cut their teeth in heavyweight acts DAYLIGHT DIES and LEGION OF THE FALLEN before joining forces with founder James Greene. This collective muscle memory helped to carry an already…
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Clouds Taste Satanic – To Sleep Beyond The Earth
Take the minimalistic, defiantly monotonous widescreen dynamics of Dopesmoker era Sleep out of its vast desert backdrop and into the claustrophobic urban confines of contemporary Brooklyn. No, this isn’t the setup to a cruel Invisible Oranges joke. Glacially-paced NYC instrumental doom quartet Clouds Taste Satanic (nothing like a Flaming Lips reference to bolster yr tr00…
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Bewitcher – Midnight Hunters
Unlike the vast number of their Pacific Northwest contemporaries, Portland, OR party kvlt BEWITCHER keep it simple, succinct and proudly Satanic. Eschewing lumbering, portentous doomdoomdoomDOOMYdoomdoomdoom in favour of a relentless, no nonsense speed metal attack, these lithe Bacchanal sonic sorcerers have conjured a confident, defiantly lo-fi sound. Over the course of their three demo EPs,…
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Darkspace – III I
“We die praising the Star Maker, the Star Destroyer.“ With little tangible to pin down in a typical ‘kvlt’ sense (beyond corpse paint and obsidian stage pageantry), the mercurial interstellar ritualism of Bern, Switzerland trio Darkspace remains one of ambient black metal’s most intriguingly opaque and highly original offerings. Since their advent in 1999, Darkspace…
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At The Gates – At War With Reality
Comeback hype, buoyed by hazy, revisionist memory (and no little vain optimism) rarely bears fruit. That’s the well-established, seemingly legit, conventional wisdom in popular music. However, recent comeback stints from Autopsy and Obituary, alongside the relentless, entropy-defying longevity of acts like Vader that are only just now reaching full potential, have defiantly pushed the bloody…
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Metalhead’s Holiday Gift Guide 2014
December is almost upon us. Unless you’re one of those highly-organized, forward-thinking people, you’ve likely still got a ways to go with your holiday shopping. There’s still plenty of time! But we here at Hellbound want to make things as easy for as possible, so once again we’re stepping up to help you out on…