Category: Reviews – Audio

Glorious metal in all its earthly forms, compressed onto shiny plastic discs or into digital files. Which ones will become the soundtrack to your life?

  • Culted – Oblique to All Paths

    Culted – Oblique to All Paths

    By Gruesome Greg Bit of an interesting back story to this death-doom unit, mostly from Winnipeg, but with a Swedish singer they’ve never actually met in person, exchanging songs over the internet and whatnot. OK, so maybe that’s not so unusual in this day and age. Anyhoo, the band’s sophomore effort begins with massive, 19-minute…

  • HELLBOUND’s TOP 10 CANADIAN METAL ALBUMS OF 2013

    Since Hellbound.ca is a Canadian-owned and operated metal publication, we do things a little bit different than most. While 2013 was coming to a close we asked all of our contributors to pick their Top Canadian metal albums of the year. We then tabulated up their responses and have created our fifth annual Top 10…

  • Slaughterday – Nightmare Vortex

    FDA Rekotz, the home of dirty rotten metal, is fast becoming one of my fave metal labels. Already in the past few years they have released many faves of mine including Deserted Fear ,Chapel of Disease/Lifeless, Revel in Flesh etc… and now maybe even their finest moment yet with Slaughterday

  • Lumbar – The First and Last Days of Unwelcome

    Lumbar – The First and Last Days of Unwelcome

    By Gruesome Greg There’s quite the back story behind this band. Seattle guitarist Aaron Edge, suffering from multiple sclerosis, sets out to record his last album before being robbed of the ability to play any instruments—ultimately enlisting area mainstays Tad Doyle and Mike Scheidt to finish the record. Yeah, that pretty much just screams “sludge…

  • The Mezmerist – The Innocent, The Forsaken, The Guilty

    Black Sabbath’s 13 might not have Bill Ward on drums, but this album does. Well, the first four songs of it, anyways. Seems that Bill Sabbath was slumming around back in ’83 when he hooked up with some cat named Mezmercardo for some session work, and the rest was buried in history… until now.

  • Castevet – Obsian

    From the black metal roar of “The Tower” to the melancholic beauty of “The Seat of Severence”, Obsian is a complex and flowing work. As elaborate as it can be, it’s simple in how it forces the basest of human emotion to rise to the surface and dominate the experience. It’s a masterwork that continues…

  • Red Fang – Whales and Leeches

    There is definitely a cleaner, crisper sound on this one, the band seemingly going for a more widespread appeal, but without entirely abandoning its roots. Put it this way: Whales and Leeches is the album Queens of the Stone Age shouldda put out this year.

  • Astrakhan – The Pillarist EP

    For a band that has only been together a couple years, the chemistry is incredible. They’re already crafting their art in such grand fashion that before long they’ll be forcing the bands now considered influences to up their game.

  • Carcass – Surgical Steel

    “A record of solidarity between chaps from Liverpool who sharpened their skills in ’88 to explore what rotting flesh would sound like, to persevere through the age of Grunge before taking a break from the operating room. You could say this band is in a state of post-mortem, but the founding spirit of Carcass is…

  • Corrections House – Last City Zero

    By Gruesome Greg Q: What do you get when you put Mike Williams, Scott Kelly, Bruce Lamont and Sanford Parker in one building? A: Corrections House. (And with a lineup like that, you know it’s gotta be good!) That said, if you were expecting a 75-minute barrage of epic post-sludge metal complete with garbled razorwire…