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?

  • Nightbitch – Sex and Magic

    Alas, for the most part, this EP is listenable, even enjoyable—but by no means original. That said, if a record sleeve of a black-clad woman in front of an oak tree with the words Sex and Magic along the bottom would incite you to buy this album, you won’t be disappointed with the content within.

  • Krallice – Diotima

    Tightly-controlled and ferociously intertwined guitar riffs.

  • Hell – Human Remains

    This is damn near perfection.

  • Witch Mountain – South of Salem

    Highly recommended for fans of Sleep, YOB, Black Pyramid, and any other band with a legitimate claim in “stoner doom” territory.

  • Batillus – Furnace

    Furnace is, without a doubt, the heaviest record I have heard this year. That’s the first, foremost, and most important thing you need to know here. It may also be the best.

  • Hate Eternal – Phoenix Amongst the Ashes

    I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the casual death metal fan (if there really are any) will find Phoenix Amongst the Ashes hard to swallow. There isn’t anything cool or ‘hip’ to grab on to here, and it will make many of the mall metal fans run screaming from…

  • The Gates of Slumber – The Wretch

    Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the trad-metal gallop of tunes like “Ice Worm” and “Iron Hammer,” but the new, slower TGOS on display on this album is right up my alley.

  • Zombi – Escape Velocity

    Escape Velocity features a stripped-down Zombi—just synths and drums pulsating to a driving beat. It feels more urban and Germanic; at times like a sinister Kraftwerk. Zombi come across as cool masters of technology now; instead of mad lab techs trying to keep a roomful of aging machines alive and in synch. On Escape Velocity,…

  • Seditius – Carne da Macello

    Gruesome Greg reviews Carne da Macello, the new album by Italy’s Seditius

  • Sourvein – Black Fang

    These guys have been doing this so long that they don’t need to mess with the formula. Black Fang is like a mean Carolina moonshine—consume at your own risk!