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?

  • Nechochwen – Azimuths to the Otherworld

    Azimuths to the Otherworld is an album that demands to be taken in from start to finish. It asks the listener to engage with its many atmospheric layers as they appear.

  • Destinity – XI Reasons To See

    It might not be as de rigueur as Deathspell Omega, Gojira, or Hacride, but Destinity definitely deserves to be recognized as one of the stronger bands in this increasingly promising recent wave of French extreme metal.

  • High On Fire – Snakes For The Divine

    Kyle Harcott reviews Snakes For The Divine, the brand new studio album by High On Fire and their first for new label E1 Metal Records.

  • Armour – s/t

    File this one under holy shit: Finland’s Armour have just released one of the finest slabs of eighties fueled heavy metal to come across the desk over here at Chez Hellbound in quite some time.

  • Rotting Christ – Aealo

    Listening to the new Rotting Christ over and over, I like it, but I want to like it more than I do. Aealo is powerful and dramatic, sometimes violent, eerie, complicated or just plain straight-ahead catchy – a black-death fusion of metal and eastern folk. But there’s something that doesn’t quite click, or at least…

  • Helix – Vagabond Bones

    One of Canada’s longest running hard rock/heavy metal bands, Vagabond Bones is Helix’s twelfth full-length studio album and twenty-first album release overall. I am very familiar with Helix’s work over the years, with eleven albums in my personal collection and I am glad to say that this one is a keeper.

  • Holy Grail – Improper Burial

    Bottom line is this is fun metal played with over the top guitar shredding.

  • Vulcano – Tales From The Black Book

    By Albert Mansour Brazilian black/thrash/death metal outfit Vulcano is back with a re-release of an album originally issued in 2004, their sixth full length overall. This bunch has been around quite a while. Way back in the 80’s I had the chance to see them in concert opening for Venom in Sao Paulo, Brazil in…

  • Karnivool – Sound Awake

    The problem with Sound Awake is that it’s just too clean, too polished and too pretty because, in addition to the statesmen of goth, Karnivool also mixes in a significant amount of pop sensibility which hinders the whole procession.

  • Overkill – Ironbound

    Now in 2010, armed with the mighty Nuclear Blast behind them in Europe and E1 in North America, Overkill has released the thrash album of this early year.