Tag: Bandcamp
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Relapse Records: 25 Years of Contamination
Now available from Relapse Records: “Celebrate 25 years of independent metal with over 180 tracks from our catalog! From death and doom to grind and hardcore to experimental and noise, get acquainted with our entire roster and help us celebrate a quarter century of contamination!” Right away I got a new discovery, and I was only…
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Kolony – Sledge
Review by Steve Earles Canada is like a metallic Cauldron (pun intentional!) at the moment, constantly spewing forth molten metal into the world. And now we have Kolony, who to my experienced ears sound like a collision between the New Wave of British Heavy Metal sound beloved of Cauldron and Laugh At The Fakes, while…
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Earth – Primitive and Deadly
I was certainly intrigued by this latest Earth album. Although their newer stuff has been more Americana—not that there’s anything wrong with that—advance singles offa this one indicate somewhat of a return to heaviness. And that includes not one but two guest vocalists, with one being Mark Lanegan. Actually, I’m not sure if they’ve had…
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Blakkr Nið – Drones, Dirges, and Dark Ambient Sounds
Bands like Earth, Boris, Sunn O))), Corrupted and Nadja have all used low frequencies and overdriven instrumentation on uber-slow songs to bring drone front and centre for a metal audience. However, as a form of musical expression, drone existed for aeons before any of those bands arrived. Drone is there in the core vibrations of…
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Bastard of the Skies/Grimpen Mire split
I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve never heard either of these British bands before, though they’ve both been around for a handful of years. But that’s what’s great about splits—they’re a bite-sized introduction to acts otherwise unknown, without putting you through the paces of a 72-minute album or something. And while I’m not…
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Disparager – Timeless, Ageless
Passion and sincerity are what matters most in music, and Disparager have an overabundance of those. Opening with “Pictures,” the band show themselves as technically adroit but never at the expense of the actual song. “Tuesday Love” is raw in its emotion; this is an antidote to the fake music that clogs up the airwaves…
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Missiles of October – Don’t Panic
A Belgian band named after the Cuban Missile Crisis is not something you hear every day. Nor are they the only outfit with that moniker—there’s also a soul/folk band from California that beat them to the domain name for Missiles of October. That being said, if it came down to an armed nuclear standoff, I’d…
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Secret Cutter – Self Titled
It’s not cool to cut yourself; remember that, kids. But Secret Cutter, a bassless trio from Bethlehem (Pennsylvania, that is), is out to make the baby Jesus cry with their self-titled debut, a 26-minute blast of sludge-metal sickness. Downtuned chugs abound on tracks like album opener “Mirror Mirror” with glass-shattering vocals straining to be heard in…
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Taurus – No/Thing
Life, the debut from Portland doom duo Taurus, consisted of two 15+ minute tracks: “Life Pt. 1” and “Life Pt. 2.” No/Thing, their sophomore effort, has five songs, and things are slightly more structured this time around. Song lengths, for the most part, are shorter than the debut — though several still exceed 10 minutes.…
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And the battle wages on – Wacken Metal Battle Canada dates & compilation
Last night the latest round of Wacken Metal Battle Canada had Toronto area bands Our Covenant, Operus, Protokult, The Fiction In Folklore and Endemise duking it out for the chance to move on to the next stage of the competition. A heck of a lot of bands are competing this year, with multiple rounds scheduled across the country…