Over the past several years, death metal has experienced a renaissance of epic proportions, fueled by movements of radical innovation (propelled by bands such as Ingurgitating Oblivion, Pyrrhon, Alkaloid, Artificial Brain, and a host of others) and adherence to the genre’s most cherished and essential elements (think early Horrendous, Blood…
February! Last year, I called it “The Bastard Month” and I stand by that. This year though, this transitory month was chock full of amazing releases. It triggered my “oh my god there is so much music” mode many times, in part because we also started getting promos for the…
Progressive and technical death metal has been having a real moment over the last couple of years. As with everything, however, there is a dark side to the genre’s current boom. With so many fantastic progressive death metal albums flooding the market, listeners run the risk of becoming disaffected by…
When it finally came time for Warforged to announce their long anticipated follow-up to 2014’s Essence of the Land, spirits were high in the Heavy Blog camp. The aforementioned release was a favorite of many on the blog and the long period of silence which followed it was a frustrating…
Hello and welcome to this, the second part of our *prognotes installment analyzing Alkaloid’s The Malkuth Grimoire. I usually don’t make a big deal out of it but, in this case, it is absolutely essential to read the first part this post, which you can find here. I won’t spend…
2018 was a big year for progressive death metal, with outstanding releases coming from the likes of Rivers of Nihil, Alkaloid, Slugdge, Obscura and Beyond Creation – just to name a few. However, those bands also all already established and lauded acts. While there were a couple of head-turning debuts…
As we did a short while ago with Shabti, let’s get questions of pedigree out of the way quickly so we can move onto the music itself. Eternity’s End, a furious prog/power generator, is made up of (deep breath): Iuri Sanson (from the excellent, if lesser known, Hibria in his…
As the years go by, the trepidation and sense of the sacred with which I approach these posts only increases. I’m not a believing person but there’s something about A Year that combines the intimate and the small with the incredibly big that triggers all my sacral instincts. “Sacral instincts”…
Boy, that title sure is a funny one; to say that Danny Tunker is Alkaloid is kind of like saying that De Vinci is the Mona Lisa’s. Tunker has played in numerous incredible bands, like Aborted, Spawn of Possession, Demilich and Hannes Grossman’s project but Alkaloid is, today at least, his most complete and ambitious outing.…
As is the case every year we do this, the exact makeup and composition of the fine (and not so fine) people who build our ranks here at Heavy Blog shifts and changes with every passing year. In a way it’s inevitable that over time you might see the general…
