There are a few things I’m excited to accomplish with this post, beyond highlighting yet another couple of excellent death metal releases. First, from a practical standpoint, this is an efficient means of covering two short EPs that are still absolutely worth your time. It’s the same reason I created…
Every year, it seems like there’s one particular death metal album released in the early months of the year that sets my quality standards for the next several months. Last year in January, Alterage’s The Approaching Roar hit me like a brick to the temple, while in 2018 Portal’s Ion…
There’s a type of victory in sports called a “wire-to-wire” win, where one team holds the lead throughout the entire game. Instead of both teams tying and trading leads multiple times or one side staging an epic comeback, the winner dominates the match from start to finish and quells any…
This year is already shaping up to be a monumental year for heavy music. It seems like there’s been more great releases in these first couple of months than the entire first half of 2019 combined. Moreover, even with all the outstanding big-name resales, it’s largely been the smaller, up…
Drama. It’s one of those things that, in the context of metal or extreme music, often feels clichéd like some sad self-parody, or just hackneyed and predictable. Things like the demonstrative highs and lows of symphonic or power metal and the cinematic tension of post-metal immediately come to mind, but…
Full of Hell, baby. You know ’em, you love ’em. We do too: they’ve appeared a handful of times on the blog this year, from our review of Weeping Choir way the hell back in May to their spot near the forefront of our Grind My Gears 2019 wrap-up last…
Sometimes, a lead single can all but guarantee you’ll love an album, which was very much the case after I heard “Far from Where Dreams Unfurl.” As I outlined in my review, Wilderun have crafted my favorite prog metal albums of the year with Veil of Imagination by a wide…
“The passion caused by the great and the sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully, is Astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. … It is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind…
The best part about bands with a completely unique identity is the way they not only differentiate themselves from other groups, but from their own sound with each subsequent release. This trait applies directly to Dysrhythmia and the vast field of other projects involving Kevin Hufnagel (Gorguts, Vaura) and Colin…
Sidian might not be a household name in the thriving North American prog and technical death metal scene dominated by acts (probably) from the Bay Area and signed to labels like Artisan Era and Unique Leader, but the project is borne and deeply embedded in its roots. Formerly an active…
