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Heavy Metal And Other Occasional Musics And Cultures

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Album Reviews

Album Review: Big Scenic Nowhere – The Waydown

While I remember digging BIG SCENIC NOWHERE’s initial two EPs, Dying On The Mountain and especially 2020’s more prog-tinged Lavender Blues, I’ll admit to letting 2020 debut LP Vision Beyond Horizon and The Long Morrow of the following year slip under my radar, always “intending to” go back and investigate what the foursome could do within the space of an album. I never did, though, so no better time than now to check in. Opener and title track, ‘The Waydown’ doesn’t so much arrive as materialize before closed eyes and open ears, the vocal harmonies and flowing, yet purposeful momentum […]

Music News

ULTHAR: Blackened Death Metal Trio Announces First US Tour In Five Years

Blackened death metal trio ULTHAR will return to stages this Spring on an eleven-date US tour. The journey commences in Oakland, California on April 26th and concludes with a performance at Norwest Terror Fest in Seattle, Washington on May 9th. The tour marks the band’s first tour since 2019! Tickets are on sale now. See confirmed dates below. ULTHAR will be touring in support of their critically adored Anthronomicon and Helionomicon full lengths, release last year via 20 Buck Spin. Anthronomicon embodies the continued progression of ULTHAR’s mastery over its art. From the opening blasts and twisting mania of ‘Cephalophore’, […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Stygian Crown – Funeral For A King

THIS is how you Doom! STYGIAN CROWN have written a textbook on epic slow motion metal with Funeral For A King and demonstrate just how this art should be performed. This is one of the best doom efforts of 2023 and might just slip onto my “Best Of” list for the year. This shit is heavy! Yet it is also stately and melodic…well composed and varied. The shadow of CANDLEMASS hangs deep over STYGIAN CROWN, but it’s not merely mimickry and there’s a thick burliness to the songs that exceeds what is generally heard from the Swedish masters. The title […]

Music News

DPERD new release, Choices: cover and tracklist unveiled

Choices is DPERD’s 8th album, and is going to add another wonderful and intimate piece to their incredible twenty-year career. Once again the great German photographer Lilith Terra is behind the amazing self-portrait used as cover artwork for the album because her work is the pure transposition into images of their intimate and melancholic music. The album was conceived without any pause, as a long journey into their vision of human existence and their feelings, and will consist of 18 songs. Choices Tracklist: Another Chance Go On Amore E Libertà Only Void Salamanca A Needed Desire For Me Old Friend […]

Short Sharp Shocks

Ghoul – Noxious Concoctions [EP]

For well over 20 years GHOUL has been splattering minds and bodies with their truly twisted death/grind/thrash, so it’s no surprise Noxious Concoctions follows that same formula. With ‘The Eyes Of The Witch’, the foursome chugs along at a mid-paced but mangling rhythm ‘n’ riff-ride, while the title track ups the ante in both speed and fury, a bit of UNLEASHED in the guitar tone. ‘Shotgun Gulch’ returns to a confrontational stomp/swagger, fine for what it is but a bit too “throwaway” SIX FEET UNDER for my taste. However, the snarling ‘Ratlicker’ and FUNEROT cover that put the final shovelful […]

Music News

NÆSTVED METALFEST 2024 – SATYRICON & 7 bands more added to the program

It’s no secret NÆSTVED METALFEST is growing. This is clearly backed up by the interest and ticket sales for NÆSTVED METALFEST 2024. With today’s announcement of this year’s headliner – Norwegian legends SATYRICON – the festival can now be labeled as Denmark’s largest independent metal festival. SATYRICON, with Satyr and Frost as the spearheads, has existed for over three decades, and throughout time has managed to stay relevant and contemporary. From pure black metal to several alternative takes on extreme metal and most recently an ambitious album with music based on the paintings and art of the countryman Munch. When […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Upon Stone – Dead Mother Moon

Ah, melodic death metal. From Gothenburg, Sweden and Finland did the beautiful yet razored strains of our beloved metal flow. While I’ll admit to being a lifer of the Stockholm sound, the rusted yet tearing teeth of the Swedish Chainsaw (HM-2) cranked to oblivion, the sometimes- bludgeoning doom-influenced moments, there’s something special about the more precise attack of the G-burg bands, and the inherent melody they brought to the table. And thus, from the cold, jagged cliffs, the snow-encased lands of the San Fernando Valley, California comes UPON STONE. Say what you will, but I’d imagine growing up as a […]

Music News

THE VISION BLEAK announce new album and release first single from upcoming Weird Tales

Horror metal poets THE VISION BLEAK reveal the lyric video ‘Weird Tales Chapter IV & V’ as the first single excerpt taken from the one-track album Weird Tales. The seventh full-length of the Germans is slated for release on April 12, 2024. View the lyric video for ‘Weird Tales Chapter IV & V’ Pre-Order HERE THE VISION BLEAK comment: “Here is the first excerpt from our new album, Weird Tales, in the shape of two chapters”, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and producer Schwadorf states on behalf of the duo. “This album is a one-track opus of darkness and grandeur that we had […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Lord Dying – Clandestine Transcendence

LORD DYING’s third album, Mysterium Tremendum, set the Portlandians (Portlanders? Portlandites?) firmly amid the bands that release watershed albums in which they could’ve really gone any direction from where they were. Brushes with previous prog elements became more intentional, and it helped the foursome in carving out its own niche in the somehow currently crowded sub-genre of doom in all its facets. Clandestine Transcendence sees founders Olson and Evans return with a new rhythm section, and slowly, almost languidly ushering us into ‘The Universe Is Weeping’ with guitars reminiscent of WISHBONE ASH or PROCOL HARUM when they knew they had […]

Music News

O ZORN!: Post-Metal Alchemists To Release Vermillion Haze Full-Length On March 15th Via Hard Drugs/Seeing Red Records; New Video/Single Now Playing + Preorders Available

Post-metal alchemists O ZORN! will release their Vermillion Haze full-length on March 15th via Hard Drugs/Seeing Red Records. Beyond the palm trees, immaculate store fronts, spectacular sunset vistas, and a general sense of opulence that Los Angeles projects to the wider world, beats a much darker heart in a city that is still reeling in post-pandemic chaos. Crime, homelessness, drug addiction, and many such social malaises point to a much more unsettled and disturbing reality. It is often said that it is in the art that a location produces, therefore, that we find an accurate portrayal of the true lived […]

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