Rebel Extravaganza

Heavy Metal And Other Occasional Musics And Cultures

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Short Sharp Shocks

Blind Chaos – Very Metal Christmas [EP]

What do you do when you’ve got some downtime during the Christmas season? If you’re BLIND CHAOS of Oslo, Norway, you find a historic church, light your torches and…record a Christmas EP! ‘Last Christmas’ is infectious, probably more faithful to the original than lead throat Chris Wiborg probably wants to admit, making for an engaging jam. ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ punches, ending in a holiday wish for something warmer than cider, if you get my drift, and ‘Santa Baby’ is sure to get portly, bearded men in red lining up to hurry down chimneys of good (and […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Megaton Leviathan – Magick Helmet

When a band (or solo act, in this case) bio begins with “creating a sound that would stump critics and come to be known as Doomgaze”, my eyes begin to itch, and I feel that familiar sick-to-the-back-teeth taste that comes when a single entity claims to have “created” a new sub-subgenre. Wait, isn’t “Doomgaze” a sub-sub-subgenre, then? All I know that sole member Reuscher – doing business as MEGATON LEVIATHAN – has his work cut out for him on Magick Helmet. So, let’s put this right out front; it seems the paramount reason for the existence of MEGATON LEVIATHAN’s 4th […]

Music News

Prophecy Fest announce new bands for the 2024 edition

Prophecy Fest welcome three outstanding acts to the 2024 billing: PARADISE LOST, FEN, and ARÐ! It is somewhat of a coincidence that all newly announced bands hail from England, but on the other hand it is not, as insular doom pioneers PARADISE LOST have wielded a mighty influence not only on the British scene but also on the development and the artistic course that Prophecy Productions have taken. Prophecy Fest will bring dark, forward thinking music with an attitude to one of the world’s most fascinating cultural locations again, the legendary, natural Cave of Balve (“Balver Höhle”). The three day […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Bull Elephant – The Long War

Alright, kids, let’s open our history books to the section on WWII, remembering when a giant pachyderm went berserker mode on the Nazis after starting out defending the weary Berliners from the incoming onslaught? You don’t? Well, BULL ELEPHANT sure do, as they’ve spent two albums before now telling the tales of our hero’s majestic and elephantine glory. Having dropped its self-titled debut a scant few months before the world went to dung – or at least more noticeably -, the Londoners unleashed Created From Death less than a year later, and then…silence from the studio. Yet, at long last, […]

Music News

Furze & Woe J. Reaper 25 anniversary double tape box set

Special edition cassettes to include Woe J. Reaper’s first demo, Necromanzee, & unreleased FURZE material from 1992-1998 Norwegian black psych metal act FURZE and the sole member behind the project, Woe J. Reaper, is celebrating FURZE and Woe J Reaper’s 25th anniversary with the release of a limited and special edition cassette box set via Devoted Art Propaganda. The box set includes the original Woe J. Reaper Necromanzee demo from 1998 on one tape, while the second tape consists of unreleased material from 1992-1998. Limited to only 100 copies, it comes in two cassettes with two separate artworks in a […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: SHYLMAGOGHNAR – Convergence

I first noticed SHYLMAGOGHNAR a couple of years ago, but never looked any further than their bizarre name. I thought it was silly at the time and figured they wouldn’t be worth my time. Curiosity finally compelled me to look further into this one-man outfit from Holland and I must confess, I was unfair to the band. This is quite a sonic adventure and an amazing achievement considering it was all done by one guy using a home studio. Convergence is really a perfect name for what SHYLMAGOGHNAR have come up with here. This record covers so many styles of […]

Music News

Black Metal: Evolution Of The Cult – definitive black metal book OUT NOW

The book release marks 10 years of Cult Never Dies Features brand new interviews with Necromantia, Arcturus, Immortal, Agalloch, Destruction, Mystifier, and Winterfylleth plus extended interviews with Rotting Christ, Behemoth, Sigh, Mayhem and many more UK-based publishing house Cult Never Dies marks its 10th anniversary with the release of Dayal Patterson’s Black Metal: Evolution Of The Cult – The Restored, Expanded & Definitive Edition. Demand for the new book has exceeded expectations and all of the 2023 delivery from the factory is now pre-sold. Cult Never Dies will be receiving the rest of the order in early 2024 and is […]

Short Sharp Shocks

Maul – Desecration And Enchantment [EP]

After a shit-ton of demos/splits/singles/EPs, North Dakota’s MAUL dropped the wing-rending Seraphic Punishment on 2022, the debut’s ice-encrusted grime palpable in its blend of Scandinavian and, strangely, Floridian death to create something invigorating in a genre that’s often too set in its ways to be aware of its own dying from glut and trend. ‘The Sacred And The Profane/Hovering,Sinking’ is destructive from :01, rotting riffs slung over the back of stench-ridden rhythms and carried forth in a voice puked from Satan’s anus itself. Guitar patterns weave meathooks upon which to hang our cadavers as we await the ‘Disintegration Of The […]

Music News

Týr Announces Battle Ballads North American Headlining Tour 2024

Faroe Islands-based folk metal collective TÝR will return to North American stages next Spring. The Battle Ballads headlining tour, named in honor of their upcoming new full-length of the same name, begins March 28th in Baltimore, Maryland and makes its way through over two dozen cities, coming to a close on April 26th in Greensboro, North Carolina. Support will be provided by Trollfest, Æther Realm, and The Dread Crew Of Oddwood. The tour marks TÝR’s first North American run since 2019. Comments the band, “It is with great joy that we announce our return to the US and Canada. It’s […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Ginnungagap – Heliacal Arising

The yawning maw of Signal Rex opens wider, near-unhinging, and from this void springs forth Heliacal Arising, the first full, intentional movement of Portuguese cult GINNUNGAGAP. Four years it did take to form what now travels ‘neath the ‘Majestic Throne Of The Sky’, wrapped in a layered cloak of guitars and keys, organ-like in tone, and lending a vital air of the mystic to this excursion, a throat laid open and scraped raw and bleeding over gravel declares our path. Arising heliacal, the title track indeed shimmers distant, ever fettered to the Solar King, despite desire, for Nature is immovable […]

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