Rebel Extravaganza

Heavy Metal And Other Occasional Musics And Cultures

Album Reviews

ALBUM REVIEW RATING SCALE:
**Please note that this rating scale serves as a reference for albums reviewed prior to 2023.
Numbered ratings will not be added going forward, in hopes that the writer’s impression of the work will suffice.
It will have to.** 

6 – Rarely bestowed. An honor reserved for undeniable classics (or those that should be). The Apex Predator.
5 – Impressive.
4 – Worthy of special recognition.
3 – A solid effort.
2 – The participation trophy.
1 – These are the albums that the 2s beat up on the way home from school.
0 – A waste of both our time and yours.

Album Reviews

Album Review: Fumes – Skeletal Wings Threshold

When a band releases an EP, video and live album before its debut, you already know the entities therein are not about to be bound by expectations, genre “constraints” of false authorities or even what the listener expects. Thus was born FUMES, spewing forth Skeletal Wings Threshold from the squalor and beauty of the streets of Mexico City. Grating tremelo scathe and scree bleeds us from the opening moments of ‘Stellar Ascension Infernal’, the worship of the riff key, and a tight, vibrant mix giving each instrument its rightful place, and when the last 0:11 combusts, there’s no amount of […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Hirax – Faster Than Death

Mr. Katon W. De Pena is one of the true warriors of thrash metal. He’s been whipping up circle pits for about 40 years now, so his dedication can’t be questioned. Plus, he’s a hell of a good guy…I can personally attest to this. Despite that, HIRAX albums have been few and far between. Faster Than Death is only the sixth full length in all that time. Well, this one may very well be their rawest and most in your face outing since their classic debut, Raging Violence. They’ve been trying to live up to that brutal dose of mayhem […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Act Of Impalement – Profane Altar

In this, its unholy 13th year, doth Nashville’s ACT OF IMPALEMENT lie us upon its third and aptly titled Profane Altar. Let the sacrifice begin… When founding guitarist/vocalist Ethan Rock revealed a new lineup before the release of 2023’s Infernal Ordinance, some wondered if this new incarnation would retain the spirit of the band some of us had followed since its early days. In a word, no. And it wasn’t intended to. Hence, when ‘Apparition’ appears, it’s with a somehow even older, more ancient tone than we’ve heard previously. Imagine BOLT THROWER as interpreted by a Cro-Magnon rhythm section and […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Aeon Gods – King Of Gods

Cosplay metal has really gotten out of hand…there’s so many bands that look like they’ve escaped from San Diego Comicon that bands wearing plain street gear now seem to be the outcasts. AEON GODS originate from Germany, but one look at their promo pic shows they would rather be from ancient Babylon. Oy vey! I put my head in my hands after seeing that, but when I got around to putting King Of Gods on the stereo, I must admit…this is not that bad at all. Yes, it is pompous symphonic power metal…what else would you expect from Scarlet Records? […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Harakiri For The Sky – Scorched Earth

While 2018’s Arson was, to my ears, a true fork in the road for HARAKIRI FOR THE SKY – an album where the band could’ve taken any number of divergent paths, all worthwhile – Mære felt very much as if the duo had decided to make camp in the lands of Arson, either unwilling, or undecided as to how to move forward. Factor in the re-recordings of 2010 debut and sophomore Aokigahara released in 2022, and it leaves one to wonder how the time since Mære was spent. Scorched Earth arrives, and now we know, for better or worse. Plaintive, […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: ALKYMIST – UnnDerr

I remember hearing the debut from these Danish noise-mongers what seems like a millions years ago. And to be brutally honest, that’s all I remember. I can’t recall a note from the actual record. Lots of things have happened since then, including a pandemic, a war and mass environmental chaos. Would 2024’s version of ALKYMIST be a bit more memorable? I think so. UnnDerr is a dark, heaving mass of foreboding heaviness that comes across as very direct and “simple” but which has some hidden depths to it. It certainly isn’t standard doom or death metal, yet I think it […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: ÚLFARR – Fornetes Folm / His Crown Grows From His Skull

ÚLFARR’s debut full-length, Orlegsceaft, arriving as it did in late December of 2023 gave it both the notable honor of being the last album released in the year that I’d review and allowed it to qualify for my much-respected Top 20 albums list for 2023. Which it did. And now, they’ve done it again. The Cumbrian horde returneth with Fornetes Folm / His Crown Grows From His Skull. ‘Alarūna’ ushers we in, conjuring the droning incant of Atilla Csihar initially, but soon enough shifting to early CRAFT in attack, merciless, but more ancient, and the more foreboding for it. Slicing […]

Album Reviews

Album Review – MÖRK GRYNING – Fasornas Tid

MÖRK GRYNING might’ve missed the first shrieks of second wave black metal in its native Scandinavia but, since 1995’s Tusen ảr gått…, founding members Goth Gorgon and Draakh Kimera and cohorts spread their shadows of melodic blackness over a handful of impressively solid albums until Mörk gryning of 2005. This would spell what most of us though was the end – and credit and hails to the founder(s) for halting the band when they felt their passion waning – yet metal in any form be a hard beast to tame, and thus was Hinsides Vrede born as the world writhed […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: CMPT – Na Utrini

From even CMPT’s initial offering, 2021’s Mrtvaja EP, it was clear there was something otherworldly about the work of sole entity Vidak Lešina. To clarify, a sense of “otherness”, rather, of being both outside of time and deeply interwoven with it. Krv I Pepeo continued the feeling, deepening the connection with the CMPT’s Balkan homeland by delving further into the obscurity of the area’s folklore. Returning three years to the month after Krv I Pepeo, Na utrini acts as a prequel to the events of that album and, while I’m generally not a fan of releasing an album out of […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Ian Blurton’s Future Now – Crimes Of The City

IAN BLURTON’S FUTURE NOW may have a pretty awkward name but they’ve managed to pull off something many others have tried and failed at; creating a genuine classic hard rock sound in the vein of the ’70s. Crimes Of The City is one of the best attempts at this that I’ve heard in a long time. The songwriting here is just so effortless and natural. All the tracks are in the three to four minute window that much classic rock dwells in. Not a wasted breath or riff is apparent here. Who does FUTURE NOW take inspiration from? Well, I […]

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