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: Hyperion – Cybergenesis

Sometimes you run into a band so pure that METAL must be written in all caps to describe them. Say hello to Italy’s HYPERION! These cats came out of nowhere to hit me upside the head with one of the year’s best METAL albums! This is 100% pure steel, forged in the fires of PRIEST, MAIDEN and ‘RYCHE but with a bracing jolt of speed and a kick of modern power metal. There are eight compact songs on Cybergenesis and I can’t find much of a flaw in any of them. There’s no pointless intro or corny narration, this thing […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Omnium Gatherum – May The Bridges We Burn Light The Way

Finland’s OMNIUM GATHERUM has never had it easy. Formed in 1996, during the time when the Gothenburg-born style of melodic death was really starting to stretch its legs and take confident steps original/current guitarist, Markus Vanhala, and co. were and have been fighting an uphill battle for recognition since the demo days. Sometimes great, sometimes good, but always deserving of a listen, the band enters the fray again in 2025 – just shy of the band’s 30th anniversary – with May The Bridges We Burn Light The Way. If you’re looking for the difference between “Intro” and “Instrumental” look no […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Architectural Genocide – Malignant Cognition

When you’ve got a sophomore album nearly six years in the making, and it’s shorter than Reign In Blood, one of two things has happened; either you’ve decided to shit something out super-quick just to keep the band name out there, or you’ve (hopefully) spent that time honing these songs to the point that they’re less “songs” than blades and boulders, both concertina wire-sharp and heavy as granite. Creepy-crawly “intro-not intro” ‘Precursor To Bloodshed’ sets the mood for Malignant Cognition, ARCHITECTURAL GENOCIDE ready to rumble like a bulldozer in the graveyard that is ‘Coercion Into Carnality’. Immensely guttural vocal spews […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: 1914 – Viribus Unitis

There were times when I wondered if 1914 would ever release a new album. There were times when I wondered if they were even still alive or able to record. These doubts arise when your country is at war and fighting for its life. Thankfully, the Ukrainians are still in action and have found time to bless us with another outstanding album, Viribus Unitis. This band are metal’s premier chroniclers of the horrors of war. On the most obvious level, they write about the wrenching events of World War 1. But now that their own country is in a life […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Olde Outlier – From Shallow Lives To Shallow Graves

From the shadowed back-alleys, fog-enfolded streets, and ramshackle buildings glaring down in geometric absurdity that is Innsmouth and was INNSMOUTH cometh death and slouching blackness. Less a continuation than a convoluted spawn of ancestral anti-cosmology held tenuously within the same universe, the Australian foursome that is OLDE OUTLIER, here to bring us From Shallow Lives To Shallow Graves… Exploding in orgiastic glee, ‘The Revellers’ wastes no time, ascending/descending riffs being battered by war drums, a surprisingly clear and loping bass heard throughout, vocalist Appleton’s unbridled howl from 2:41-2:53 letting us know it’s about the emotion here. That gut-born and gut-wrenching […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Coroner – Dissonance Theory

The last CORONER album, Grin, came out in 1993. The world has changed so much since then (and not for the better, which only an idiot would dispute) that there are hardly words fit to describe the gulf. Yet in 2025, CORONER has returned. Have they also changed beyond recognition? Dissonance Theory will go down as one of the best “comeback” albums ever released. This is everything CORONER was in 1993 but better, more refined. Grin was hardly a great album in my book. In every way, Dissonance Theory is superior. This is progressive thrash metal at its highest level. […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Morbikon – Lost Within The Astral Crypts

Composed of members of bands as often intolerable as MUNICIPAL WASTE and UADA, yet also as underappreciated as GOATGOR and as forward-thinking as …AND OCEANS, MORBIKON either has a lot going for it or is an accident waiting to happen on its second, Lost Within The Astral Crypts. While 2022’s Ov Mournful Twilight was solid “enough” patch of sonic real estate , ’25 finds the lineup shifting, Dave “I’ve been in every band under the sun” Witte relinquishing his drum throne to Pierce Williams of the aforementioned UADA, Toby Swope being replaced by GOATGOR’s Blake Hibberd, lineup scattered hither and […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Pupil Slicer – Fleshwork

Cards on the table, I’m a complete dunderhead when it comes to mathematics. A rube. Anything over short division, and I am not only not to be trusted, but avoided like the plague. Hence, I despise “mathcore”, “math rock”, and the majority of jazz, simply because it’s too wonky and up its own arse to be bothered with. Grab your slide rules, kids, it’s time to rock the fuck out to some 29/16 time signatures! I’m looking at you, THE MARS VOLTA. And don’t even get me started on MESHUGGAH post-None. I hadn’t torn an album a new rectum in […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Agnostic Front – Echoes In Eternity

AGNOSTIC FRONT’s pedigree is impeccable, and its history and importance in heavy music in general, much less hardcore, cannot be overstated. Yep, as a matter of fact, if you’re of a certain age and haven’t heard the band, you’re probably lost on the internet, which is the way most people stumble across this site anyhow. Regardless, if – even nearly a half-century of the New Yorkers kicking global ass from basement shows to arenas later – you’re still not familiar, welcome to Echoes In Eternity, the band’s thirteenth studio record. No useless intro to wade through, as ‘Way Of War’ […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Death Yell – Demons Of Lust

From the mists of the past comes a scream of defiance. DEATH YELL are among the oldest South American extreme metal bands. They emerged from Chile in the late ’80s, around the same time as PENTAGRAM, and were contemporaries of SEPULTURA, KRISIUN, SARCOFAGO and other beasts of ancient South American metal. They’ve hardly been a prolific band, as this is only their second full length, but their name has lingered in the memories of those times. Demons Of Lust is an absolute nostalgia trip, but one that’s fully justified because these dudes were there from the beginning. Everything about Demons […]

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