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: Ignobleth – Manor Of Primitive Anticreation

Italy’s IGNOBLETH arrived with 2024’s Voidspawn Sacrifice EP, which was solid, but was also the sound of a band searching for itself. Heavy? Sure! Dark? As midnight. But memorable? Not so much, at least for these ears. And now the time has come to enter the Manor Of Primitive Anticreation. What lurketh beyond its gates, within its chambers? ‘Cults Of The Undead And Profane Necrolatry’ easily moves beyond a paltry “intro” track, an assurance that something is beginning that’s more than filler to the band. ‘Obelisk Of Deformity’ is gargantuan in riff and rhythm, cosmically malformed and unrelenting, collapsing us […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Who On Earth – It Takes The Village

New Jersey’s WHO ON EARTH returns with its sophomore shot, It Takes The Village. So strap in, babies, let’s see if the chicken’s finger-lickin’. Opener ‘Vigilance’ is a slab of fellow Garden Staters BLACK LABEL SOCIETY, complete with pinch harmonics, a biker bar anthem at birth, and I’m starting to see the Neil Fallon comparisons in the delivery of vocalist Coosh, but thus far not blatantly enough to be called a rip-off. ‘Any Other Way’ follows, gang background vocals adding a bit of ‘80s hard rock seasoning to the sauce, tasty dual leads garnishing the main dish, and leading us […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Tulus – Morbid Desires

The histories of many Scandinavian black metal scenes are incestuous; members shared, then each member branching off into a dozen other projects (sometimes simultaneously – I’m looking at you, Shatraug), often including members of yet other bands on different instruments than they’re known for. Yet none may be so convoluted and interwoven as Norway’s KHOLD and TULUS. While the latter was formed nearly a decade prior, when KHOLD was placed on hiatus in the mid-‘00s, what were members Sarke and Blodstrup to do except resurrect their original band? Bolstered since 2008 with the rumbling bass attack of Crowbel (who also […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Winterfylleth – The Unyielding Season

In the past, the covers of WINTERFYLLETH showed magnificent natural vistas, usually snowy mountains or rolling hills. It cannot be without meaning that The Unyielding Season shows a raging forest fire. There is no better metaphor for what is happening to our heritage and our entire planet today. These Englishmen have always taken a prideful stand for honor and history and that hasn’t changed at all here. This album is a call to resist the commercialized mechanization creeping across the land. As always, the music is rooted in majestic black metal. The opening songs here are some of the fastest, […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Palmar De Troya – III [EP]

Spain’s PALMAR DE TROYA returns with its third EP, the aptly titled III, and I’ll just bet you’re wondering what their first two EPs were called too, huh? Anyhow, let’s get to it, bruddas and sistas. ‘The Method’ revs its engines early, no-wave and snarling, LYDIA LUNCH’s ‘80s output blended with an almost THE LORDS OF THE NEW CHURCH post-punk ethic, guitars slicing ‘n’ dicing. Follows ‘She, The Destroyer’, coarse and uneven, but the band seems to be stepping out of the shadows of their influences here, certainly an outgrowth of time spent on the road in the past year […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Mordeo – Mordeo

Composed of members of sludge / doom AMAROK, groovy deathsters ABERRANCE and LEVEL, California’s MORDEO arrive with what purports to be its own take on sludge / crust in the form of its self-titled debut. ‘Bring Back The Fear’ collides with the eardrums instantly, a brief Cro-Magnon thundering giving way to what sounds like the collective asses of IRON MONKEY, VARUKERS and FISTULA getting an electrified cattle prod enema. There’s not a sense of urgency here; there’s a slathering, spitting, bloody, heaving mess that demands heed taken. Witness ‘Fight Your Friends’, a coiling, striking five-headed hydra on meth in sonic […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Kate’s Acid – Hellbender

After Belgium’s CYCLONE returned to action recently, it’s no surprise that their country(wo)men ACID are also back for the attack. ACID were one of the very first female fronted metal bands, along with WARLOCK, and they played a fast and rough kind of “biker metal” that was pretty heavy for the time. Now Kate de Lombaert, the original voice of ACID, returns with an all new band of guys at least half her age. Horns up for the metal grandma! This is a real trip back to early ’80s metal, courtesy of a band who was there. First things first, […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Multiwomb – Anatomy Of Gorelust

Just under a year after the aptly named Demo 2025, MULTIWOMB either pollutes the already cluttered brutal death metal sewer with even more aural fecal matter OR proves that you can, in fact, polish a turd into something presentable. Let’s study the Anatomy Of Gorelust, shall we? Wisely wishing “Fuck off and die” to tiresome intros, ‘Blood Climax’ goes for the money shot instantly, and – while I’d love a fuller drum sound when it comes to the toms (are those literal coffee cans, sir?), there’s something endearing here that recalls the early ‘00s basement and squat shows I went […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Witchcraft – A Sinner’s Child [EP]

After the few (and welcome) acoustic flourishes of last year’s Idag, I wasn’t sure what A Sinner’s Child would be for WITCHCRAFT or hold for my ears. As much as 2020’s Black Metal was mostly enjoyable, there were hints at a sonic claustrophobia that was also troubling, in the lack of dynamics from a band that – up to that point – had been known for infusing its music with both climactic highs and cathartic lows. Was Idag an attempt to cleanse the palate while still leaving the good memories of Black Metal lingering in our memory, and if so, […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Teratoma – Longing Voracity

To say Purulent Manifestations of 2021 caused the death metal world to sit up and take notice is an understatement, TERATOMA’s initial independent crusher being released by no less than five labels in all imaginable formats within two years of its arrival. Now, just over four years later, we find the Berliners on Me Saco Un Ojo Records out of London, and ready to (hopefully) cause damage with Longing Voracity. I’m not a fan of needless, unrelated intros as a rule, but ‘Exordium’ transudes smoothly into the title track opener, neither out of place nor overstaying its welcome. There’s immediately […]

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