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: Feral State – II

Pardon me, PR folks, but if you’re gonna compare a band to BROKEN BONES, that band better drink engine oil through scalded throats, belch up steam like a train in the 1800s, and pack a punch harder than a hit to the cranium with a nail-spiked bat. It’s gotta be memorable as fuck, but it’s also gotta be interesting too, especially since we’re usually talking an album length of under a half-hour. Straight outta Leicester comes FERAL STATE, returning after 2022’s self-titled wrecker with the aptly named II. Straight to the point, as a band of this sort must be. […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Arkhaaik – Uihtis

The human race right now is the weakest it has ever been. Internet, A.I., television, billions of types of legal drugs and all the other “comforts” of modern life have made us into something completely different than our ancestors of just a few hundred years would recognize. Is there any room at all any more for the primal and raw instincts we once possessed in abundance? ARKHAAIK from Switzerland says yes. They have found a way to tap into the dawn times of humanity with the power of heavy metal. Uihtis has done it. When I listened to this album, […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Sinsaenum – In Devastation

Journeyman Frédéric Leclerq is at it again, a “new direction” being proclaimed with In Devastation, which is a good move, based on how lifeless at worst, mediocre at best SINSAENUM’s output has been thus far. Born from the double-loss of a longtime band member and a parent Leclerq is, apparently reinventing what the group can be – and honestly, it’s far past time. First, the artwork looks straight off the cutting room floor of early/mid-‘00s Roadrunner. Could it be TRIVIUM? Could it be KILLSWITCH ENGAGE? Shit, it could be any of those and doesn’t make me want to hit Play […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Bask – The Turning

I can draw a line of sorts from Denver, Colorado’s (now maybe Nashville, TN’s) ACROSS TUNDRAS and their work in the early 2000s to BASK’s newest and fourth album, The Turning, released now in 2025. I could go back further than that, to (also Colorado’s) 16 HORSEPOWER and THE DENVER GENTLEMEN, as well as SLIM CESSNA’S AUTO CLUB, and their use of gothic Americana – usually Western or Southern – to take us back to a time of crop failures, religious camp meetings, exorcisms, Native American “mythology”, what have you. It’s there, I believe… ‘Chasm’ drones us in, pedal steel […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Degrave – Metalithic

Not a heck of a lot of metal coming out of Missouri these days, but DEGRAVE is a very potent exception. I like these guys a lot! There’s a real grittiness and rawness to what they dish up on Metalithic that sounds pretty refreshing. When the final feedback of ‘Death Is…’ came to an end, I immediately wanted to start over with ‘Usurper Of Flame’ once more. That doesn’t happen too often in Mality’s world these days! What’s really cool about DEGRAVE is that they don’t really resemble any other band…also a rare thing. Sure, the press compares them to […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Victim Of Fire – The Old Lie

Returning with its third full-length in nearly a decade of its existence, death-fueled crustmongers (or is it crust-fueled deathmongers?) VICTIM OF FIRE flame forth from the fertile soil of Colorado with The Old Lie. Mind you, one of the key elements of crust with any sort of socio-political overtones is its timeliness, so we’ve also been assaulted with a trio of EPs and a few demos during this time, confirming that not only shouldn’t a band in this style, but that a band in this style is physically incapable of sitting on its collective ass for too long. The title […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Barbarous – Initium Mors

The world needs another death metal band like I need an extra asshole. Remember that saying “Opinions are like assholes. Everybody’s got one.”? Well, every city seems to have a death metal band – some more than their share, some more than any of us need – and straight outta the Bay Area comes yet another steaming pile of either excrement or entrails by the name of BARBAROUS. We shall see… Initium Mors (“The beginning of death”) blasts forward with the intro-less ‘Injection Of The Exhumed’, already something in that grisly, sharpened tone recalling the band’s heritage, ala Bonded By […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Cancer Void – First Metastasis

Well, at least CANCER VOID had the balls to call its dreaded intro track ‘Introduction’, so there’s that going for the quintet already. Synths surround and oscillate, and I’m sure this dungeon synth gone Windham Hill sampler is going to sound nothing whatsoever like the actual tunes on here, so let’s just get through this and move on, shall we? You’re already spending nearly 2 minutes of a record that’s less than 20 farting around like the bastard chillun’ of Vangelis and Mortiis. Echoes of INCANTATION permeate ‘Breeding Pyramids’, and the sound is surprisingly organic given the precursor. There’s some […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Black Magnet – Megamantra

Industrial metal that sounds like a swarm of killer androids fashioned from junkyard materials, that’s what you get from BLACK MAGNET. Industrial music has always appealed to me, if done right. That means if done with the proper aggression and atmosphere and not sounding like evil disco music. No worries here…BLACK MAGNET has a suitably abrasive and heavy approach. You can hear influences from all the standard industrial acts here, like MINISTRY, NINE INCH NAILS, FEAR FACTORY, SKINNY PUPPY. Those influences are blended in such a way that BLACK MAGNET has its own sound. Even in the almost “danceable” moments, […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Pulpit Vomit – Hospital Lens

From either the too stupid to ignore or the too good to ignore file (and I’m not sure which), PULPIT VOMIT speweth forth its first full length in the form of Hospital Lens. Several singles brought us here – many holiday themed – but the trio has wisely left the holiday-specific ones off of the debut…what, adding another 3:35 to an already short record woulda killed you? The first of the three already released, ‘Razor Jaw’ scrapes and scrambles, rats in a maze, but we’re the rats and the maze is on fire, and we’re on fire, and, oh yeah! […]

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