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 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 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 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 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 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 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 […]

Album Review: Wuldorgast – Cold Light

‘Obscured In Shadows’ throws its head back in a magisterial and mighty howl from the start, ascending and descending riff patterns, a definite early ‘00s DARKTHRONE vibe to both the tempo and Feral Spirit’s (henceforth F.S.) vocal proclamations not unlike Fenriz of the aforementioned, who shan’t be again, because there’s at once something fresh about what WULDORGAST is bringing this early on in Cold Light. Neither blanching at the idea of stretching a song to just under the breaking point as in the opener, nor averse to the “get in, do damage, get out” aesthetic, ‘Natural Life Is Eternal Battle’ […]

Album Review: The Kearns Family – Together And Alone

Take a husband and wife old-time music duo, give them a sound to paint to, a touch of JOHNNY DOWD, and more than a little style. Now, take those two, put them in the Mojave Desert, and put a few mics in the room. What comes out is Together And Alone. ‘The Dust’ immediately resonates, bell-clear and crystalline despite its title, Susan Kearns’ upright bass already as integral to the sound as the weathered, careworn voice of Pat. Grains of BRETT DETAR are sifted through vocal cords just this side of brittle, a breath away from brimstone and heart-deep in […]

Album Review: The Brood – For The Dark

Come to think, it’s really not all that rare for a punk/hardcore band to start up, then spend years playing in local dives, squats, basements and VFW halls before deciding to crank out an actual album. I’d even add that, as a genre, the type of punked up hardcore THE BROOD is on about is more geared to a live setting, where the band and the crowd become one heaving, moshing organism than something you’d toss onto a record player. But that’s not keeping the Philadelphia crew from delivering with For The Dark. ‘Sinkhole’ is exactly that from the start, […]

Album Review: Barren – The Hanged Man

New Jersey’s BARREN arrives with its debut, The Hanged Man. ‘Unheard’ begins with the all-too-common sound of the church bell, winds blowing in the darkness, and a wail over a plain – but still somehow interesting – chord structure. There’s a feeling of an extended prelude here, though, as a true song never takes shape. Vocalist/guitarist/bassist Andrew Campbell does seem to be desirous of some sort of purging, and his delivery is understandable, while carrying the burden of desperation. There’s something of the Akron – Cleveland, OH sound in ‘Death Interrupted’, bands like ULTRALORD and FISTULA coming to mind in […]