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: Lungburner – Dogma

Meditative metal is an actual thing. There’s not enough of it around to be an actual functioning subgenre (yet) but it’s out there and that is the space where Atlanta’s LUNGBURNER functions. I must say Dogma caught me by surprise. With the band name and cover art, I was expecting some angry groove metal or even straight nu-metal, but this is much more intellectual and interesting than that. Doom plays a sizable part of the LUNGBURNER equation. Slow, undulating tempos predominate and the guitar tone is thick and heavy. But I wouldn’t call it sludge, as the music doesn’t seem […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Dead Void – Cranial Devastation

Danish death/doom duo A & K return from 2022’s Volatile Forms, having trimmed the lineup to themselves, each taking up portions of the bass, adding to their respective drums and guitars, and now unleashing Cranial Devastation upon us. Well, let’s hope so. You can’t just drop a title like that and not deliver. Actually, you can, and we’ve seen it far too frequently before. ‘Regurgitation Of Ancient Manifest’, thankfully, drips with bass-drenched plod, oozing slow yet vile malignance from every festering pore. RUNEMAGICK comes to mind, a less off-the-rails KHANATE due to the focus employed. Around the 2:20 mark, the […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Witch Ripper – Through The Hourglass

When a band’s PR one-sheet compares any band to MASTODON, DAVID BOWIE and COHEED AND CAMBRIA not only in the same paragraph, but the same damn sentence, ya just gotta wonder what kind of fever dream or ayahuasca trip was being recovered from here. You know the bands themselves don’t write these, and – while you trust this particular source – you kinda hope for the best. WITCH RIPPER’s been at it awhile now, and Through The Hourglass is it’s third. Riding on the back of two solid releases, the chances of the ball being completely dropped are few, but […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: The Ghoulstars – The Dark Overlords Of The Universe

I used to have quite a liking for horror punk…indeed, for any music connected to the horror genre…but in recent years, the flood of cosplay “monster bands” has soured me on a lot of it. Everybody today loves to play dress up…we have Vikings, Ninjas, Pirates, aliens. And of course, monsters. Monsters up the wazoo. So forgive me if I’m not impressed by THE GHOULSTARS all that much. Oddly, these guys have roots in Finnish underground death-doom, with members of KUOLEMANLAAKSO and HOODED MENACE amongst their ranks. Expect none of that here, as THE GHOULSTARS are a way for them […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Goetia – Mortuary Cult

After three years and as many EPs, Washington, D.C.’s GOETIA welcomes us into the Mortuary Cult on its first full length release. I’m blindfolded, mind, having never heard the band before, but given their previous choice of covers [KREATOR’s ‘Ripping Corpse’ and ‘Don’t Burn The Witch’ from VENOM], one hopes for at least a spark from these mighty torches has found its way into what we’re about to hear. Ahh, the intro. The seemingly ever-present and often pointless intro which seems to plague death metal bands specifically. Thankfully, ‘Lanterns Of The Dead’ rips the scab off, taking its share of […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: THE FRĒQS – No God On The Gold Coast

There’s been quite the resurgence of noise and noise-adjacent rawk in the past few years, with longtime bands like THE ANTIKAROSHI releasing the finest work of its career [2024’s L’inertie Polaire], the recent MELVINS / NAPALM DEATH’s Savage Imperial Death March collaboration, not to mention relative newcomers EYES and BRIGHT SUNSHINE adding their own angular, jagged shards to the scene with Spinner and Executive Power Supreme respectively. ‘John Travolta’ pops his collar to the sound of that prehistoric dial-up internet connection we love so well, and THE FRĒQS follow shortly. Messrs. Crowell, Mandly and Fierman have come darker this time, […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Sacriversum – Before The Birth Of Light

Have you ever wondered what DEEP PURPLE would sound like as a death metal band? SACRIVERSUM from Poland definitely provides an answer! These guys have a long history going back to the early ’90s but this is my first encounter with them…and it’s a very delightful one! This is a great combination of death metal and prog rock. A lot of credit goes to the inventive keyboard work of “Baran”, who adds some awesome Jon Lord quality Hammond organ sound to SACRIVERSUM’s diverse attack. This is heard nowhere better than the first two proper tracks ‘We’re Storming Through The Night’ […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Immolation – Descent

I’ve intentionally shied away from reviewing certain bands over time, either due to a blatant dislike or an appreciation that bordered on the slavish, knowing that both would result in a bias leaning heavily on one side or the other. DRAGONFORCE lies on one end of that seesaw, IMMOLATION the opposite. As I suffered through the latest album of the former, I felt the Noo Yawk-based death metal stalwarts were deserving of the same, so let us begin the descent into…Descent… Imagine, for a moment, a pastoral scene; maybe something of John Bradley or Frederic Edwin Church. But only for […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Powerrage – Beast

It’s no secret EXCITER is one of my all-time go-to bands and that their classic guitarist John Ricci is one of my favorite musicians. The first three EXCITER albums are untouchable. Alas, the members of the band find it extremely difficult to be in the same room without killing each other, which has led to decades of erratic output and finally, another break-up of the original crew. Arising from the ashes is POWERRAGE, featuring Ricci and some time EXCITER vocalist Jacques Belanger, along with bassist Todd Pillon of WITCHKILLER and drummer Lucas Derry. John swears up and down that POWERRAGE […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Restless Spirit – Restless Spirit

RESTLESS SPIRIT came up old school, the way it should be done; dropping three EPs, tweaking and molding its sound so that by the time an album was even conceived, founding members Marc Morello [bass] and Paul Aloisio [vox, guitars] had at least a general idea of what they were going for. Can’t hurt that they’d known one another for practically their entire time on this rotting planet, so their musical language was inspired by decades of hailing favorites and mocking the “shitty” albums in each other’s collections. Enter drummer Jon Gusman, just in time for 2021’s Blood Of The […]

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