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: Watain – The Agony & Ecstasy Of Watain

It’s funny to me how I still think of WATAIN as a “new” black metal band. With a recorded history longer than a good many of its fans have been alive, countless tours and now seven full-lengths to their credit, it’s not as if the members haven’t put in the work. That the original blackened trinity remains intact well over a decade after formation speaks to the dedication and perseverance if nothing else. But here’s the rub. For myself, WATAIN has just been, largely, there. Lawless Darkness was alright enough, The Wild Hunt tiresome, so I shrugged and stepped away. […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Heart Attack – Negative Sun

The hype machine goes into overdrive for this French band on their press sheet, practically proclaiming them the new saviors of heavy metal. Well, while I wouldn’t go quite that far, HEART ATTACK created a surprisingly engaging and energetic record in Negative Sun that touches on several styles of metal. First off, this sounds as good as any major league release you’ll find. Everything pops, including bass and drums. That ticks an important box right there. In no way would I describe HEART ATTACK as a very original band, but they are very clever in how they weave different influences […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Falls Of Rauros – Keys To A Vanishing Future

Portland, Maine’s FALLS OF RAUROS, since its inception, has been searching. Not to say that the band is confused, haphazard or simply looking for its “sound”, whatever that means. More to the point, the band knows who and what they are after well over a decade of albums, keeping one eye on that path, but another wandering, almost scanning the sides of the way for bits of itself hidden under rocks, in leaf-veins – in places it wouldn’t expect commonality or kinship. FOR’s sixth opens with ‘Clarity’, a pristine, simple pattern quickly underpinned by staccato guitars and drums. While I’d […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Sadistic Ritual – The Enigma, Boundless

This has got to be one of the quirkiest and most entertaining thrash records I have laid ears on in a while. The band is from Atlanta, Georgia and their moniker had me thinking they would be a POSSESSED or KREATOR type band. Thankfully, they are more original than that and not easy to describe. The PR calls them “psychedelic” thrash, but the most psychedelic thing about the album is its cover art. I think fans expecting real hardcore psych influence might be disappointed. SADISTIC RITUAL does not fit into a neat little box. They aren’t a knock-off of either […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: WEDROWCY – TULACZE – ZBIEGI – Trzy Siostry [EP]

When you take current and former members of FURIA, GRUZJA and MASSEMORD and hand them computers what could go wrong? With three full-lengths behind this project, Trzy Siostry  is my first exposure to WEDROWCY – TULACZE – ZBIEGI…but it won’t be my last. Hum to undulation, transistors in transit, ‘Pierwsza siostra’ throbs to life, incessant, almost as if we’ve caught the criminals already at work in the bank vault. There’s something very, very ART OF NOISE about what’s going on here at times, early ‘90s Cleopatra Records at others, and sometimes simultaneously. A driving song, one not for sitting still. […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Melt Motif – A White Horse Will Take You Home

‘Sleep’ bubbles to the surface, yet quickly pulses, throbs, a being brought to life and speaking secret language via the sugary, beguiling delivery of Rakel. Underneath, though, the insistent vibration, dream pop in its truest, most literal sense. There’s a strong ‘80s keyboard base here, YAZ and earliest DEPECHE MODE springing to mind, and into ‘Mine’, which even more confirms this kinship, though the members of MELT MOTIF may not’ve even been born then. Jagged guitars rise from the cave floor, stalagmites formed from the dripping sweet honeyed vocals, adding another color to the sonic palette thus far. ‘Everything Will […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Deathspell Omega – The Long Defeat

Enshrouded in its own seemingly self-enfolded cloak of mystery, France’s DEATHSPELL OMEGA with 2004’s Si Monvmentvm Reqvires, Circvmspice fully embraced the Satanic theology and esotericism it had been toying with previously, both starting the band on a new path and spawning legions of wishful carbon copies in the process. After six years without a full-length, DO returned in 2016, and has kept to its every third-year cycle since, of which The Long Defeat is the latest. Two minutes into opener ‘Enantiodromia’ and it still sounds as if the band’s searching for a song somewhere in the ether; not that there’s […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Static Abyss – Labyrinth Of Veins

AUTOPSY fans, if you’re getting anxious waiting for the next slab of rotten death from your heroes, relief is headed your way. For all intents and purposes, STATIC ABYSS is AUTOPSY, Not all the members of AUTOPSY are here, but Chris Reifert and Greg Wilkinson sure are and if there’s any noticeable difference in style between STATIC ABYSS and AUTOPSY, it escapes me. This is repulsive death-doom laced with insane hammering in classic AUTOPSY/ABSCESS style. I would say the production here is slightly cleaner than what we usually get with AUTOPSY, but the same dedication to depraved sonic destruction is […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Temple Of Void – Summoning The Slayer

Now four albums deep into its nearly ten-year existence, Michigan’s TEMPLE OF VOID returns with Summoning The Slayer. Lumbering and lurking, ‘Behind The Eye’ stalks forth from shadow, basic, almost Cro-Magnon in its main chord progression, but “basic” in the style of BOLT THROWER and early BENEDICTION, straightforward. No muss, no fuss, just head-down and advancing destruction. ‘Deathtouch’ makes no secret of its melody, oppressively forlorn in the verses ala the burgeoning days of The Peaceville Three, and – as their forefathers – with a chorus that confirms that not only can such a sub-genre as death/doom exist, but can […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Likheim – Alt Skal Svinne Hen… [EP]

Alt Skal Svinne Hen… may be LIKHEIM’s first shot across the bow when it comes to black metal, but the project’s been incubating for around two decades, so let’s strip all excuses such as “It’s the first recording” and “Pretty good try” away, shall we? Helmsman and vocalist Gretn has had plenty of time to craft this EP into what he wishes, to mold it to his vision of perfect form, so no one to laud or blame but himself should things go awry. The title track reeks with the stench of mid/late ‘90s GORGOROTH, Gretn’s vocals reminiscent of Gaahl’s […]

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