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: UADA – Djinn

To say Portland’s UADA has “blown up” during the two years between Cult Of A Dying Sun and what we now have before us in the form of its all-important third album is the height of understatement. High profile tours (remember tours?), the made-for-mass-consumption safety of its music, and the band’s ridiculous “left hand presence” photos of late have taken what I believe was a decent “enough” second album, and sculpted the quartet into basically melodic black metal’s GHOST. The title track begins sounding like some bastard wedding of Morricone high on bath salts and an even more tremolo-heavy ALESTORM, […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Manticora – To Live To Kill To Live

Power metal doesn’t get much more epic than this. Bowing deeply at the altar of BLIND GUARDIAN, MANTICORA holds nothing back here. This Swedish band has been around for a while, but their exposure in America has been almost non-existent except for a single performance at the ProgPower Festival. This is the second album of a grand concept and the follow up to the logically titled To Kill To Live To Kill. When you open your album with a 14-minute-plus, over the top power/thrash opus, you lay all your cards on the table right away. They sustain the intensity remarkably […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Void Rot – Descending Pillars

I’ll be honest from jump here. When it comes to death metal, my tastes lean decidedly toward Scandinavia. Be it the dimed-out HM-2-driven Stockholm sound, the melodic elements of AT THE GATES / DARK TRANQUILLITY, the myth-worship of AMORPHIS, or the twists ‘n’ turns of CONVULSE / DEMILICH, those are the lands of death where I’m most at home. Of course, there are a handful of USDM acts I’m into, but, for the most part, I’ll take a pass. Enter VOID ROT, from Minnesota, which, to be fair, is about as far north as you can get within the US […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Havukruunu – Uinuos Syomein Sota

This is the discovery of the year for me so far. I ran across this quite by accident on Youtube and I’m quite ashamed to say it’s the first I’ve heard of Finland’s HAVUKRUUNU. This is their 3rd full length album, in addition to numerous splits and demos. All of which I now intend to track down diligently, because this is some of the most soaring and brilliant black metal I have heard not just this year, but any year. Finnish is one of the most jaw-breaking languages around and I won’t insult you by trying to cope with the […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Valkyrie – Fear

VALKYRIE of Virginia has never been one to put out albums just willy-nilly, or “because we had enough songs written”. The brothers Adams and their cohorts aren’t averse to “sleeping” on songs, letting them bake a bit longer, marinate in their own seasonings until what comes out of the oven is exactly what they want to put before us. Which is part of what makes the 5-year wait between 2015’s Shadows and Fear worth it for the listener. I’ll admit to being foremost a fan of doom in all its forms when it comes to metal, without excluding the occasional […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: THE DEATHLESS DOGS – Five Across The Eyes [EP]

When a band’s promotional one-sheet references CLUTCH, I’m already on guard. Not that picking up sonic and lyrical cues from the Maryland Men Of Cordial Gentility is anything bad per se. It’s just that 8 of 10 times what we get is an act that’s flipped through a thesaurus, listened to a REVEREND GARY DAVIS album once, and probably covers ‘Big News I & II’ live to show its “diversity”. Thankfully, in real life, THE DEATHLESS DOGS are very much their own blend. Sure, the duo is the sum of its influences, but that’s the majority of what’s in all […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Atramentus – Stygian

Though members of CHTHE’ILIST, FUNEBRARUM, and other acts comprise Longueuil, QC’s ATRAMENTUS, the quintet is very much its own beast from the start. Opener ‘Stygian I – From Tumultuous Heavens… (Descended Forth The Ceaseless Darkness)’ reveals a band certainly in no rush to get anywhere with great speed, yet more layered than FUNEBRARUM, less ribaldly feral than CHTHE’ILIST. We move through vast tundra wastes at times, lean against blizzards that howl through the bones others, but always, always alone. Solitary. While certainly beholden to its genre forefathers, who need not be named except as reference points for all that came […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: The Passing – The Passing [EP]

We have Viking metal bands who call the fjord-hewn shores of Croatia home, so why not a band of Los Angeles miscreants dressing up a blend of Scandinavian extremity for the ’20s? That’s what THE PASSING is on about, and it works. The self-titled blister-fest clocks in at just over 15 minutes, the definition of a short, sharp shock. ‘Condemned’ recalls d-beat OGs SKITSYSTEM in its hysterical forward momentum, while ‘Please Him’ is even more unhinged in that glorious kangpunk, MOB 47 of ways. If you’re looking for second to breathe, it’s not to be found here, that’s for sure, […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Falconer – From A Dying Ember

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve been into FALCONER since before there was a FALCONER. With the ending of MITHOTYN, I was glad to see founding guitarist Stefan Weinerhall moving on in any capacity, and FALCONER fit the bill, which now comes full circle in the band’s final release. While 2014’s Black Moon Rising was undoubtedly FALCONER at its heaviest, most gritty, I wasn’t expecting the lackluster ‘Kings And Queens’, which opens From A Dying Ember. Musically, the band still knows how to write a tune, but Mathias just sounds tired. Not just a bit weary; dog-ass-dragging knackered and, […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Incantation – Sect Of Vile Divinities

INCANTATION have inspired so many death metal bands, they sometimes almost sound like they are following in their own footsteps, as strange as that may sound. It’s not exactly fair to them. They marked out their territory a long time ago and have stayed in those boundaries. They are determined to be the best they can be within those borders and leave experimentation to others. Most of the bands picking up on their sound are easy to spot as mere knockoffs. Sect Of Vile Divinities shows INCANTATION is still totally devoted to the cryptic, cavernous death metal sound they practically […]

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