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: Foetal Juice – Gluttony

Not many bands take over a decade to release their debut album. That’s not to say Manchester’s FOETAL JUICE has been sitting on its collective arse since 2005, either, though, having filled the time with a demo, two EPs, three split releases, and as many singles. And now, a “scant” four years after Masters Of Absurdity comes Gluttony. At first notice, it seems the quartet has left behind much of the parody/juvenile humor element, or at least the twisting of film/song title/band names for its output, which could be chalked up to either input of the band’s new vocalist and […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Noctu – Gelidae Mortis Imago

The sound of dripping, as of water from a stalactite in a long-forgotten cave begins Gelidae Mortis Imago, ‘Suicidio al chiaro di luna’ acting less as a standard “intro”, carrying its own ambience. Melancholy keys, evoking an air of the classical and befitting the genre in which NOCTU operates, lead into ‘Fitte Tenebrae (Le radici dell’ inferno), which oppresses and shrouds as it was meant to, multi-tracked and oppressive choral vocals perverting the liturgical. It’s here that we first realize what NOCTU exhales are more “patterns” than “songs”. If one is looking for verse/chorus/verse – or anything “standard”, it can […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Sinister – Deformation Of The Holy Realm

If Europe has an equivalent to CANNIBAL CORPSE, it’s got to be SINISTER. These Dutch madmen have been going at it at least as long as the Boys from Buffalo…this is their 14th album! And they are still as brutal as a nightstick shoved down your throat! With hyper-aggressive death metal, there’s a certain amount of monotony that arises and while SINISTER doesn’t totally avoid it, they do a pretty good job of keeping it at bay here. Hard to believe a band with a 30-year history can still smash skulls and tear out guts like this. The tunes are […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Cauldron Black Ram – Slaver

The piratical goons of CAULDRON BLACK RAM are one weird bunch, and that’s exactly why I love this oddball Aussie band. They certainly aren’t prolific (Slaver is their first record in 6 years), and perhaps that also helps them to stand out. They have brewed up another grimy, greasy and rancid potion of extreme metal carnage that defies classification. Slaver may be even rawer and filthier in sound than their previous record Stalagmire, which is no mean feat. The music is an unpredictable assault of strange riffing that ranges from sludgy doom to mid paced chug to swaggering fast (but […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Cadaver – D. G. A. F.

Norway’s CADAVER has always been, is, and looks to forever be Neddo. It also seems to foul the ears so sporadically as to almost be forgotten in the interim, despite cranking out some morbidly grotesque death under the name CADAVER. And so, 16 years after the flesh-covered wrecking ball that was Necrosis, Neddo surfaces again, journeyman skinbasher Dirk Verbeuren behind the kit, to deliver D. G. A. F. At just over 10 minutes long, the duo has neither the time (nor thankfully) the inclination to fuck around, Jeff Walker lending his rasp to the title track. Luddite as all Hell, […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Winterfylleth – The Reckoning Dawn

It’s been six long years since WINTERFYLLETH released an all out black metal album. 2018 saw an acoustic/folk based effort entitled The Hallowing Of Heirdom. The result of this time off has been nothing less than a complete reinvigoration of the band; The Reckoning Dawn is the best album WINTERFYLLETH has ever done. This is blurry, high speed black metal at its absolute peak. The pace is relentless, but the songs are full of emotion and majesty. Listening to this album, I experienced shades of rage, sadness, defiance and pride. The riffing reaches back to the dawn times of Albion […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Tombs – Monarchy Of Shadows

TOMBS is for sure one of the most reliable bands in American black metal. I haven’t heard a bad album by them yet, and the latest, Monarchy Of Shadows, stands as one of their best. They are laser focused here, and don’t mess around for a second. It’s a compact album of six songs, but you get plenty of bang for the buck. I like how TOMBS subtly shift the approach on each song, bringing in slightly different influences, but yet the album is a unified whole. The title track starts things off with gloomy synth until hard riffs come […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Trivium – What The Dead Men Say

I don’t know what it was about TRIVIUM’s debut Ember To Inferno that I dug back in ’03, but clearly, it didn’t take long for Heafy and the boys to monkeywrench what was already a barely roadworthy machine, becoming a pastiche of even themselves only two years later, and firing off an album that would’ve killed a less merch-driven band only one year after that with The Crusade. It’s nearly 15 years later now, and the musical climate has changed. TRIVIUM hasn’t, though, and album #9 flails and falters from the start, twee guitar squeal with all the rage of […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Khemmis – Doomed Heavy Metal

KHEMMIS’ 2018 release proved my Third Album Theory on so many levels. At some point, I’ll have it up on this site, but suffice it to say that it wasn’t only my ears which heard something special in the Colorado quartet that – while it might’ve been there before – came shining through within Desolation. It’s really no surprise that the first tune we’d hear from the band after its most blatantly metal album was a song of the stature of ‘Rainbow In The Dark’. What is impressive, however, is that KHEMMIS pulls it off with nary a hitch nor […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Front – Antichrist Militia

After four years and doubling its lineup in size, Finland’s FRONT return with MCD, Antichrist Militia. Still on the Iron Bonehead imprint, still peddling its brand of war-tinged blackthrash, a bit of death sprinkled here and there for taste, Missile shriek string histrionics and an instantly catchy riff & rhythm riot advance onto the battlefield, the title track literally spilling over with bloody ideas come to fruition, riffs imprinting on your memory at first listen, and would’ve stood just fine as an opener without the seemingly obligatory and needless intro, ‘Doom Cult Legion’. After the blatant MOTORHEAD homage ‘Iron Front’, […]

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