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: Collision – The Final Kill

15 releases in 20 years ain’t that bad of a run for a band of any sort, and while a good many of those were of the Split/EP variety, there’s no doubt the Dutch killing machine that will be remembered as COLLISION ate, drank, and shat grind. The Final Kill is to be the quintet’s swan song, if the press releases are to be believed, but at the end of this 15-minute (17+ minutes on album due to the vinyl-only cover of S.O.D.’s ‘Kill Yourself’) blastfest, you’re left with the feeling that COLLISION wasn’t planning on going out with anything […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Dirt Woman – The Glass Cliff

Maryland’s DIRT WOMAN is the world’s first WINDHAND tribute band. The members probably won’t like hearing that, but there it is. One listen to The Glass Cliff, and chances are, you’ll agree. Now, that does not necessarily mean this is a “bad” album. It’s actually pretty good, if you like super-gooey sludge riffs mixed with haunting female vocals. It’s just really, really derivative. Lots of long, oozing jams here, with only 5 songs, but about an hour of run time. The minute you hear the guitar tone on ‘Lady Of The Dunes’, you know you’re in for one super-heavy ride […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Curse Upon A Prayer – Infidel

Much has been made of the fact that Finland’s CURSE UPON A PRAYER have anti-Islamic lyrics, to the point that all other facets of the band are in danger of shuddering under the weight of this supposed gimmickry. Truth is, CUAP has crafted some fairly solid black metal in its short history, and isn’t black metal supposed to be anti-…well, pretty much everything anyway? So let’s get to it. While I was a bit concerned that ‘Call To Prayer’ was going to be a full on intro of the Adhan, I needn’t have been, the foursome unrolling a hazy rug […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Necrowretch – The Ones From Hell

This French band has been going at it for a good long stretch now, tossing out discs of evil death metal every few years to remind us they’re still around. They put me in a peculiar position, because they are definitely heavy enough, fast enough and diabolical enough, but they just don’t seem to make a big impression on me. The Ones From Hell is more of the same. These guys don’t have the aura of being bandwagon-jumpers, their commitment to black and death metal seems sincere. Yet it doesn’t register in any major way. They are influenced by classic […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Death The Leveller – II

When a band’s first long-player is titled II, two things become starkly clear. One, something has come before – in this case, 2017’s creatively-titled I. And two, that what’s found on DEATH THE LEVELLER’s Cruz Del Sur debut is to be seen as a continuation. And thus, so armed, to Bandcamp I did go, armed with 4 EUR ($4.34 for USsians), and was summarily impressed by the emotion found within I’s four expansive tracks, ‘Gone Forever’ especially showing a band with promise and clearly with its eyes to the future, albeit bleak. Now comes II, and the wailing guitar stunt-doubling […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Smoulder – Dream Quest Ends

The Good Doctor must have been under a sleeping enchantment when SMOULDER’s debut Times Of Obscene Evil And Wild Daring hit the racks last year. How I could have missed an album with Michael Whelan art on the cover can only be explained by sorcery. Now comes the Canadian band’s EP, entitled Dream Quest Ends, which gives me a second chance. Epic sword and sorcery metal with a very doom-laden aura and ringing female vocals is the most succinct way to describe Dream Quest Ends. Imagine MANILLA ROAD played at CANDLEMASS velocity and you’ve hit on the SMOULDER template. And […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Goden – Beyond Darkness

True devotees of underground heaviness and grimness will nod their heads at the mention of the band WINTER, whose brief recording career had a disproportionate impact on the metal scene. They created one of the doomiest, ugliest and most massive sounds ever heard on their landmark 1989 Into Darkness release. That sound has haunted the cobwebbed corners of the underground for 30 years now, though WINTER itself ceased to exist long ago. GODEN (named after a track on Into Darkness) are about as close to WINTER as you’re going to get in 2020 and in fact have former WINTER member […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: God Dethroned – Illuminati

GOD DETHRONED has been one of my “go to” bands since the early ’90s, as well as probably the top extreme metal act from Holland. That’s why it pains me to say that their latest, Illuminati, is a very average release, and one that lacks the usual fire and fury we can expect from Henri Sattler and whoever his current cohorts are. It’s not that the band have radically changed their style here, or that this lacks technical skill and ability. Something just seems off about it. It is generally slower than what we’ve been getting from GOD DETHRONED and […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Lychgate – Also Sprach Futura

LYCHGATE’s fourth release (and first for Debemur Morti Productions) seems as good a starting point as any for my ears. Having three full-lengths to its name at this point, and with nary a core lineup change since its inception, LYCHGATE should be settled into what it is and what it is not, thereby providing the new listener an experience of a band at its best. Quite frankly, I’m ashamed at myself, as big a fan of ESOTERIC as I am, not realizing the part Greg Chandler plays as a third of this trio, but rest assured, this isn’t some “pet […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Formosa – Danger Zone

With two albums under its belt (2016’s Tight & Sexy and Sorry For Being Sexy from 2018), and promo photos that make FORMOSA look like either stunt doubles for General Zod, Non and Ursa from Superman II or extras from the Blue Oyster scenes in the first Police Academy movie, I cannot bloody wait to hear this shit. ‘Dynamite’ prances out of the gate, positively poppy, BIBLE OF THE DEVIL at half-speed and ¼ the passion, and ‘Masquerade’ fares not much better, FORMOSA revealing itself to be any one of a thousand club bands you can see in any mid-sized […]

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