Rebel Extravaganza

Heavy Metal And Other Occasional Musics And Cultures

2022

Album Reviews

Album Review: Hate Forest – Innermost

It cannot be a coincidence that this promo comes across my desk on a day with lethal -40 degree temperatures and blowing snow. I can’t imagine a better accompaniment to such death-dealing cold than the latest output from Roman Saenko, also of DRUDKH, BLOOD OF KINGU and WINDSWEPT fame. This is black metal cold and bleak enough to cause frostbite. It has the sort of straightforward purity that all of Saenko’s projects have. Saenko also hails from Ukraine. Innermost was written and recorded in December of 2021, as clouds of war were hovering over his homeland. A war that was […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Satanic Warmaster – Aamongandr

Since 2005 (and a few albums deep into its recorded history already), Finland’s SATANIC WARMASTER has been bathed in the blood of the sole and ridiculously prolific Werwolf, for better or worse. Guest musicians involved or not, SW’s failures and triumphs rest and resound in one man. With a discography as varied and plentiful as this, it’s unwise to assume everything measures up to the quality of the best or should be down to the level of the triteness of the worst. Aamongandr is SATANIC WARMASTER’s first full-length in 8 years, though, so one hopes Werwolf and the chosen session […]

Album Reviews

Album Review – Mycelium – Mycoticism: Disseminating The Propagules

Scotland’s NECRONOCLAST cranked out some pretty interesting black metal in the mid-late ‘00s and it seemed as if with its final album, Ashes, and a split with the mighty DODSFERD, sole member Greg Edwards might be ready to take the next step forward. There was always something a little quirky and uncommon about the lyrical content of NECRONOCLAST, but no one saw MYCELIUM coming ten years later, I’d wager. Elements of let’s call it “fungal horror” are found in death metal’s beginnings, but have recently taken hold as roots, strangling and choking. That’s a little of what’s happening within Mycoticism: […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Rudra – Eight Mahavidyas

Why is this Singapore band not signed to a major metal label? It’s not only a mystery, it’s tantamount to a crime, because these masters of Vedic Metal, who have been active since 1992, have got to be one of the best extreme metal bands from Asia. Their new album, Eight Mahavidyas, sees them continuing to evolve even as they remain true to the basics of their craft. RUDRA has always been deeply entwined with Hindu myths and philosophy. On this album, they examine eight female characters from the past who have fought against evil and ignorance. A lyrical subject […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Kampfar – Til Klovers Takt

Nearly three decades (man, I’m feeling my age at typing this) and 9 albums into life as KAMPFAR, the Norwegian black metal lifers have spent their career eschewing the satanic, the demonic, the “low hanging fruit” of a good many of their contemporaries, opting instead of tales of myth, folklore, true history, and how such can relate to society today. What were “myths” anyway, but a way for olden man to wrap his head around something in Nature – human included – that he couldn’t comprehend. From the first mythmaker, the first storyteller on, man has been seeking that wisdom, […]