Rebel Extravaganza

Heavy Metal And Other Occasional Musics And Cultures

2024

Album Reviews

Album Review: Ischemic – Condemned To The Breaking Wheel

This Canadian band definitely has the potential to make some noise in the burgeoning death-doom scene. They’ve added a couple of members since their last effort and now exist as a 5-piece. I’m glad to see they still have Necro-Nurse Isabelle grumbling and rasping for them. She’s one of the heaviest female vocalists in the scene. ISCHEMIC have matured a lot since their self-titled LP. The sound here is cleaner and more varied…not as sludgy yet still extremely heavy. You sure won’t feel like partying and cruising for chicks after hearing this mournful monolith of sound. Four lengthy tracks are […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol – Big Dumb Riffs

For its all-important third album, Austin trio RICKHSAW BILLIE’S BURGER PATROL have, if possible, gone even more primal with Big Dumb Riffs. ‘Clowntown’ spot welds Bleach-era NIRVANA to PIXIES, while ‘1800EATSHIT’ plows grooves deeper than Ron Jeremy in the ‘80s. Tempos may slow from time to time over the course of this abbreviated album, but I’ll be durned if the syrup-laden ground ‘n’ pound of TAD and MELVINS might have been given a run for its money with ‘Peanut Butter Snack Sticks’. ‘Whip It Around’ follows suit, injecting a bit of HELMET to the point you can – if you […]

Short Sharp Shocks

Besotten + Funerelic – Abyssal Synodality

Damn, the older I get the more I’m loving these little one-off split releases. Maybe it’s memories of mixtapes traded that almost made shit sound nastier once you went down to 8th gen. There two Pacific pummelers seem to thrive in such realms, BESOTTEN early on locking into a mid-‘00s GRAVE groove in ‘Anothered’. ‘Subterranean Realms Of Excrutiation’ lives up to its name, plodding and pain-inducing. FUNERELIC’s ‘Tomb Of The Necrolith’ follows the same path, but adding good many sonic convulsions along the way, all welcome, all ominous in their love of the stench-ridden. Ending with ‘Devoured In Obsidian Flame’, […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Furze – Caw Entrance

The one and only Woe J. Reaper, the Mad Hatter of Black Metal, returns with an all-new mad tea party to mess up our perception of reality. Every form of music needs a jester, a raconteur, to shake things up. Mr. Reaper, operating under the name of FURZE, has been doing that since the late ’90s, creating an indefinable version of low-fi black metal that mixes in generous dollops of doom and warped psychedelia. It shouldn’t work…yet it does. Crazy titles and song names are part of the FURZE experience and Caw Entrance lives up to that reputation. I suspect […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Hands Of Goro – Hands Of Goro

‘Prince Of Shokan’ kicks off (and out) the jams on HANDS OF GORO’s self-titled debut here, replete with ‘70s rawk riff glory and pulsing rhythms. These three ain’t no spring chickens when it comes to bringing this sort of thing to the party, members of neo-classic metallers SLOUGH FEG, doomhounds SPIRIT ADRIFT and blackened NITE comprising the crew here. “Metal” is the operative word here, from the fast-paced ‘Demonizer’ to ‘Uncanny’ with its NWOBHM gallop (SAXON, Di’Anno-era IRON MAIDEN). The psyche-progrre-delic freakout of ‘21st Century Plague’ manages to slam some proto-punk into the mix as well. Think THE SWEET’s ‘Ballroom […]

Short Sharp Shocks

Nomura – The Silent Whisper [EP]

Right out the gate I’ve gotta worry about a djent band. Sorry, I’ve heard more than enough pissing and moaning about how I “just don’t get it”, but you know what? If releases like The Silent Whisper keep flatulating across my desk, I’m glad. NOMURA seems to revel in the masturbatory style of TESSERACT and MESHUGGAH, with no discernable tunes anywhere to be found amid the spend drying on the tissues and socks that must surely litter their space after “practice”. ‘Embrace The String’ and ‘Natural Revange’ jerk and jitter past like the band’s scared a song might actually catch […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: White Dog – Double Dog Dare

My review of WHITE DOG’s self-titled 2020 debut was, how shall we say, less than kind. I still stand by that impression, but when Double Dog Dare came across my desk, I’ll also confess to being curious at how the band had aged in the little over three years since. With a revamped lineup, including a new vocalist and added – you guessed it – keyboardist, there’s hope, right? A compact little FOGHAT-styled shuffle leads us into ‘Holy Smokes’, lead runs and vocal harmonies aplenty, the rhythm section keeping things tight but buoyant. Quite frankly, I’m not sure who’s got […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Dragonforce – Warp Speed Warriors

‘Astro Warrior Anthem’ begins satisfyingly enough, Marc Hudson seeming for all the world like a rather bored Klaus Meine, but it all goes to pot less than a minute in when the noodle factory opens for business, Li and Totman clocking in for some true tweedly-dee runs that should be jaw-dropping but don’t even sound as if they were created by humans. Sure, I get it, “fastest band in the world”, blah blah blah. But there’s exactly zero emotion conjured in the entire song, a carbon copy of 95% of what DRAGONFORCE has done up until now. ‘Power Of The […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Darkestrah – Nomad

A fierce wind is blowing from the steppes once more. I hear thundering hooves on the horizon…DARKESTRAH has returned! I’ve loved this unusual band since hearing their masterpiece, The Great Silk Road, but they’ve been quiet the last few years. The silence is shattered with Nomad. This is one of the great black metal bands, with such a memorable, time-lost sound. Only the best can conjure up a true feeling of being from another time and place and DARKESTRAH have done this like no other. Yes, the style here is similar to The Great Silk Road and Turan. I hope […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Messiah – Christus Hypercubus

MESSIAH was one of the first metal bands to cross my hears from Switzerland (yes, yes, the mighty CORONER, a little-known band named HELLHAMMER that turned into an even lesser-known band called CELTIC FROST, we know). There was always something quirkily special about MESSIAH, though. From the low-slung proto-doom/death of ‘Space Invaders’, to the utterly bonkers yet melodic ‘The Dentist’ of the debut to the complete about-face that was Extreme Cold Weather and that curious polar bear on the cover, MESSIAH was just different. Fast forward to 2024, the regrettable loss of vocalist Andy Kaina certainly still haunting after the […]

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