Rebel Extravaganza

Heavy Metal And Other Occasional Musics And Cultures

2025

Short Sharp Shocks

Cartilage – Tales From The Entrails: A Necrology [EP]

The San Francisco slaughtercrew of CARTILAGE has been quiet for a few years, so Tales From The Entrails: A Necrology sizzles when it hits the pan like flesh sliced straight off the bone. The ‘Official Trailer’ is how an intro should be done, and ‘Frothed Vomit Slosh’ roils ‘n’ boils with DESULTORY-styled glee, maniacally messy. The guitar tone alone sells ‘Globs Of Glimmering Gore’, vocal violator Mark Wallace carrying a bit of Mille Petrozza sneer in his spewage, reminding us how much death/grind truly owes to thrash. ‘Ape-u-tator’ – aside from being brilliantly titled – is catchier than an STD […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Fumes – Skeletal Wings Threshold

When a band releases an EP, video and live album before its debut, you already know the entities therein are not about to be bound by expectations, genre “constraints” of false authorities or even what the listener expects. Thus was born FUMES, spewing forth Skeletal Wings Threshold from the squalor and beauty of the streets of Mexico City. Grating tremelo scathe and scree bleeds us from the opening moments of ‘Stellar Ascension Infernal’, the worship of the riff key, and a tight, vibrant mix giving each instrument its rightful place, and when the last 0:11 combusts, there’s no amount of […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Hirax – Faster Than Death

Mr. Katon W. De Pena is one of the true warriors of thrash metal. He’s been whipping up circle pits for about 40 years now, so his dedication can’t be questioned. Plus, he’s a hell of a good guy…I can personally attest to this. Despite that, HIRAX albums have been few and far between. Faster Than Death is only the sixth full length in all that time. Well, this one may very well be their rawest and most in your face outing since their classic debut, Raging Violence. They’ve been trying to live up to that brutal dose of mayhem […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Act Of Impalement – Profane Altar

In this, its unholy 13th year, doth Nashville’s ACT OF IMPALEMENT lie us upon its third and aptly titled Profane Altar. Let the sacrifice begin… When founding guitarist/vocalist Ethan Rock revealed a new lineup before the release of 2023’s Infernal Ordinance, some wondered if this new incarnation would retain the spirit of the band some of us had followed since its early days. In a word, no. And it wasn’t intended to. Hence, when ‘Apparition’ appears, it’s with a somehow even older, more ancient tone than we’ve heard previously. Imagine BOLT THROWER as interpreted by a Cro-Magnon rhythm section and […]

Short Sharp Shocks

Balefire – Balefire [MLP]

The keys of ‘Black Sun’ dissolve into the caustic eruption that is ‘Sands Of Gemini’, bassist Chuck Sherwood and his interplanetary cohort managing to somehow be knuckle-dragging and technically mind-bending simultaneously. ‘Star-Born Revolt’ is convoluted, chaotic and cerebral, pre-Obscura GORGUTS on bath salts, when you could sense the obliteration of senses that was that album on the horizon. ‘Barbaric Rebirth’ is especially concise, yet covering so much in so short a space, so that the nearly 4 minutes of ‘Lord Of The Red Lands’ seems almost epic in scope. This is death metal birthed from some alternate dimension where entire […]

Music News

Album Review: Rats Of Gomorrah – Infectious Vermin

While the members of German death metal entity RATS OF GOMORRAH may not be new to the genre or the frustration that comes with wanting to branch out or explore new horizons within what (to some) is a staunchly policed style, ROG is a new project, born from the ashes of DIVIDE. The trio has trimmed down to a two-piece, and we now are given Infectious Vermin. Wasting no time with the all-too-common trope of the “Intro” track, ‘Swarming Death’ lives up to its name from the first hammering rhythm, the first chop of the guitar, Daniel Stelling’s [guitar/vocals] delivery […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Harakiri For The Sky – Scorched Earth

While 2018’s Arson was, to my ears, a true fork in the road for HARAKIRI FOR THE SKY – an album where the band could’ve taken any number of divergent paths, all worthwhile – Mære felt very much as if the duo had decided to make camp in the lands of Arson, either unwilling, or undecided as to how to move forward. Factor in the re-recordings of 2010 debut and sophomore Aokigahara released in 2022, and it leaves one to wonder how the time since Mære was spent. Scorched Earth arrives, and now we know, for better or worse. Plaintive, […]

Short Sharp Shocks

EX DEO – Year Of The Four Emperors [EP]

EX DEO has always been a band with no reason to exist to my ears, largely as it’s literally KATAKLYSM with one extra member. I will say this for opener ‘Galba’, though; it’s more enjoyable than most of what’s come from either band in over a decade. ‘Otho’ is lackluster, basic and by-the-numbers, while ‘Vitellius’ begins with a fucking stellar low-end groove, and does return variations on this from time to time. Too little too late at this point, though. Obviously a vanity project from its start, EX DEO continues its own revelry in glut with Year Of The Bored […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: ALKYMIST – UnnDerr

I remember hearing the debut from these Danish noise-mongers what seems like a millions years ago. And to be brutally honest, that’s all I remember. I can’t recall a note from the actual record. Lots of things have happened since then, including a pandemic, a war and mass environmental chaos. Would 2024’s version of ALKYMIST be a bit more memorable? I think so. UnnDerr is a dark, heaving mass of foreboding heaviness that comes across as very direct and “simple” but which has some hidden depths to it. It certainly isn’t standard doom or death metal, yet I think it […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: ÚLFARR – Fornetes Folm / His Crown Grows From His Skull

ÚLFARR’s debut full-length, Orlegsceaft, arriving as it did in late December of 2023 gave it both the notable honor of being the last album released in the year that I’d review and allowed it to qualify for my much-respected Top 20 albums list for 2023. Which it did. And now, they’ve done it again. The Cumbrian horde returneth with Fornetes Folm / His Crown Grows From His Skull. ‘Alarūna’ ushers we in, conjuring the droning incant of Atilla Csihar initially, but soon enough shifting to early CRAFT in attack, merciless, but more ancient, and the more foreboding for it. Slicing […]

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