Rebel Extravaganza

Heavy Metal And Other Occasional Musics And Cultures

Armageddon Label

Album Reviews

Album Review: The Brood – For The Dark

Come to think, it’s really not all that rare for a punk/hardcore band to start up, then spend years playing in local dives, squats, basements and VFW halls before deciding to crank out an actual album. I’d even add that, as a genre, the type of punked up hardcore THE BROOD is on about is more geared to a live setting, where the band and the crowd become one heaving, moshing organism than something you’d toss onto a record player. But that’s not keeping the Philadelphia crew from delivering with For The Dark. ‘Sinkhole’ is exactly that from the start, […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Alarm! – Alarm!

There’s just something about Swedish hardcore/punk that stands apart from any other movement. From ANTI-CIMEX to Mob 47 to the ‘90s crust influences of SKITSYSTEM and DISFEAR, it just hits different. The members of ALARM! have pedigree up the wazoo but, refusing to rest on the laurels of their past (bands such as VICTIMS and OUTLAST), the foursome has crafted a brief but boisterous album in Alarm!. A tellingly ominous bass/drum opens up ‘Into The Dark’, and when I say “opens” up, I mean “sonically eviscerates”, all speed and high register screams/spits. Not slowing down for ‘Alerta!’ (which I think […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Malleus – The Fires Of Heaven

Here’s a record to stoke the flames of a traditional metalhead’s furnace! Pretty sure there’s more than one band called MALLEUS out there, but these guys hail from Boston, an old school town that seems fitting for old-school metal such as this. It is fairly easy to conjure up the names of old titans like HELLHAMMER, VENOM and BATHORY…much harder to sound like you actually come from the era when those giants were in their heyday. That is what MALLEUS has done here…first wave black metal worship of the highest order! After the classical intro ‘The Tempest’, they rip right […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Exil – Warning

Umeå, situated in Norrland of Sweden, has a rich cultural history. So much so that – if you’re reading this – you probably either really love or really hate its most famous metal export, MESHUGGAH. But more than this…much more than this…is that if you’re of a certain age, and listened to punk/hardcore, the name “Umeå” was mentioned without irony alongside the scenes of New York, Cleveland, Detroit and LA. That history flows deep within EXIL, though Stockholm is where the elements of this culture-shattering bomb came together to create Warning. Made up of members current and former of U.X. […]