Rebel Extravaganza

Heavy Metal And Other Occasional Musics And Cultures

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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: 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 […]

Album Reviews

Album Review – MÖRK GRYNING – Fasornas Tid

MÖRK GRYNING might’ve missed the first shrieks of second wave black metal in its native Scandinavia but, since 1995’s Tusen ảr gått…, founding members Goth Gorgon and Draakh Kimera and cohorts spread their shadows of melodic blackness over a handful of impressively solid albums until Mörk gryning of 2005. This would spell what most of us though was the end – and credit and hails to the founder(s) for halting the band when they felt their passion waning – yet metal in any form be a hard beast to tame, and thus was Hinsides Vrede born as the world writhed […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Wuldorgast – Cold Light

‘Obscured In Shadows’ throws its head back in a magisterial and mighty howl from the start, ascending and descending riff patterns, a definite early ‘00s DARKTHRONE vibe to both the tempo and Feral Spirit’s (henceforth F.S.) vocal proclamations not unlike Fenriz of the aforementioned, who shan’t be again, because there’s at once something fresh about what WULDORGAST is bringing this early on in Cold Light. Neither blanching at the idea of stretching a song to just under the breaking point as in the opener, nor averse to the “get in, do damage, get out” aesthetic, ‘Natural Life Is Eternal Battle’ […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: The Kearns Family – Together And Alone

Take a husband and wife old-time music duo, give them a sound to paint to, a touch of JOHNNY DOWD, and more than a little style. Now, take those two, put them in the Mojave Desert, and put a few mics in the room. What comes out is Together And Alone. ‘The Dust’ immediately resonates, bell-clear and crystalline despite its title, Susan Kearns’ upright bass already as integral to the sound as the weathered, careworn voice of Pat. Grains of BRETT DETAR are sifted through vocal cords just this side of brittle, a breath away from brimstone and heart-deep in […]

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: Barren – The Hanged Man

New Jersey’s BARREN arrives with its debut, The Hanged Man. ‘Unheard’ begins with the all-too-common sound of the church bell, winds blowing in the darkness, and a wail over a plain – but still somehow interesting – chord structure. There’s a feeling of an extended prelude here, though, as a true song never takes shape. Vocalist/guitarist/bassist Andrew Campbell does seem to be desirous of some sort of purging, and his delivery is understandable, while carrying the burden of desperation. There’s something of the Akron – Cleveland, OH sound in ‘Death Interrupted’, bands like ULTRALORD and FISTULA coming to mind in […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Bedsore – Dreaming The Strife For Love

Aside from a split album with Japan’s MORTAL INCANTATION, 2020’s slow grower, Hypnagogic Hallucinations was the last we’d heard from BEDSORE… until now. When I refer to the debut as a “slow grower”, the mistake would be to view that as a bad thing, especially in this case. Neither one to chop the tail off a song unnecessarily to meet some self-enforced track length, nor to draw out a piece to the snapping point for the same reason, there was a lot going on in BEDSORE, even from the start. And thus, it’s no real surprise that, if anything, the […]

Short Sharp Shocks

NECRONOMICON EX MORTIS – The Mother Of Death [EP]

Churning out two EPs last year and as many this year, adding up to the playing time of pretty much a single album, Chicagoans NECRONOMICON EX MORTIS return with The Mother Of Death. ‘Trick Or Treat’ leads, a beefed up RUMPLESTILSKIN GRINDER blended with ACID WITCH vocals, obsession with ‘70s/’80s horror flicks in full force. While the drums could stand a bit more heft in the mix, and the guitars tend to get buried in the bass-heavy mix, ‘Infestation’ and the title track are punchy and chock fulla riffs. The ambient ‘Itchy Tasty’ is surprisingly worthwhile, and ‘Salem’s Lot’ conjures […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Goatlord Corp. – Temple Of Serpent Whores

GOATLORD CORP. arrives, kicking open the rust-encrusted gate to Temple Of Serpent Whores with ‘Slave Disciplin’, a confidently striding riff soon devolving into the equivalent of a sentient woodchipper on crack, ferocious. Vokillist Saint Vincent dredges up a mighty Mille Petrozza from KREATOR’s early years, all snarl, sneer and raspy execution. The title track only fans the flames here, the chorus of ‘Temple Of Serpent Whores’ demands horns raised, heads banged, blood in the pit in a way that those black metal bands with convoys of tour buses and Nuclear Blast touring budgets rarely succeed. Deceptively, the song shifts and […]

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