Rebel Extravaganza

Heavy Metal And Other Occasional Musics And Cultures

lord randall

Album Reviews

Album Review: Come To Grief – When The World Dies

GRIEF. Fuckin’ GRIEF. Not to harp on the past or “glory days”, or how things were “better back then”, but Bostonian doom crew GRIEF lived up to its name in sound and action, over the course of 4 albums never once buckling to trends or easy money. And, in a way, this steadfastness is what did them in. Lo, doth 2022 bringeth the debut full-length from COME TO GRIEF, formed by two members from the early days. Alright, let’s strap in. ‘Our End Begins’ bludgeons right out the gate, curmudgeonly, a truncheon of what in any other style of music […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Mournful Congregation – The Exuviae Of Gods – Part I [EP]

Despite being active since 1993 Australia’s MOURNFUL CONGREGATION can, as the slow inevitable march of time – and of its music – never be accused of rushing to its end. That 2018’s The Incubus Of Karma was only its fourth full-length, and now followed by an EP four years hence speaks not so much to the lack of material, but to the great amount of care put into what is released under the MC banner. One of two new tracks presented on The Exuviae Of Gods – Part I, ‘Mountainous Shadows, Cast Through Time’ is ushered in by a near-overbearing […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Municipal Waste – Electrified Brain

Virginia thrash/crossover goofballs MUNICIPAL WASTE have been plying their trade for over two decades, gaining and losing fans, a group of die-hards who love everything this crew breathes, burps or farts in tow, and doing – quite frankly – nothing to my ears and eyes but put a clown face on metal. Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not that Tony Foresta & co. aren’t talented, but their output has always seemed, well, contrived. I’m also looking at you, Joel Grind, but that’s for another time. Still and all, I seem beholden to give each album a chance – at […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Haunter – Discarnate Ails

Something happened to San Antonio’s HAUNTER between 2016 debut Thrinodia and Sacramental Death Qualia, which was to follow three years after. What happened was this: a run-of-the-mill screamo trio embraced death metal and became something a bit more in the process. And now, three years after, we’re subjected to Discarnate Ails. Now, from Thrinodia onwards the members were fond of long, extended pieces, but Discarnate Ails (we’ll call it HAUNTER’s second album, but don’t tell them) is made up of three tracks clocking in at an armadillo’s tail over the half-hour mark. I’ve never ever “gotten” screamo, but friends who […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Nihil Nihil Nihil – Things Fall Apart As They Shall [EP]

‘Further Inwards’ beckons, hanging chords and LORDS OF THE NEW CHURCH vibe all over the place. Bits of Laura-era FIELDS OF THE NEPHILIM scattered through, but with enough of a sense of modernity so as not to seem stuck in retro-land. Alternately crawling and lashing, hypnotic – and at over 6 minutes, there’s time to be – we can tell even this soon that what we’re hearing isn’t some one-off toe-dipping in the pool to test the dark waters. The duo is diving in headlong. MISSION UK’s influence (think ‘Deliverance’) arrives in ‘Dance The End’, early SISTERS before Eldritch got […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Watain – The Agony & Ecstasy Of Watain

It’s funny to me how I still think of WATAIN as a “new” black metal band. With a recorded history longer than a good many of its fans have been alive, countless tours and now seven full-lengths to their credit, it’s not as if the members haven’t put in the work. That the original blackened trinity remains intact well over a decade after formation speaks to the dedication and perseverance if nothing else. But here’s the rub. For myself, WATAIN has just been, largely, there. Lawless Darkness was alright enough, The Wild Hunt tiresome, so I shrugged and stepped away. […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Falls Of Rauros – Keys To A Vanishing Future

Portland, Maine’s FALLS OF RAUROS, since its inception, has been searching. Not to say that the band is confused, haphazard or simply looking for its “sound”, whatever that means. More to the point, the band knows who and what they are after well over a decade of albums, keeping one eye on that path, but another wandering, almost scanning the sides of the way for bits of itself hidden under rocks, in leaf-veins – in places it wouldn’t expect commonality or kinship. FOR’s sixth opens with ‘Clarity’, a pristine, simple pattern quickly underpinned by staccato guitars and drums. While I’d […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: WEDROWCY – TULACZE – ZBIEGI – Trzy Siostry [EP]

When you take current and former members of FURIA, GRUZJA and MASSEMORD and hand them computers what could go wrong? With three full-lengths behind this project, Trzy Siostry  is my first exposure to WEDROWCY – TULACZE – ZBIEGI…but it won’t be my last. Hum to undulation, transistors in transit, ‘Pierwsza siostra’ throbs to life, incessant, almost as if we’ve caught the criminals already at work in the bank vault. There’s something very, very ART OF NOISE about what’s going on here at times, early ‘90s Cleopatra Records at others, and sometimes simultaneously. A driving song, one not for sitting still. […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Melt Motif – A White Horse Will Take You Home

‘Sleep’ bubbles to the surface, yet quickly pulses, throbs, a being brought to life and speaking secret language via the sugary, beguiling delivery of Rakel. Underneath, though, the insistent vibration, dream pop in its truest, most literal sense. There’s a strong ‘80s keyboard base here, YAZ and earliest DEPECHE MODE springing to mind, and into ‘Mine’, which even more confirms this kinship, though the members of MELT MOTIF may not’ve even been born then. Jagged guitars rise from the cave floor, stalagmites formed from the dripping sweet honeyed vocals, adding another color to the sonic palette thus far. ‘Everything Will […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Deathspell Omega – The Long Defeat

Enshrouded in its own seemingly self-enfolded cloak of mystery, France’s DEATHSPELL OMEGA with 2004’s Si Monvmentvm Reqvires, Circvmspice fully embraced the Satanic theology and esotericism it had been toying with previously, both starting the band on a new path and spawning legions of wishful carbon copies in the process. After six years without a full-length, DO returned in 2016, and has kept to its every third-year cycle since, of which The Long Defeat is the latest. Two minutes into opener ‘Enantiodromia’ and it still sounds as if the band’s searching for a song somewhere in the ether; not that there’s […]

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