Rebel Extravaganza

Heavy Metal And Other Occasional Musics And Cultures

lord randall

Album Reviews

Album Review: Queensrÿche – Digital Noise Alliance

No sense in lying to you or to myself. It hurts when a band that meant so much in your younger years seems to have completely turned tail and run on the sound that undeniably both made them a household name in the cottage industry of metal but endeared them to yourself and othersin the process. For me, one of “those” bands was QUEENSRŸCHE. And I couldn’t care less about the legal battles, all of that, so if you want to rehash something that’s been decided (at least by the courts) long ago, might as well go somewhere else. I’d […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: I AM – Eternal Steel

Begun by vocalist Brandon Hileman in his 20th year, Texans I AM solidified their lineup in 2017, and have since put out a couple albums sparking a level of interest completely relative to the listener’s enjoyment of groove metal. While the Lone Star State has a plethora of fantastic metal bands, I’ll stand on Phil Anselmo’s ego and swear that PANTERA was never one of them. Yet still, their influence looms large, and thus we arrive at Eternal Steel, I AM’s third. ‘The Primal Wave’ is the grabbing of low hanging fruit from an orchard of already rotten fruit, Hileman’s […]

Interviews

Interview: BONGBONGBEERWIZARDS

For the past five-odd (emphasis on odd) years, Germany’s BONGBONGBEERWIZARDS have been making use of ancient sonic alchemical techniques to conjure riffs moving at the speed of slow, drone hymns and cautionary tales. Lord Randall takes the magic carpet ride to the Ampire… STRAIGHT OUTTA DORTMUNDInterview with Bong Travolta in the human form of Jan S. [Guitars/Synth/Saxophone]Interview by Lord Randall Rebel Extravaganza: When the band first began, did you already have a solid idea of what you wanted the sound to be, or would you say it’s naturally developed over time? Bong Travolta: After changing the lineup back in 2019, […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: MADROST – Lost Lives Volume 1

Ah, the live metal album. To be honest, in my Top 20 Live Albums of all time aside from MANOWAR’s Hell On Wheels – Live and Live After Death by IRON MAIDEN there’s probably not a single one that could qualify as balls-out Metal ™. That’s largely because the metal show is so visceral, so in-the-moment that if you weren’t sweating it out in the venue – be it arena or basement show – no amount of audio trickery, snappy between-song banter or killer set list is going to make you feel like you were. Oh, there are exceptions. OZZY […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: ABHOR – Sex Sex Sex (Ceremonia Daemonis Antichristi)

Now eight albums deep into a 25+ year history, Italy’s ABHOR renew their commitment to the dark arts with the evocatively titled Sex Sex Sex (Ceremonia Daemonis Antichristi). With the core membership of Domine Saevum Graven and Ulfhedhnir (on guitar and vocals respectively) intact since 1995, one would be forgiven for assuming you know what you’re walking into with ABHOR. With the cover continuing the red/crimson theme of 2015’s Ritualia Stramonium and Occulta Religio of three years later, thoughts (among other things) arise of COVEN’s oft’ imitated Jinx Dawson, but this being ABHOR, there’s a snide swipe at the liturgies […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Manic Abraxas – Foreign Winds

Okay, so you’re a three-piece band from Stephen King Country, and you’ve already shot your shot by naming your outfit MANIC ABRAXAS. Add the weight that your last album was called Speed Golem and where the fuck do you go from there?! Well, it’d help if you started Foreign Winds out with something equally snazzily titled, ‘Red Camo Rock’, let’s say. Bonus points if you throw a few COFFINS grooves and Thomas G. Warrior-patented “Unnnh!”s in also. There’s a tad of the early ’00s DARKTHRONE here, thinking The Cult Is Alive, when Fenriz got to stroke his punk hard-on to […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Even Flow – Mediterraneo [EP]

EVEN FLOW has been active for a bit over two decades now, and yet Mediterraneo is only its fifth release (including two other EPs and as many full-lengths), so one would hope for quality over quantity, right? Opening with ‘Ocean Lies’ we’re immediately swept under the waves of crashing keys that seem to dominate the mix, the band clearly feeling the energy that this sort of prog-lite metal needs to carry it over. Don’t let the “lite” confuse you, though, as there’s plenty of heft to the vocals of Marco Pastorino, who has possibly the most pristine pipes I’ve heard […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Saor – Origins

Freshly back from his second album under the also solitary but more overtly blackened FUATH moniker, Andy Marshall returns with Origins, and it’s here we find SAOR returning to its, erm, Roots, yet looking brightly, brilliantly forward. Contemplative from the onset, ‘Call Of The Carnyx’ rolls in like fog across the moors, a hypnotic guitar phrasing, clan drums calling, beckoning to join, to heed the harkening. Soon enough, the fires are lit, and an energetic phrasing is held aloft by galloping rhythm, just as quickly to return to a brief gentler moment – and this is where the strength of […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Cavernous Gate – Voices From A Fathomless Realm

At over three minutes, the layered choral intonations, bell-like chimes, ritual drums of ‘That Night’ are less “intro” and more a full piece of the DEAD CAN DANCE / CURRENT 93 variety, gently tolling into ‘Old Graves Stir’. ‘Twixt forlorn crags, yet of majestic height we travel, summoned into the realm of death, stumbling over jagged riff, loss howling its fetid decay into our face in form of winds. Sebastian “S.K.” Körkemeier in his other roles, other bands has proven himself well versed in all shades of light and shadow, seeming to fully embrace the chance here to truly shine […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: The Necromancers – Where The Void Rose

Almost feels as if we’ve stumbled into some shady downtown bar mid-song, ‘Sunken Huntress’ wasting no time in reminding old friends and informing newcomers what THE NECROMANCERS is on about. There’s a bit of Magnus Pelander in new vocalist Basile Chevalier-Coundrain’s pipes, more complimentary than carbon copy, shades of the much-missed Michael Grant of CRESCENT SHIELD, and neither a bad thing. Musically, there’s a delightful blend of doom, SLOUGH FEG-styled rave-ups and even a sense of experimentation ala MASTODON’s post-Leviathan work on offer here. Certainly the most overtly Metal of the bunch, ‘The Needle’ marries early JUDAS PRIEST to a […]

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