Rebel Extravaganza

Heavy Metal And Other Occasional Musics And Cultures

lord randall

Album Reviews

Album Review: Firebreather – Dwell In The Fog

In which Gothenburg stoner/doom merchants FIREBREATHER return with their all-important third album, Dwell In The Fog, hopefully ready to kick ass and take names. Given their previous album titles of Firebreather and Under A Blood Moon, and that both were solid efforts in their own right (rite?), methinks there may be something of the elemental in the band, what with fog now making an appearance. Opener ‘Kiss Of Your Blade’ flicks open the album, rusty, nicked and dry-blood-covered, no trendy desert or dune-buggy surfboard rawk ala FU MANCHU here, the rumble more akin to METH DRINKER and KRUGER. Flowing ‘n’ […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Pyreship – Light Is A Barrier

Finding a quality band that falls under the post-whatever (in this case -metal) tag is almost – if not more – rare than a current thrash band actually doing something interesting with the genre. Houston, Texas’ awfully-named PYRESHIP has a full-length and split with Louisiana sludge/prog crew FORMING THE VOID under its belt from a few years back, and now returns with Light Is A Barrier. An overlong spoken piece takes up the first minute of ‘Broken Spire’, but I guess the band figured they could spare it, what with 8+ minutes to fill on the opener. Once the vocals […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Darkness Everywhere – The Seventh Circle [EP]

Admittedly I’ve always dug both key variants of the Swedish death metal sound, those being Stockholm and Gothenburg. While the Stockholm sound was ripping, cavernous, gutted by the HM-2 pedal (Swedish Chainsaw, y’all!), the Gothenburg sound was inherently more melodic, generally faster, a distant cousin of the US thrash of its time. Oakland, California is nowhere near Gothenburg, though, so when DARKNESS EVERYWHERE’s debut EP landed on my desk, I had to investigate. As much as I despise intro tracks, ‘Apocalyptic Nightmares’ gets a pass due to its nod to my beloved doom, a simple pattern delivered over dual guitars […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Mystic Circle – Mystic Circle

MYSTIC CIRCLE has been plying their trade in the black/death market since the mid-‘90s, releasing a half-dozen albums in the decade between ’96-’06, but has as yet failed to make a noticeable impression of any sort, just always being “there”, one could say. Others have their thoughts, I’m sure, but I believe releasing three albums in as many years burnt whatever creativity the band had to cinders, resulting in the lackluster Bloody Path Of God in 2006, followed by the 15-year recording hiatus that ended with last year’s Letters From The Devil EP. And now, a mere four months later, […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Black Altar / Vulture Lord – Deathiah Manifesto

Given my current renaissance of affection for split releases over the past few months or so, Deathiah Manifesto looked interesting at the start, being a melding of Polish (now UK) blackguards BLACK ALTAR and Norway’s equally profane VULTURE LORD. The styles of blackness from both countries are identifiable almost at first listen, yet I’ve found them often in at least aesthetic camaraderie, giving me hope that the few moments to come won’t be wasted. With its last full-length arriving in 2008 and only three other splits and an EP to show for the past decade, BLACK ALTAR has more to […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Cynic – Ascension Codes

Conceived as a mind-journey – as, if we’re being honest, most CYNIC has been – pollen blown from Olias Of Sunhillow / Song Of Seven JON ANDERSON is evident from ‘Mu-54*’ and ‘The Winged Ones’, which is much pleasing to these ears, oft’ jaded and haggard from guitars with gain cranked to 11 and tempos that have more in common with arcane ritual than art given time to let the music breathe. ‘Elements And Their Inhabitants’ is positively otherworldly, and it’s here that newfound drummer Matt Lynch first slips into his role, as comfortable as an ivory finger into a […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Sataray – Blood Trine Moon [EP]

Though active and releasing music under SATARAY for a bit over 10 years, this is my first listen to she of Olympia, Washington, lately also of funerary doom outfit VOUNA, a recent and impressive addition to whatever “Cascadian metal” is identifying itself as these days. At any rate, barring a single and a split release with Zania Morgan, the Blood Trine Moon EP is the one-woman project’s first output since the 2019 Nocturnum debut full-length. And thus… ‘Astara’ flows gentle at its start and keeps interest even though a good bit of this ambient sort of work reveals itself to […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Golgothan – Leech

Originally GUTWRENCH, over the past 11 years, the band changed monikers to GOLGOTHAN (Read the story of the name, it’s just as back-of-the-bus Junior High as you’d want when it comes to humor), and tossed a couple members in the ditch along the way, releasing 3 EPs between 2014-2016, not really returning until ‘20s cerebral masterwork, the Rotting Genitalia EP. And thus, the band that brought us ‘Drink Of My Piss’ and ‘Diddle The Genitals’ – seriously, adult humans wrote these songs – a couple years back arrives in 2022, with the backing of Czechian death devotees Lacerated Enemy Records […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Phrenelith – Chimaera

Copenhagen’s PHRENELITH kicked up grave dirt fairly consistently from its initial 2015 demo until the Ornamented Dead Eyes EP from 2018, and then…nothing. While full length debut Desolate Endscape was solid as fuck, the band’s disappearance seemed as if it had failed to strike while the iron was hot, as it were. And now comes Chimaera, drawing heavily (and possibly not so strangely) on Greek myth. I’ll admit I was a bit surprised to see the entire 2017 Chimaerian Offspring EP show up here, especially since it was released before the album of that same year, but I’ve often thought […]

Interviews

Interview: Confusion Master (2022)

The members of Rostock, Germany’s doomed-out sludge merchants CONFUSION MASTER continue to spread their tentacled, sucking madness with new album Haunted, available via Exile On Mainstream. HAUNTED BY THE HUNTERInterview with Stephan Kurth [Vocals/Guitars]Interview By: Lord Randall Rebel Extravaganza: Germany is really turning into a key point for doom in the past few years, Ahab, Emerit, you guys. Is there much of a metal/extreme music scene around where you are based? Stephan Kurth: We are Baltic Sea, coastal based. Rostock, Hamburg, Kiel and Copenhagen got quite substantial scenes and amounts of growing bands of all kinds of Metal. I‘d mention […]

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