Rebel Extravaganza

Heavy Metal And Other Occasional Musics And Cultures

lord randall

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 […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Nathr / Ordo Cultum Serpentis – Shadows Crawl

Of NATHR, bell-toll, windswept soundscape beckons, chiming, an almost harpsichord tone to herald ‘The Burial’. Lie back on the satin, fold arms, and let the tide take you. Six minutes elapse before the guitar becomes consciously noticeable, embroidered and woven slow, steady, patient and undeniable as the Norns, keys flipping tumblers in the lock as the gate to eternal repose opens. At 10:24, when the lid closes and the soil begins to pile, though resigned and longing, comes hysteria, a panicked, futile clawing. Futile, as the darkness takes on weight, takes you in. Black liturgy here, and no benevolent forced […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Godless – States Of Chaos

In all fairness to India’s GODLESS, when States Of Chaos came across my desk, I wasn’t exactly thrilled. Nothing to do with the name, we’re past that. My lack of interest was born of a general “meh” reaction to most death metal of varieties other than Swedish or the classics – you know, DEATH, GORGUTS, IMMOLATION, etc. – and dislike of almost all new thrash output. ‘Malevolent’ begins living up to its name, no annoying intro track to wade through. There’s just something “off” about the tone that bugs me, though. Bass-heavy with raw guitars, it’s exactly what I should […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Power Paladin – With The Magic Of Windfyre Steel

Sometimes you just know. And with even a cursory glance at the cover art for With The Magic Of Windfyre Steel, it’s crystal clear what Iceland’s POWER PALADIN is here to do. Betcha there’s not even a death metal riff within a mile of this shit. Takes me back to when you could look at an album cover, song titles – if you were lucky a band photo on the back of the record – and lay good odds on what you’d find inside. POWER PALADIN gets right down to business with ‘Kraven The Hunter’, ghosts pre-Final Countdown EUROPE and […]

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