Rebel Extravaganza

Heavy Metal And Other Occasional Musics And Cultures

lord randall

Album Reviews

Album Review: Memoriam – To The End

Since The Hellfire Demos announced Karl Willetts’ return to Death Metal at the helm of MEMORIAM in 2016, it’s a mere 5 years on, and we’re already looking at the band’s fourth full-length. On its own, that’s not saying much. A good many bands are as productive. Often, though, such a rigorous writing/recording regimen can cause the quality to suffer, at times. Thankfully not so here, as ‘Onwards Into Battle’ is a true call to arms, majestic as the quartet has ever sounded, as ready for havoc, but united, in lock step with Spikey T. Smith’s rhythm engine, which doesn’t […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Fuoco Fatuo – Obsidian Katabasis

Italy – possibly not surprisingly, considering the iron grasp of the church of Rome, and the sense of the liturgical ensuing – has been a stronghold of doom for many years, the organ-driven NOCTU, the more traditional ABYSMAL GRIEF, and SEPULCHRAL VOID coming to top of mind. Enter Lombardy’s FUOCO FATUO with Obsidian Katabasis, its third full-length celebrating its first decade of existence. Comprising three more extended pieces, each over 13 minutes in length, and divided by shorter, yet no less important, instrumental movements, it’s easy to see the album as a concept. It may well be that, but not […]

Interviews

Interview: SOMNURI

Brooklyn progressive sludge trio SOMNURI know a lot about overcoming obstacles, as witnessed on their sophomore full-length. Recorded pre-pandemic, placed in somewhat of a forced hibernation for 2020, this Summer will find the threesome decimating eardrums upon the June release of Nefarious Wave. RIDING THE WAVEInterview with Justin Sherrell [Vocals, Guitars] and Phil SanGiacomo [Drums] of SOMNURIInterview By: Lord Randall Rebel Extravaganza: Your bio mentions “The strength of will to survive in New York” being a reason for the heaviness found in what SOMNURI does. These days, that’s anywhere, right? Being from Detroit, there’s obviously a lot of pride in […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: T.O.M.E. – I-III

Though from the hotbed of black metal of all discernable forms that is Finland, T.O.M.E – formed nearly a decade and a half ago – is only now seeing its debut realized for wider consumption. Originally independently released in 2009, I-III now bears the mark of Spread Evil, and, as such, is the herald of future material. Distended notes hang in the chilled air, no semblance of warmth at the start of ‘I’, near-doom tempo and plod ala AVSKY, yet fanged and clawed, let not the slowness be mistaken for lethargy or laziness. By 3 ½ minutes in, what’s come […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Witherfall – The Curse Of Autumn

While Nocturnes And Requiems and its follow-up, A Prelude To Sorrow, quickly established California’s WITHERFALL as modern prog-power players on a field that simply doesn’t have that many worthy competitors in the band’s native US, I confess a bit of trepidation when it came to The Curse Of Autumn. Would this be just another disappointment when it comes to third albums released thus far in 2021, or would the quintet finally find their own sound and wake the sleeping giant I felt might lie dormant within? After the neck-snapping rhythms and skipping riffs of ‘The Last Scar’ revealed itself as […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: BRÆ – A Thousand Ways To End It All

Here we go a-fucking-gain. That’s it, after this one right here, I’m not reviewing anything with the word “ambient” in the one-sheet by choice for at least two weeks. I mean, all the boxes were ticked, in fairness to BRÆ. 40+ minute album, two songs clocking in at over 20 minutes apiece. Reverences to “faceless beings”, so on, and so forth. But “insane shrieks” and “raw” were mentioned, so there was hope I wasn’t going to end up in another DEAFHEAVEN album hearing critical darlings / Pitchfork dandies whine about their “feelings”. As the lone piece on A Thousand Ways […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Arepo – Arepo

In the ridiculously varied phases and moods of music I’ve gone through in my near half-century on the planet, this one seems to be new. Amid the standards – ‘70s guitar rock, doomed-out sludge, pagan black, Southern hymnody and Neofolk – this ambient thing has thrown me. Maybe I’m appreciating what background music can be? Damned if I could tell you, but here’s AREPO, a duo with a past in everything from BLEACH EVERYTHING (who I have heard and enjoy) to HARMONIC CROSS (who I haven’t, but will after this). Okay, the one-sheet referring to the album as “the most […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Bizarrekult – Vi Overlevde

Sixteen years after its initial formation, it’s BIZARREKULT that I’m trusting to give me a break, however short, from this ambient / instrumental mode I’ve been in of late. Having never heard a note of its music, I’m putting a lot of faith in a band who’s only now releasing its debut full-length. And thus… Of course an intro, of course of the ambient sort I’d just mentioned trying to get a respite from, but still different enough from what I’ve been hearing that I’m not perturbed. Mercifully, ‘For 1000 Ar Siden’ arrives, the first thing leaping out of the […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Culted – Nous

Cults are always problematic for me, largely because what – on the surface – seems a calling to “abandon false religions” and “leave society behind” almost invariably becomes religious in practice and elitist, societal, “hive mind” in psyche by the time the Kool-Aid starts getting passed around. Especially within the realms of our beloved “extreme” music, the term “cult” gets thrown around with the same abandon my generation used to declare things “radical”, “bitchin’”, or “hella”. But I’ll leave this for another day. CULTED has been at it a little over a decade now, and is one of the ever […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Fossilization – He Whose Name Was Long Forgotten [EP]

With a lineup composed of two members of Brazilian sludge/doom/death behemoth JUPITERIAN, namely vocalist/instrumentalist V., and P. on the drums. Now, I’ve recently gone on record with my opinion (aka The Whole Of The Law, Handed Down From The Mountain, Writ On Stone By Lightning) on members of one band forming a “side project” that basically mirrors the other (aka Thou Shalt Not), so I won’t bore you again – at least for now. Blessedly, FOSSILIZATION is noticeably different on its face than its members other effort, being more death than doom in overall scope, while still retaining a bit […]

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