Rebel Extravaganza

Heavy Metal And Other Occasional Musics And Cultures

lord randall

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 […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Great American Ghost – Torture World [EP]

I’ve gotta confess, I’ a sucker for the EP format. Bands can either provide a taste of what’s to come, bust out a few cover versions, or stretch themselves into areas they wouldn’t feel comfortable with in an album format. Given our current global situation, the past year plus has given cause for many bands to pause and reflect on what it means to continue on, or if they can even financially/emotionally manage to do so. And, not for nothing, some brilliant art in all forms has been born from that reflection. GREAT AMERICAN GHOST has taken that time, looked […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Gaahls Wyrd – The Humming Mountain

Black metal thrives on controversy, whether intentionally created by the artists/bands themselves or a by-product of media hype. In that realm, few have lived that life to the degree of Gaahl. I don’t need to rehash, and won’t as a cursory web search can do that for those interested. GAAHLS WYRD’s debut album in 2019 was a chance for Gaahl (the man) to move away from Gaahl (the media/meme fodder) and simply record as an artist with like-minded comrades – and it succeeded. 2021 brings The Humming Mountain, a self-described “mini-album” that swims in the pre-history first explored on GastiR […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Wombbath – Agma

Sweden’s WOMBBATH were there in the gory glory days of almost my favorite style of death metal. Gimme an HM-2 and I’m at least giving your band a chance. A demo, EP, split, you know the drill, and then 1993’s Internal Caustic Torments showed some promise…and then, the aptly-named Lavatory EP flushed all the gains of before right on down. It’s really only since 2015 that the band has come into its own, of a sort, and an argument could be made that the hiatus was simply a case of “right band, wrong time”. Clocking in at over 70 minutes […]

Album Reviews

Album Review – Shield Of Wings – Unfinished

Alright, first off, it’s not the late ‘90s anymore, or had you not noticed? SHIELD OF WINGS apparently hasn’t. The Illinois fivesome features not one but two female vocalists, so credit for that, as ‘Crushing Hail’ does give a bit of difference from the norm, Mordian and Daye (also on keys) blending to create an interesting melody. Musically, the band is exactly what I expected, and that’s unfortunate, especially when I’d actually been taken back to those early NIGHTWISH / LACUNA COIL / EPICA days for a moment…until the absolute bottom drops out right around the 3 ½ minute mark. […]

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