Rebel Extravaganza

Heavy Metal And Other Occasional Musics And Cultures

lord randall

Album Reviews

Album Review: Valkyrie – Fear

VALKYRIE of Virginia has never been one to put out albums just willy-nilly, or “because we had enough songs written”. The brothers Adams and their cohorts aren’t averse to “sleeping” on songs, letting them bake a bit longer, marinate in their own seasonings until what comes out of the oven is exactly what they want to put before us. Which is part of what makes the 5-year wait between 2015’s Shadows and Fear worth it for the listener. I’ll admit to being foremost a fan of doom in all its forms when it comes to metal, without excluding the occasional […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: THE DEATHLESS DOGS – Five Across The Eyes [EP]

When a band’s promotional one-sheet references CLUTCH, I’m already on guard. Not that picking up sonic and lyrical cues from the Maryland Men Of Cordial Gentility is anything bad per se. It’s just that 8 of 10 times what we get is an act that’s flipped through a thesaurus, listened to a REVEREND GARY DAVIS album once, and probably covers ‘Big News I & II’ live to show its “diversity”. Thankfully, in real life, THE DEATHLESS DOGS are very much their own blend. Sure, the duo is the sum of its influences, but that’s the majority of what’s in all […]

Interviews

INTERVIEW: EREMIT

From Lower Saxony cometh EREMIT, spreading a sludge/doom hybrid we’re soon to find is not as rare in Germany as most would’ve expected. Instead of spewing bile-drenched hymns of misanthropy and addiction (though there may be something of allegory within), this trio envelops the listener in a world of its own creation, and its recently-released EP, Desert Of Ghouls. Wander… BENEATH A CRUSHING WEIGHTInterview with Moritz Fabian [Guitars/Vocals] of EREMITInterview By: Lord Randall Rebel Extravaganza: Germany. Known for thrash, black and folk metal, but doom? Moritz Fabian: I think this is always dependent on the perspective from where you´re looking […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Atramentus – Stygian

Though members of CHTHE’ILIST, FUNEBRARUM, and other acts comprise Longueuil, QC’s ATRAMENTUS, the quintet is very much its own beast from the start. Opener ‘Stygian I – From Tumultuous Heavens… (Descended Forth The Ceaseless Darkness)’ reveals a band certainly in no rush to get anywhere with great speed, yet more layered than FUNEBRARUM, less ribaldly feral than CHTHE’ILIST. We move through vast tundra wastes at times, lean against blizzards that howl through the bones others, but always, always alone. Solitary. While certainly beholden to its genre forefathers, who need not be named except as reference points for all that came […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: The Passing – The Passing [EP]

We have Viking metal bands who call the fjord-hewn shores of Croatia home, so why not a band of Los Angeles miscreants dressing up a blend of Scandinavian extremity for the ’20s? That’s what THE PASSING is on about, and it works. The self-titled blister-fest clocks in at just over 15 minutes, the definition of a short, sharp shock. ‘Condemned’ recalls d-beat OGs SKITSYSTEM in its hysterical forward momentum, while ‘Please Him’ is even more unhinged in that glorious kangpunk, MOB 47 of ways. If you’re looking for second to breathe, it’s not to be found here, that’s for sure, […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Falconer – From A Dying Ember

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve been into FALCONER since before there was a FALCONER. With the ending of MITHOTYN, I was glad to see founding guitarist Stefan Weinerhall moving on in any capacity, and FALCONER fit the bill, which now comes full circle in the band’s final release. While 2014’s Black Moon Rising was undoubtedly FALCONER at its heaviest, most gritty, I wasn’t expecting the lackluster ‘Kings And Queens’, which opens From A Dying Ember. Musically, the band still knows how to write a tune, but Mathias just sounds tired. Not just a bit weary; dog-ass-dragging knackered and, […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Green Carnation – Leaves Of Yesteryear

While 2006’s EP, Acoustic Verses, was phenomenal, and would have been a worthy finale to a career of majestic highs and Hell-deep lows, something just didn’t seem quite finished. I, for one, was affected more than I thought I’d be when GREEN CARNATION announced its end only 2 years later. In 2014, the band teased live appearances, delivering on the promise to great acclaim, but alas, no new music was offered. And that, my friends and fiends, is why Leaves Of Yesteryear is such a special album. Comprised of largely the same lineup responsible for 2003’s A Blessing In Disguise […]

Interviews

Interview: Dark Forest

True metal quartet, DARK FOREST, recently released Oak, Ash & Thorn, an album as imbued with the band’s native British perspective as with the history of the land of their birth. Lord Randall recently sat down with founding songwriter/guitarist Christian Horton to discuss… TO EMBRACE DESTINYInterview with Christian Horton of DARK FORESTInterview By: Lord Randall Rebel Extravaganza: Back at the start (or your start with the band), did you have a vision of what you wanted DARK FOREST to become over time, and how does what it is today look back on what it was? Christian Horton: In the very […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Foetal Juice – Gluttony

Not many bands take over a decade to release their debut album. That’s not to say Manchester’s FOETAL JUICE has been sitting on its collective arse since 2005, either, though, having filled the time with a demo, two EPs, three split releases, and as many singles. And now, a “scant” four years after Masters Of Absurdity comes Gluttony. At first notice, it seems the quartet has left behind much of the parody/juvenile humor element, or at least the twisting of film/song title/band names for its output, which could be chalked up to either input of the band’s new vocalist and […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Noctu – Gelidae Mortis Imago

The sound of dripping, as of water from a stalactite in a long-forgotten cave begins Gelidae Mortis Imago, ‘Suicidio al chiaro di luna’ acting less as a standard “intro”, carrying its own ambience. Melancholy keys, evoking an air of the classical and befitting the genre in which NOCTU operates, lead into ‘Fitte Tenebrae (Le radici dell’ inferno), which oppresses and shrouds as it was meant to, multi-tracked and oppressive choral vocals perverting the liturgical. It’s here that we first realize what NOCTU exhales are more “patterns” than “songs”. If one is looking for verse/chorus/verse – or anything “standard”, it can […]

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