Rebel Extravaganza

Heavy Metal And Other Occasional Musics And Cultures

lord randall

Album Reviews

Album Review: Mors Principium Est – Seven

I’ve always had a soft spot for melodic death metal, especially that of the Scandinavian/Teutonic variety, so Finland’s MORS PRINCIPIUM EST fit easily into my listening choices when NIGHT IN GALES took a hiatus for the ‘10s, when we didn’t know if AT THE GATES was going to be a thing anymore, and when IN FLAMES disappeared up its own ass starting with 1999’s Colony, incidentally the year of MPE’s founding. Now on its appropriately-titled 7th album, the duo has largely been reliable, not having released an outright clunker during its two decades. Certainly, there are some standouts as well […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Hatebreed – Weight Of The False Self

I just can’t get behind Jamey Jasta & co. One could make the case that HATEBREED’s frontman/heart and soul of the band has done much for hardcore, as far as bringing it into the spotlight. Whoever said that’s where hardcore wanted to be is my thought. Anyway, the band’s never impressed me, but I can’t seem to help giving each new album a listen. Not sure exactly what I’m hoping for, but I know I haven’t found it yet. And so it remains with Weight Of The False Self, HATEBREED’s eighth. I couldn’t help but wince at the rhyme of […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Zebadiah Crowe – The Cloven Hand [EP]

Remember when bands like DIE KRUPPS, the mighty GODFLESH and PITCH SHIFTER used to take on remixes of straightforward metal bands and mangle the songs, turning them inside out, so that what came forth from your speakers was nothing whatsoever like the original? It was liberating to hear, at least to these ears. But when those aforementioned would allow the scalpel to be taken to their own tracks, all bets were off, and what often happened was no less than a dissection and a piecing back together, an electronic Frankenstein’s monster with a result no less bleak than Shelley’s doomed […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: White Dog – White Dog

There’s really no reason at all why I shouldn’t be frothing at the mouth over Austin, TX pack WHITE DOG. I mean they tick ALL the boxes. From the Southern US, named after an animal, twin guitar harmonies (scratch that – “guitarmonies”, as the band say), guitars, long hair, hats, AND the quintet looks like 5/6 of the ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND or the classic lineup of MOLLY HATCHET shat them out their ass in the promo photos. So yeah, absolutely no reason. Oh, and and they’re on Rise Above, one of the most reliable labels going since it began. But […]

Interviews

Interview: The Plague Physicians

Ohio’s THE PLAGUE PHYSICIANS continue their experiments with sonic exploration (and even more eldritch, darker goals in mind, to be sure) on new release, In Arkham’s Shadow. Lord Randall joins vocalist Dr. Orange in the diagnoses… FROM THE BANKS OF THE BURNING RIVERInterview with Dr. Orange [Vocals] of THE PLAGUE PHYSICIANSInterview By: Lord Randall Rebel Extravaganza: So you began your practice in Cleveland in 2013, taking almost 5 years to release The Raven Mocker. How much of the persona was in place from the start, or was The Plague Physicians something you became over time? Dr. Orange: I’d been in […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Undeath – Lesions Of A Different Kind

It takes a lot of either courage, confidence, or flat out balls for a new death metal band to release a debut album. Sometimes it’s all of one of the aforementioned, sometimes an equal blend of all three. Nonetheless, when the promo sheet from Prosthetic Records hails your album as “a whole new level [Insert Obligatory “of confidence and powarrr!” Here] of skull crushing intensity, you’d best know what you’re about. I’m also a little concerned that, within a little over 1 ½ years, New York’s UNDEATH has managed to crank out 2 digital demos, a vinyl split, a compilation, […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Gearea – Limbo

It worried me when I saw that Portugal’s GAEREA had not-one-not-two-but-three (count ‘em!) songs past the 9-minute mark on its sophomore release, Limbo. Now I’m all for exploration, sonic and otherwise, but I’d truly enjoyed the 40-odd minutes of Unsettling Whispers in 2018, and its been my considered opinion that genre-wide, black metal slips most easily into wandering tangents when it should stay right where it is, and stop trying to be so fancy. I’m looking at you, UADA. Hence, when GAEREA pulled not one single punch, getting down to the monolithic, tower of fuckoff that is the beginning of […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: In Flames – Clayman (20th Anniversary Edition)

By the time IN FLAMES delivered Clayman at the dawn of the new millennium, the band had already morphed from one of the founding fathers of the Gothenburg melodic death metal sound into…well, I had already begun to wander, let’s say. Granted, I love me some DEPECHE MODE, but ‘Everything Counts’ from Whoracle of three years hence signaled more than good taste in covers from Jesper Stromblad & co. ‘Bullet Ride’ sounded positively jovial in ’00, and is no less so here, strange and ill-suited as an opening track. Faring no better were ‘Pinball Map’, and we can begin to […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: In Malice’s Wake – The Blindness Of Faith

Australia (at least within the metal circles in which I move) is much more known for its black/death output than thrash, so I can say without shame that The Blindness Of Faith is my first encounter with IN MALICE’S WAKE, who have apparently been tearing up the band’s local Melbourne scene and beyond for nearly 18 years, and in recorded form for a bit less, the album we speak of today being its fourth since 2008. Coming five years after Light Upon The Wicked, we find the quartet also now two albums deep into its current lineup – and it […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Pimmit Hills – Heathens & Prophets [EP]

The phrase “born from the ashes of” when referring to a band formed after the end of another usually denotes some sort of catastrophe, some event – or string of events – that caused the upheaval. Not so PIMMIT HILLS, which was birthed out of founding rhythm guitarist Dave Kowalski’s decision to leave stalwart Southern troubadours KING GIANT due to family/life obligations. Simple as that. The remaining members were encouraged to continue, and have, this time under the banner of a name taken from the band’s native Pimmit Hills, Virginia. Originally intended as a full-length debut, as thee darke spectre […]

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