Rebel Extravaganza

Heavy Metal And Other Occasional Musics And Cultures

Personal Records

Album Reviews

Album Review: Ligation – After Gods

LIGATION, formed by DARK BUDDHA RISING alumnus MN and MS of enthralling funeral doom entity PROFETUS, and now joined by TI of brutal death crew PUS, arrives with its full-length debut, After Gods. A shagged-out doom groove strides in in the form of the title track, ghosts of DESULTORY (when they mattered) and GOREFEST’s Mindloss flitting around the corners. There’s already something unhinged at work here, be forewarned, slobbering death metal and chaos-reigning noise elements making an appearance, and we’re less than three minutes in. ‘Turmoil In Everest’ TI’s bass is robust in the same way as the slathering creature […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Fumes – Skeletal Wings Threshold

When a band releases an EP, video and live album before its debut, you already know the entities therein are not about to be bound by expectations, genre “constraints” of false authorities or even what the listener expects. Thus was born FUMES, spewing forth Skeletal Wings Threshold from the squalor and beauty of the streets of Mexico City. Grating tremelo scathe and scree bleeds us from the opening moments of ‘Stellar Ascension Infernal’, the worship of the riff key, and a tight, vibrant mix giving each instrument its rightful place, and when the last 0:11 combusts, there’s no amount of […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Stargazer – Bound By Spells [EP]

Initially released on Hallowe’en 2023 by Nuclear War Now! Productions on Vinyl + Digital formats, STARGAZER’s Bound By Spells EP sees its CD release nearly seven months later via Personal Records. The Adelaide alchemists (or assault brigade, depending on the form their music takes) have been around since the mid-‘90s, spewing forth four albums, splits and EPs, which doesn’t seem like much, when you get right down to it, especially considering the tomblike silence between 2014’s A Merging To The Boundless and Psychic Secretions of seven years after. Still and all, Bound By Spells finds the trident every bit as […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: The Rottening – Seeds Of Death [EP]

In which ex-members of Swedish death metal band INTESTINAL take shape under the moniker of that band’s last album, new vocalist in tow, to create, you guessed it…Swedish death metal. Carrying over three songs from last year’s Ode To Rot demo and adding a couple new ones, THE ROTTENING breathes, eats and shits the Stockholm sound on initial EP, Seeds Of Death. So, you know what you’re getting, and can stop now or move forward into demise. The Swedish Chainsaw is revved up with ‘Ode To Rot’, the tone a bit less coarse than I’d anticipated, but still raw, hard-charging, […]