Rebel Extravaganza

Heavy Metal And Other Occasional Musics And Cultures

Century Media

Album Reviews

Album Review: Marduk – Memento Mori

Time sure hasn’t sanded the edges off of MARDUK. Memento Mori has some of the fastest, most vicious metal these guys have ever played. There’s a hardcore contingent of “fans” that complain the band has lost its edge when they ditched their Sieg Heiling bass player. You sure can’t hear it here. ‘Blood Of The Funeral’, ‘Coffin Carol’ and ‘Red Tree of Blood’ are like barbed wire whips that rip the flesh from your bones. Yet if you listen carefully, there is also strange melody and even a kind of brutal elegance that slips into some of these tunes. The […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Frozen Soul – Glacial Domination

Texas’ FROZEN SOUL is one of the new generation of death metal bands stepping up to the plate and trying to take the torch from the giants of old. That is a super difficult task, because almost all of these bands just sound like an echo of what has gone before. In FROZEN SOUL’s case, they obviously are BOLT THROWER’s junior division and I imagine vocalist Chad Green spends a lot of time in front of a mirror polishing his best Karl Willets tones. Out of all the new “primitive” death metal bands getting big publicity…the group includes SANGUISUGABOGG, 200 […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: SANGUISUGABOGG – Homicidal Ecstasy

After the four song Pornographic Stench demo of 2019, SANGUISUGABOGG got snapped up double-quick by Century Media, parlaying the “weirdness” of their name and logo (self-described as “the Nike swoosh of death metal” by gurgler Devin Swank) into what seems to be the next “it” band in metal. ‘Black Market Vasectomy’ kicks things off, or tries to, at least. I shouldn’t enjoy Cody Davidson’s coffee can drums, but for some reason I am, but that could be because they’re mixed so far to the front that the guitars sound like they’re in a room down the hall somewhere, likely jerking […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Queensrÿche – Digital Noise Alliance

No sense in lying to you or to myself. It hurts when a band that meant so much in your younger years seems to have completely turned tail and run on the sound that undeniably both made them a household name in the cottage industry of metal but endeared them to yourself and othersin the process. For me, one of “those” bands was QUEENSRŸCHE. And I couldn’t care less about the legal battles, all of that, so if you want to rehash something that’s been decided (at least by the courts) long ago, might as well go somewhere else. I’d […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Enforced – Kill Grid

Here it is…100% thrash metal PERFECTION! I was hoping that ENFORCED would rise to the challenge…and they have! These Virginia hellhounds have made a strong argument with Kill Grid that they are the rightful heirs of SLAYER. This album is full of the same balls-out intensity that made Hell Awaits and Reign In Blood classics. You doubt me? Slip this sucker in, hit play, and prepare to be battered and bruised by a whirlwind of steel! ‘The Doctrine’ starts with a medium crunchy build before exploding into pure holocaust of speed and intensity. Did ENFORCED blow their wad early? Along […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Bewitcher – Cursed Be Thy Kingdom

This record took a while to really hit its stride, but it finally got there. BEWITCHER is a SoCal act kind of following in the footsteps of several “evil rocking metal” bands, and they didn’t strike me as anything too special in the first half of the album. After a bluesy intro of ‘Ashe’, they lead off with ‘Death Returns’, which sounds like a not so thrashy MIDNIGHT. Dirty rock meets heavy metal…it’s always a good formula, but pretty well worn. ‘Satanic Magick Attack’ sounds a lot like ‘2 Minutes To Midnight’ with different vocals and some minor tweaks… I’m […]

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: 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 […]

Music News

SPIRIT ADRIFT ANNOUNCE TRIUMPHANT NEW ALBUM, ENLIGHTENED IN ETERNITY

SPIRIT ADRIFT are a band who refuse to slow down. On their new album, Enlightened In Eternity, guitarist/vocalist Nathan Garrett alongside drummer Marcus Bryant have created yet another monument to the timelessness of heavy metal. While Enlightened In Eternity builds on the sizable foundation established by the band’s previous albums, it also sets itself apart in formidable new ways, widening the scope of what SPIRIT ADRIFT can be. Listen to the album’s powerful first single ‘Harmony Of The Spheres’ HERE SPIRIT ADRIFT have mastered the ability to invoke the power of metal’s past, whether it be the ’70s, ’80s or […]