Rebel Extravaganza

Heavy Metal And Other Occasional Musics And Cultures

osmose productions

Album Reviews

Album Review: Darkestrah – Nomad

A fierce wind is blowing from the steppes once more. I hear thundering hooves on the horizon…DARKESTRAH has returned! I’ve loved this unusual band since hearing their masterpiece, The Great Silk Road, but they’ve been quiet the last few years. The silence is shattered with Nomad. This is one of the great black metal bands, with such a memorable, time-lost sound. Only the best can conjure up a true feeling of being from another time and place and DARKESTRAH have done this like no other. Yes, the style here is similar to The Great Silk Road and Turan. I hope […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Mournful Congregation – The Exuviae Of Gods – Part II [EP]

Surprisingly, it didn’t take long for funeral doom to make the journey from its birthplace (in either England or Scandinavia, a hot point of a debate which has no place in this review) to the primarily sunlit lands of Australia so, for purists – who also likely already know and follow the five-piece – MOURNFUL CONGREGATION were there “back then”. And thus, doth The Exuviae Of Gods – Part II begin with a new recording of ‘Heads Bowed’, from 1995’s An Epic Dream Of Desire demo. Never having been one for re-recordings, feeling them dangerously close to revisionist history, the […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Minenwerfer – Feuerwalze

In the history of warfare, no battle was deadlier, more chaotic and more hellish than the Battle Of The Somme in World War I. Casualties were tabulated at more than one million and this grueling conflict rewrote the rules of war. Feuerwalze, the latest album of American black metal force MINENWERFER, is a concept album dealing with The Somme. This album sounds like all-out warfare. Fast, savage, chaotic yet militant, this is trench war given aural form. World War I is no longer an unusual subject for a metal band – GOD DETHRONED, 1914 and even IRON MAIDEN have dealt […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Hate Forest – Innermost

It cannot be a coincidence that this promo comes across my desk on a day with lethal -40 degree temperatures and blowing snow. I can’t imagine a better accompaniment to such death-dealing cold than the latest output from Roman Saenko, also of DRUDKH, BLOOD OF KINGU and WINDSWEPT fame. This is black metal cold and bleak enough to cause frostbite. It has the sort of straightforward purity that all of Saenko’s projects have. Saenko also hails from Ukraine. Innermost was written and recorded in December of 2021, as clouds of war were hovering over his homeland. A war that was […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Mournful Congregation – The Exuviae Of Gods – Part I [EP]

Despite being active since 1993 Australia’s MOURNFUL CONGREGATION can, as the slow inevitable march of time – and of its music – never be accused of rushing to its end. That 2018’s The Incubus Of Karma was only its fourth full-length, and now followed by an EP four years hence speaks not so much to the lack of material, but to the great amount of care put into what is released under the MC banner. One of two new tracks presented on The Exuviae Of Gods – Part I, ‘Mountainous Shadows, Cast Through Time’ is ushered in by a near-overbearing […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: BA’A – Egregore

A relative new arrival to black metal, France’s BA’A stirred up things a bit with 2020’s Deus qui non mentitur, the debut embracing the overarching aspects of the genre without seeming beholden to tradition to the point of obstinance. Now don’t get me wrong, I can fully respect a BOLT THROWER-esque refusal to move either “forward” or “backward” sonically, it’s just that to have put up such an image for BA’A – especially given the pedigree of its members – would’ve seemed dishonest. And thus, credit where due. Not having nearly enough French to even begin deciphering Egregore lyrically, I’ll […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: CMPT – Mrtvaja [EP]

Clocking in at a goat’s breath shy of 20 minutes, Balkan entity CMPT has its work cut out for it. With only two songs, almost evenly cleaving Mrtvaja in twain, not a second of space can be wasted, even one minute of aimless wandering would taint the purity I’m sure CMPT is seeking to display. Built on indigenous ways and Slavic folklore, ‘Mrtvaja Part 1’ lures, hypnotic before a blazing, triumphal chaos unfolds, enfolds the listening ear, offering no chance of escape. Rhythmically impressive – and it’s satisfying to hear the drumming so clear, so prevalent in the mix – […]

Music News

AVSLUT set release date for new OSMOSE album, reveal first track

Today, Osmose Productions sets November 29th as the international release date for AVSLUT’s highly anticipated second album, Tyranni, on CD and vinyl LP formats. The highly anticipated second album from the Swedish black metal legion AVSLUT is finally ready to be unleashed upon the world. With nine vicious new songs, the band takes it to a whole new level with Tyranni. AVSLUT depicts a deformed, decayed, and lost mankind. The group has its roots in the suburbs of Stockholm. With full force, following their well-received Deceptis debut album for Osmose last year, AVSLUT waste no time in continuing their reign […]

Album Reviews

Album Review: Patronymicon – Ushered Forth By Cloven Tongue

Aside from guitarist / sometimes-everything-else-ist N. Sadist, Sweden’s PATRONYMICON has ever been in flux, both in lineup and quality. Now, after having worked with a dedicated vocalist (H. Sulphur) and second guitarist (J. Malice) since shortly after 2013’s All Daggers Towards The Sky, N. Sadist returns, rounded out by a new rhythm section, attempting to finally stake his claim. Ushered Forth By Cloven Tongue rips forth from the gates of perdition, less black scathe and more an all-out death assault. One element greatly improved from past efforts is the injection of true melodic riffing that sacrifices no brutality in the […]