The problem with black metal is that it tried to evolve, not realizing that it was the ultimate evolution and had to go within, making more complex melodies and keeping its droning ambient mood-shifting textural structure. Katavasia attempts to return to black metal with heavy metal roots like Varathron, from which it borrowed personnel.
3 CommentsTags: Black Metal, katavasia
Like most of nowadays death metal, this album has its moments, but fundamentally, is a speed metal and heavy metal hybrid dressed up as death metal. Like rock music, it focuses on establishing tonal centers and then using fills around those to keep its riffs together, instead of getting fully chromatic and using phrasal, through-composed music.
4 CommentsTags: death metal, massacre
Foundational Dutch death metal band Sinister has re-issued its 1990 demo “Perpetual Damnation” on a CD, cassette, and vinyl release titled Perpetual Damnation. You can get your copy from Xtreem Music or on the Hammerheart Records compilation The Blood Past.
No CommentsTags: death metal, hammerheart, sinister, xtreem
Progressive death metal band Sadist, who brought an early fusion of 1970s prog with 1990s technical death metal, intend to revisit their origins with Firescorched, their ninth album, due out in 2022.
5 CommentsTags: death metal, Progressive Death Metal, sadist
One of the heads of the Paul Speckmann hydra — Death Strike, Funeral Bitch, Master, Abomination, and Speckmann Project — Abomination presented an early vision of the grinding punk, speed metal, and 1970s rock fusion that formed the basis of the Speckmann ideal of death metal.
2 CommentsTags: abomination, death metal
Birth Ritual records added Sentenced Down to its roster of tapes licensed from Century Media. Originally released in 1996, the album showed where Sentenced went after the formative North From Here, and while it was quality heavy metal, it missed out on the mystical atmosphere of earlier releases.
No CommentsTags: birth ritual records, Heavy Metal, sentenced
Deceased and Doomstone, like Motörhead, represent a certain spirit in metal that combines enthusiasm and cynicism, although Doomstone tends more toward the imaginative early heavy metal era that wrote about goblins, witches, UFOs, and ancient gods. This album compiles some well-executed covers from bands that I mostly care little about.
4 CommentsTags: deceased, Speed Metal
Swedish melodic death metal band Unanimated have completed their fourth full-length album, aiming less for the mystical atmosphere of their first but the fast heavy metal riffs of their second, updated for a somewhat contemporary sound.
No CommentsTags: death metal, unanimated
Continuing the legacy of progressive/folk heavy metal band Absu, Proscriptor McGovern’s Apsû releases its self-titled debut this year. Now, the band has released the first single, “Caliginous Whorl,” from the upcoming album.
1 CommentTags: absu, apsu, Heavy Metal
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