Condor – Unstoppable Power (2017)

by Daniel Maarat on April 30, 2017

Readers can probably infer from the title, logo, and cover of Unstoppable Power that this Condor are not the Colombian heavy metal / progressive rock act. Norwegian Condor plays rocking speed metal similar to the Canadians Exciter and Razor. Riffing is primarily in the Motorhead influenced style of those two mixed with the chromatic, tremolo-picked styles of early Slayer. Leads are Slayerian noise bursts or imitations of Kirk Hammet. Norwegian Condor’s drumming is mostly crusty, background d-beating which lends the music some extreme percussive aggression not found in many 80s speeding oldies.

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Cirith Gorgor – Bi Den Dode Hant (2017)

by Daniel Maarat on April 29, 2017

Cirith Gorgor try to apply the technical musicianship of the best death metal to black metal as Demonaz did on Immortal‘s heavily Morbid Angel influenced last gasp, Blizzard Beasts. However Cirith Gorgor’s songwriting on Bi Den Dode Hant cannot even hope to approach the level of the Norwegian greats and best death metal bands of the early nineties; Cirith Gorgor sound more like Hate Eternal or any other generic rock band recorded by Erik Rutan‘s Klingon forehead trying to be Mayhem as black metal is cool with the kiddies now due to them reading on Facebook that Varg stabbed Euronymous in the face over twenty years ago.

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Midnight – Shox of Violence (2017)

by Daniel Maarat on April 29, 2017

Midnight are the definition of beer metal. Midnight sound like Motorhead if Motorhead accidentally took tranquilizers and forgot to write chord progressions and progressive minor-key heavy metal leads in their songs. Midnight are Motorhead if when Lemmy got arrested for drug possession in Canada in the early seventies while touring with Hawkwind, Lemmy did not merely get kicked out of Hawkwind and deported back to the United Kingdom; Midnight are Motorhead if the Canadians were really the Soviets who institutionalized and lobotomized Lemmy while forcing him at gunpoint to cart around a potent IV drip of anti-psychotics and sedatives for the rest of his life.

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Lame Gates of Ishtar Albums Reissued

by Daniel Maarat on April 28, 2017

Century Media has reissued third rate Gothenburg melodeaf band Gates of Ishtar’s first two studio albums, The Dawn of Flames and At Dusk and Forever, remastered by Dugout Studios (vinyl mastering by Patrick W. Engel) and with new artwork from Juanjo Castellano as the original artwork was “really ugly” according to the band. The band should have been more concerned with writing worthwhile material than artwork for lame, cash-in releases on the popularity of In Flames and other competitors with VH1’s adult contemporary lite rock. Gates of Ishtar were not “melodic death metal masters” but warmed-over bouncy speed and power metal for a late 90s mallrat and Wacken audiences just like the most of their contemporary bands from Gothenburg, Sweden when they weren’t making outright pop music.

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Infester – To the Depths, In Degradation Reissue Review

by Daniel Maarat on April 27, 2017

Martyrdoom Productions, run by Dead Congregation frontman A.V., reissued Infester‘s long out of print classic To the Depths, In Degradation on CD and vinyl LP earlier this year. I purchased a copy of the CD version myself to review for our readers benefit. The record was never originally released on vinyl and being over fifty minutes long, the LP reissue will have compromised sound quality due to narrower groove spacing and all the limitations of the vinyl format such as the compression of the cutting lathe, high and low pass filtering, and mono bass.

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Elfsgedroch – Op de beenderen van onze voorvaderen (2016)

by Daniel Maarat on April 25, 2017

Op de beenderen van onze voorvaderen is yet another another Dutch black metal record heavily influenced by Gorgoroth and Zyklon-B like Tarnkappe. Elfsgedroch however structures riffs as hyper-extended, arpeggiated tremolo-picked chords in incredibly long to the point of droning phrases in the manner of French Canadian band Sorcier des Glaces, who are indeed the band’s primary influence. Clever but occasionally too sappy harmonies similar to Master’s Hammer‘s Bartok and folk influenced heavy metal ones on Ritual but way more annoying pervade the record.

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Dawning – Mount Um + 1997 Demo (2016)

by Daniel Maarat on April 21, 2017


Another previously unreviewed record judged some of The Best Underground Metal of 2016.

Mount Um + 1997 Demo is a digital anthology collecting what Steve Cefala judged to be Dawning‘s strongest material. Half the run-time (“Side A”) is one new, extended track entitled Mount Um in three parts: “Pilgrimage to Umunhum”, “The Albino Bridge Sacrement”, and a melodic bass outro. Mount Um sounds like Summoning worshiping Emperor‘s In the Nightside Eclipse in a lengthy composition reminiscent of Celtic Frost‘s album work. Ambient fantasy keyboards are perverted into pandemonium as if on an arduous journey of great hardship and loss culminating in a bittersweet victory over the uncaring, vicious forces of nature. Mount Um‘s composition is progressive and profound.

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Stoner Rock Is Not “Doom Metal”

by Daniel Maarat on April 20, 2017

Earlier this year, independent music distribution platform Bandcamp claimed that many stoner rock bands are in fact doom metal. This is a common logical fallacy based around associating the pace and instrumental tone of the music with actual musical content. The stoner “doom” trend of bands that started in the late 90s and early 2000s and has continued non-stop right up until the present almost twenty years later was one of the earliest hipster attempts to assimilate heavy metal before the waves of speed, death, and now black metal aesthetics rehashed into pop rock for the safe space generation.

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Antifa Boots Antifa Supporting Metalcore Band

by Daniel Maarat on April 15, 2017

German antifascist communists booted American metalcore band Woe from the lineups of some shows on their current tour due to Woe opening for Inquisition a few times. Woe are one of your standard, screamo random post-hardcore bands pretending to be “US Black Metal” when in reality they are still metalcore. Moreover, Woe being social justice warriors from Brooklyn, New York played several benefit shows for antifa in the US. Now Woe themselves are throwing a fit about leftist crybabies preventing them from playing shows on Facebook as the communist scum decided that since Woe do not march in gay pride parades, probably do not fuck the gaping open wounds of mutilated transvestites, and do not mind opening for bands that once sort of played a simplified form of black metal that Woe occasionally play on Spotify when wanting something heavier to relieve the stress of their service jobs, Woe must be shot with hollow point bullets in the back of the head.

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