White Death – White Death (2017)

White Death turn black metal into pop rock on their self-titled album, White Death, for scenesters who want to be tough and are mad that black metal songwriting was based melodic narratives instead of hooky pop-singalongs like Gothenburg metal. White Death aim to reach out to that group of scenesters who used to shop at Hot Topic back when they were teenagers. White Death even have an edgy Finnish nationalist theme to go with their generic, non-descript Satanism! Scenesters don’t have to want to send the world back to the Dark Ages anymore, they can just drink beer for the evil and chant sing-alongs about the 5’3 Simo Häyhä shooting hundreds of frost-bitten Ivans! Wait White Death’s lyrics are not even about the Winter War, just generic mall Satanism; the Auntie Anne’s Pretzels of evil.

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Irillion – Egledhron (2016)

Some releases go neglected upon release as their poor production makes it too hard to discern what is actually being played for those without neutral high-fidelity setups. Upon upgrading my own, I realized that Irillion’s debut Egledhron EP is one of them. The production is so muddy and filthy that even warm “audiophile” style setups have a hard time discerning what the downtuned and distorted electric guitars are playing. While two earlier Sadistic Metal Reviews from our staff noted the recording as a promising but inferior, listening on a more revealing setup reveals Irillion’s self-recorded musical intentions and goals: Irillion wish to play flowing Eastern European black metal like Graveland with a filthy Joined in Darkness era Demoncy style production and atmosphere and an almost Transilvanian Hunger manner of variation.

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Zemial – For the Glory of Ur Reissue

Greek black metal band Zemial have reissued their debut album, For the Glory of Ur, in a limited edition digipak. The CD is a self-release exclusively available for purchase from the band’s BigCartel page. If you’re a compulsive collector who has to have everything that wasn’t terrible from the mid 90s, maybe you will need this.
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Isvind, Sammath, and Standvast Playing Diabolical Echoes PT2

Sammath and Standvast have been booked to play the Diabolical Echoes PT 2 mini-festival with Norwegian black metal band Isvind in Groesbeek in the Netherlands on February 24th, 2018. Sammath is one of Death Metal Underground’s most highly praised modern bands while Standvast is an Ildjarn-like project from Nortfalke from Tarnkappe, Kjeld, and Kaeck. Sammath has long been a mainstay of our staff’s list of the The Best Underground Metal of the year so live shows from them should be a furious storm of riffs and whiplash.

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Enslaved Finish Recording New Album For Beardos

Sell-out formerly black metal band Enslaved has finished recording another indie rock album for Nuclear Blast Records. Expect every fat guy in flannel with neck pubes to love it almost as much as he loves the smell of putrid mayonnaise that gets stuck in the beard like little white dingle berries.

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Entombed Win Entombed Trademark Case

The three musicians from Entombed‘s classic Left Hand Path lineup, Nicke Anderssen, Alex Hellid, and Uffe Cederlund, won their trademark dispute against Left Hand Path vocalist Lars-Goran “L.G.” Petrov’s Entombed A. D. project in the Swedish Court of First Instance (Patent and Market Court [PMD] at Stockholm District Court). Petrov has used the Entombed A.D. moniker to release lame death ‘n’ roll to tour behind long after the rest of Entombed hung in the towel and admitted they would never be rock stars.

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Metalucifer Release “We Are Still Metal Kids” Video

Metalucifer, the heavy metal loving parody side project of Gezol from Sabbat (Japan), released a new video to Youtube from their upcoming split 7″ with Sabbat. “We Are Still Metal Kids” is a  disposable, haphazard parody of NWOBHM bands such as Iron Maiden and Judas Priest just like all other Metalucifer songs . It will also eventually appear on an upcoming album to be released on Iron Pegasus / R.I.P Records. Metalucifer’s previous albums (Heavy Metal Drill, Heavy Metal Chainsaw, and Heavy Metal Bulldozer) and all of their other cash grab releases are all pretty much disposable kitsch but still better than most of the war metal, metalcore, and crypto-indie rock the Funderground attempts to force down our throats.

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Ancient – Trolltaar Reissue

Ancient‘s last hurrah, the Trolltaar EP, has been reissued by Sleaszy Rider Records with three bonus live tracks from 1993 according to the band’s Facebook page. Trolltaar saw Ancient develop cyclical simple Enslaved style riffs into extended black metal epics inspired by the virtuosity of longer 1970s popular progressive rock songs from Yes, Pink Floyd, Camel, and Led Zeppelin. Ancient were one of the few death or black metal bands inspired by popular rock music where the mass-market inspirations did not render them impotent as a metal band at least at first. Ancient, lacking a truly distinct riffing style of their own, eventually ran out of ideas and decided to play Hot Topic rock after Svartalvheim and Trolltaar but that is a topic for another time.

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