Humans and metal bands are self-replenishing resources. There are always more to burn!

Necromantic Worship – The Calling (2016)
The Calling presents listeners with Hellenic style black metal distilled down into a verse, chorus, verse riff salads with melotron choruses. Necromantic Worship do little progress their powerchord based rhythm riffs; the only melodic development on The Calling are keyboard, making all of the songs repetitive and boring. The attempts at a Lovecraftian atmosphere fail miserably, not even becoming remotely engrossing or even entertaining like the baby dinosaur noises on Innsmouth’s Consumed by the Elder Sign. Necromantic should heed how Varathron, Root, and Celtic Frost developed their simple riffs into melodic narratives with fitting conclusions rather than just layering on the keyboard wank like a lame, late 90s black metal band. If they did that, they could easily make themselves into a very competent black metal band that blends together Master’s Hammer, Emperor, and the Greeks.

Forest of Harambe – Under the Sign of Harambe (2016)
Joke bands are disposable novelty acts and Forest of Harambe is no different. Under the Sign of Harambe is generic muffled, somber black metal. Forest of Harambe have riffs but their songs mourning the loss of the great gorilla have zero melodic development and just drone on for four minutes until thankfully the band themselves finally become bored of boring you and move onto the next track. Forest of Harambe manage to be amusing for fifteen seconds at conveying the murder of a majestic and noble creature by his fellow apes in the defense of a surely less financially valuable child Harambe was trying to save. The problem is actually listening to Under the Sign of Harambe is the same as your father telling you a boring, beaten to death joke you’ve heard a hundred times already.

Brutally Diseased – Satanic Corpse (2016)
Brutally Diseased take everything they liked about Swedish death metal and condense it down into deathcore for today’s imbecile audience. Satanic Corpse has the d-beat drumming, the heavy metal of later Dismember, the straight up crusty rhythm riffs of God Macabre, and the attitude of Entombed. The problem is the songs are boring and overlong even at two to three minutes each. The riffs are just power chords with unmemorable single note melodic fills attached; you won’t remember any of them ten seconds after listening to song. The songs drone on and on and all the riffs sound the same. Brutally Diseased need to quit metal and go back to tending bar in Brooklyn and playing in pop punk bands for forty something Green Day fans.

Uburen – Fra Doden Fodes Liv (2016)
Uburen is what happens when dudes who love Stained and Fall Out Boy attempt to play black metal after watching Until the Light Takes Us. What results is screamo metalcore rock with boring extending, droning songs that pleases no one but art fats looking for the next hybrid idiot trend (stoner doom, rethrash, caverncore, war metal, hipster screamo pretending to be black metal, etc. Fra Doden Fodes Liv sounds like the screamo version of Enslaved who blasted Slaughter of the Soul instead of Blood Fire Death as kids.

Ungod – Bewitched by Sins and Lust (2016)
Drunk constipated vocals follow the snare around like a drunk girl stumbling out of a club at 2am hanging off the arms of her……wait what am I saying? Hessian Warriors of Death would never be willfully expose themselves to such degeneracy! The intoxicated vocalist shuffles proudly while clutching four of his battle brethren inside a pub in Hagar slurring odes to vests and virility; the sight reaches the halls of Valhalla where Odin is ripping out his remaining eye. Cyclical and repetitive three chord faux-atmosphere pop is rounded out by blood-thinning pseudo-mosh riffs. It is a lot like Pest who rite songs out of the most “fun” parts of Darkthrone-Does-Celtic-Frost with no pretense of offering something actually that is evil – lest ye be fooled by the cover art and spooky promo pictures. Instead Ungod writes ubercult-Slayer riffs which approach the sound of the newer Darkthrone records but about three steps beneath that band in terms of creative but empty effortlessness. If The Cult is Alive is Budweiser then Bewitched by the Sins of Lust is Michelob Ultra. Nobody buys it willingly it just happens to show up now and again inside refrigerators and gets consumed with passive acquiescence as it offers a buzz after about twenty or so. Ungod is old school for the forty year old dad bod crowd who put on this sort of retro throwback trash on as background music to superbowl parties before and after the game. The label who sent out the promo couldn’t be bothered to properly tag the tracks and saw fit to bury the actual music in about three folders within the main fail. Ungod must’ve mailed cheap German television lager in with the master tapes.

Shorts

Jagged Mouth – Louring (2016)
Noisy stoner rock pretending to be black metal. Jagged Mouth sounds more like Jack White on codeine than Black Sabbath or Varathron.

Sagh – Memento Mori (2016)
Nu-metalcore pretending to be Black Sabbath. Sahg should break their own copies of their CD in half and jab the shards repeatedly into their necks until severing their spinal cords or femoral arteries.

Penitence Onirique – V.I.T.R.I.O.L (2016)
Lame happy drone rock pretending to be atmospheric black metal as it has tremolo picked melodies and harsh vocals. This is not Summoning or Sorcier des Glaces, this is hipster bullshit for screamo fans who wear black trenchcoats and wallet chains.

Waldgeflüster – Ruinen (2016)
Walferfluster are vocal driven indie hipster rock pretending to be black metal. These rock songs are six times as long as they should be. Frequently I am waiting for the next hipster chorus or round of 80s buttrock noodling. Ruinen is the equivalent to shoving a finger in your asshole the first thing in the morning in order to see if the Sriracha you ate on crappy Chinese takeout last night makes your poop taste garlicky.

Sleepwalkers – Hollowpath (2016)
Vocal driven hipster rock pretending to be lurching death metal like Autopsy. Sleepwalkers instead sound like Deafheaven with a streptococcus infection.

Sin Of God – Aenigmata (2016)
Sin of God play generic brutal death metal in the old Unique Leader mold, occassionally slowing down to bore you. They need to work on better riffs though: so much of Aenigmata is riffless, vocal driven rock music amidst the mosh riffs and pinch harmonic abuse while other tracks are pure techdeaf with leads that could’ve come off of the awful Surgical Steel.

Warcrab – Scars of Aeons (2016)
Imagine how boring it would be if Bolt Thrower never got around to grinding and their songs were just constructed of introductory verses and codas strung out for five minutes? That’s Warcrab; they’re terrible and play death ‘n’ roll bullshit with some Gothenburg melodies.

Take Over And Destroy – Take Over And Destroy (2016)
Take Over and Destroy is the metalcore version of Ghost if Ghost listened to Deep Purple and were attempting to cash in on the hipster trend of stoner rock attempting to be heavy metal like Black Sabbath and Witchfinder General. Take Over and Destroy fail miserably and fall flat on their face rather than conquering.

Nocturne – Nocturne (2016)
Lame Gothenburg black ‘n’ roll bullshit with symphonic goth rock choruses. You know a record’s terrible when you’d rather be rocking Reinkaos.

Negative Symbols – Without Voices (2016)
Relentlessly boring instrumental atmospheric black metal. Tremolo picked riffs drone on and on only occasionally developing over steady blast beats that are surely quantized. Making it through a single track without hitting stop and breaking the cd or deleting the files is an achievement nobody should subject themselves to.

Venom Prison – Animus (2016)
Deathcore meets the D-list beatdown death metal of Benediction and fails miserably. Most unfulfilling, can’t stop me from deleting.

Wolf Counsel – Ironclad (2016)
Stoner doom bar rock for hipsters with beards and Electric Wizard patches.

Tengger Cavalry – Cavalry In Thousands (2016)
After an intro straight out of Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings, Tengger Calvarly head straight into metalcore with throat sung choruses and ethnic instrumentation. The overall effect upon listners is of a Gothenburg metalcore loving Chinese breakdance team.

Tengger Cavalry – Hymn Of The Earth
More Gothenburg metalcore with throat singing. Real Mongolians would smash Tennger Cavalry’s instruments and knock down their shitty rectal walls.

Lectern – Precept of Delator (2016)
90s hard rock pretending to be “brutal death metal” just as many rock bands pretend to be “blackened death metal”. Nope.

Noise Trail Immersion – Womb (2016)
Your typical “technical death metal” release that’s really post hardcore bullshit pretending to be death metal. Metal + hardcore = metalcore.

Glaukom Synod – Vampires and Precious Throats (2016)
Industrial music that claims to be influenced by grindcore and black metal. The main metal influence is apparently Carcass down to the lyrical theme of “Oxidised Razor Masticator“. Not metal but not any less metal than many other SMRs claiming to be metal.

Disthrone – Retaliação (2016)
Crusty d-beat SJW punk. Heard all riffs before. SJW FUCK OFF!

Hellschwadron – Storming Obliteration (2016)
Another band creating incompetent World War II themed, vocal-driven, hard rock/speed metal hybrid music and claiming it’s death or black metal just like Hail of Bullets and Decaying. EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE!

Misanthropic Rage – Gates No Longer Shut (2016)
The gates are fucking shut on you Misanthropic Rage. You got tossed out of the club the moment the management heard your lame Deathspell Omega meets Gorguts tomfoolery with stupid Opeth interludes. Don’t try to come back, you will be beaten.

Mentor – Guts, Graves and Blasphemy (2016)
Blackened pizza thrash metalcore.

Moanaa – Passage (2016)
Emo whiny metalcore. Slit your wrists over your mom not buying you Cocoa Puffs at the Supermarket Moanaa. Sodom would jump you in 1984. Yeah a skinny teenager with a fucking bowlcut would beat you up.

qip – On Ephemeral Substrates (2016)
Music to get gonorrhea to at the industrial gay bar. Leather twink metalcore.

Pogavranjen – Sebi Jesi Meni Nisi (2016)
Overlong “black metal” that’s really droning metalcore for hipsters who like ambient music and strawberry milk stout black IPAs with grapefruit flavored hops.

False Gods – Wasteland (2016)
Sludge isn’t metal; it’s slowed down hardcore for junkies who deserve to die in a gutter. False Gods are slowed down Warped Tour, The Offspring style hard rock.

Dark Portrait – A Harrowing Atrocity (2016)
Symphonic metalcore for fat virgins with undescended testicles and sleep apnea. If Summoning are The Lord of the Rings, Dark Portrait are In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale.

Junior Bruce – Endless Descent (2016)
Bouncy metalcore attempting to cash in on the stoner rock trend. Fails miserably. Fat dudes with food-encrusted beards and flannel will hate this.

Krepitus – The Eyes of The Soulless (2016)
Speed metal based “melodic death metal” that’s actually simply thrashy metalcore little different from all the Slaughter of the Soul and Artillery worship.

Soulemission – Tales of Inevitable Death (2016)
Gothenburg slowed down for stoners and the mildly retarded.

Creatures – Le Noir Village (2016)
Boring black ‘n’ roll with spooky Halloween noises! So scary! Will the black death get me mommy? Will Mommy still be around to cook Creatures SpaghettiOs even though they are thirty five?

Nephrolith – Paleness of the Bled World (2016)
Black ‘n’ roll metalcore for hipster beta males who cry when they cum.

Primogenorum – Damned Hearts in the Abyss of Madness (2016)
Primogenorum are angry, semi-pubescent sixteen year olds flexing in the mirror shirtless and sending selfies to girls on instagram. Damned Hearts in the Abyss of Madness is the random metalcore/doom/ambient hybrid they record onto the MacBook their parents bought them after their mom tells them to do their laundry and they threw a fit after she takes away their car keys. Not that anyone can understand their constant lisping due to the extensive orthodontics.

Tags: creatures, dark portrait, disthrone, false gods, forest of harambe, glaukom synod, hellschwadron, jagged mouth, junior bruce, krepitus, lectern, mentor, misanthropic rage, moanaa, Necromantic Worship, negative symbols, nephrolith, Nocturne, noise trail immersion, nuclear war now! productions, nwn, penitence onirique, pogavranjen, qip, sadistic metal reviews, sagh, sin of god, sleepwalkers, soulemission, take over and destroy, Tengger Cavalry, uburen, ungod, venom prison, waldgefluster, warcrab, wolf counsel