Kreator have announced an extensive 2017 tour with Sepultura in support of their yet-untitled, upcoming album.
2 CommentsTags: Europe, German Speed Metal, kreator, news, sepultura, Speed Metal, tour, tour dates, upcoming tours
Beer Metal Label Goes Broke, Starts Ponzi Scheme
Blockheaded beer metal label Witches Brew is bankrupt from releasing beer metal and the owner’s bottom feeding A&R at German beer halls and rethrash bands’ MySpace pages. Many record labels are passion projects or Ponzi schemes. Witches Brew is openly the latter now. Their failure proves that experienced Hessians would rather buy actual beer and Obsessed by Cruelty reissues than sub-Little Caesar’s pizza thrash.
3 CommentsState of the Brewery address 2016. Despite having maintained a super positive attitude since our rebirth in 2013, the current state of Witches Brew is that the label is broke/bankrupt. Having invested nearly 90% of my job income into the label and in the end now being in debt over 7000 EUR, reality has hit me that it’s just not possible to keep going at the level I’ve been trying. Especially not in light of the fact that I will be jobless at the end of this month. I took a lot of chances, invested a lot of money in bands that in the end basically used me for a free ride. Disappointed is how I have felt in the last weeks. I’m NOT stopping the label, I’m just downsizing to a handful of bands and releases will be a few a year, because I’ll need to raise the money from sales in order to pay for the releases since my job money won’t be there anymore. I also have to get myself out of the damn debt somehow.
Tags: beer metal, German Speed Metal, germany, hipster bullshit, modern metal, news, non metal metal pop crap, pizza thrash, Witches Brew
Destruction to release Under Attack
Destruction plans to release their next studio album, Under Attack, on May 13th, 2016; amusingly enough this’ll be their 13th album as well; at least if you count the especially disastrous mid-’90s lineup’s material. “Neo-Destruction”, as they call it these days, is especially important to understanding this band. Its studio work blew up so violently in their faces that it locked the band into the self-referential and especially formulaic route they tread today. Under Attack is unlikely to end that, and the trailer showcases little of the inventive riffcraft and melodic development that made the band influential and interesting in the ’80s, even though the rest of their songwriting eventually fell behind more advanced underground acts.
1 CommentTags: 2016, destruction, German Speed Metal, Speed Metal, under attack
Sodom – Sacred Warpath (2014)
Article by Daniel Maarat
Sodom’s latest EP was ignored by the Death Metal Underground when it was originally released in late 2014 due to the more commercial nature of the band’s work over the past decade. After recruiting guitarist Bernd “Bernneman” Kost, Sodom abandoned their traditional black thrash style and adopted a more American speed metal, eighties Metallica and Megadeth oriented sound. Most of their new songs are rock structured, speed metal riff salads, peppered with occasional slowed-down extreme metal riffs.
Sacred Warpath is no different. The title track is the only new material and is strictly verse-chorus-verse. There is no melodic riff glue except for the verse riff variations. The chorus where Tom Angelripper snarls the name of the song in the song as a vocal hook like a line of dialogue from a cheesy action movie just serves as a way to repeat the verse verbatim to kill time. An acoustic interlude allusion to Agent Orange (“It’s like poetry; it rhymes.” – George Lucas) leads to a random speed metal solo for the Wacken whelps.
Following that speed metal drag, there are a few live songs nobody will ever listen to again: a cover of “Surfin’ Bird” (originally from M-16 in 2001) that leads into the fan favorite singalong “The Saw is the Law”, a generic Slayer-style song, and Sodom attempting Gothenburg melodeaf. These are here just to take this release from a 7” single and digital download to a 10” 33 ⅓ RPM EP and CD so Steamhammer can charge Sodomites more money. An underwhelming and mediocre cash-in, but the new song is less offensive than the Kill ‘em All “loving” on 2013’s Epitome of Torture.
4 CommentsTags: 2014, cash grab, German Speed Metal, sacred warpath, sodom, Speed Metal
