Desecresy – The Mortal Horizon (2017)

The Mortal Horizon is Desecresy’s first album as a solo project of Tommi Gronqvist’s after vocalist Jarno Nurmi left to focus on Serpent Ascending. Picking up right where Stoic Death left off, The Mortal Horizon is band’s most percussive and violent yet. The album takes after the death metal debut Arches of Entropy but is set into the multi-layered, ritualistic minimalist narratives of Desecresy’s later career.

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Graveland Live In Poland On April 29, 2016


by Max Schoenbach

For metalheads who have listened to the studio output from Graveland over the past twenty-five years, experiencing a live version feels odd and uncanny, and definitely “new.” That the band will be struggling with unattainable heights it established for itself is obvious. When seen in Poland on April 29, 2016, other dimensions of the experience revealed themselves as well.

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Dave Vincent – Drinkin’ With the Devil (2017)


Review by Lance Viggiano.

Me here. My Chevelle needed a new fuel pump and I was a fixin’ for some true renegade tunes. You know, something I can crack a beer to and hit on my cousins, all three of them. I found this here tune by a North Carolina boy by the name of Davey Vincent who was dressed in something he found in meemaws closet. I couldnt help but notice that he was tryin’ to do some sorta “Devil Went Down to Georgia” singing but you know, without a whiskey shot of sincerity. I swear I heard more faithful collard green tunes from that there California hipster Les Claypool and his Flying Frag Brigadiers man.

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Spite Extreme Wing – Vltra (2008)


by Max Schoenbach

Spite Extreme Wing was an Italian black metal band with a vision rooted in their national culture or what they perceived as a manifestation of its innate transcendental aspect. On their older albums they are perhaps comparable to Sigrblot or Kaevum, either aesthetically, or by following similar approach to constructing identity of their art. (more…)

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Antichrist – Sinful Birth (2017)

Antichrist are yet another group of millennials who want to LARP 1987 thirty years later. Sinful Birth is their second campaign in the eighties and of course Antichrist come armored with denim, leather, spandex and high tops of haste +2. Antichrist are of course of great appeal to the funderground as they ape records everyone loved as teenagers, they have riffs beer metallers have heard a thousand times before and can recognize whilst blacked out, and the vocalist isn’t aggravatingly annoying.

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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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Rotten Copper – Rotten Copper (2017)

Living in a dying time presents as many troubles as recording in a dying genre. Something went wrong with metal in 1995, and since that time we have had big oaf idiot metal from the NWN/FMP types which bores us, versus popular metal music which is vapid and consumerist at its core and so has nothing to offer of substance.

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Nokturnal Mortum – Verity (2017)

With Verity, Nokturnal Mortum continue down the more commercial path they started embarking on The Voice of Steel and their half of last year’s The Spirit Never Dies split with Graveland: commercialized rock-constructed music with Ukrainian folk and power metal aesthetics.  On the inferior half of the The Spirit Never Dies, Nokturnal Mortum abandoned the use of the progressive rock techniques with speed, power, and Gothenburg metal riffs to craft compositions similar to the extended, droning flowing black metal compositions of past greats. Verity continues the slide down into Wacken fare.

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Evil – Evil’s Message (1984)


Article by George Psalmanazar.

Evil were a Danish metal band from the mid 1980s often held up as yet another “lost gem” by record collectors as their sole studio release, the Evil’s Message EP, has never been reissued except for a hard to find, bargain basement compilation with French heavy metal band Sortilège’s self-titled EP in the late 90s. Evil’s Message is far from actually being good though; it is nothing special, bog standard Motorhead and Metallica style speed metal.

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