Lantern – II: Morphosis (2017)

Lantern take the Finnish black and death metal and move it back in time towards eighties speed metal to better appeal to a funderground hipster audience who never bothered to listen to Beherit or Demigod. The production of II: Morphosis is clean but slightly cavernous and vocals that sound like Per Boder of God Macabre help deceive inattentive millennials that Lantern are quality death metal and not Finnish Pantera.
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Condor – Unstoppable Power (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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Midnight – Shox of Violence (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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Sadistic Metal Reviews: Inquisition of the Unworthy

Burn them all!

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Satan – Court in the Act (1983)


Article by George Psalmanazar.

Satan‘s Court in the Act exists in a unique space between the New Wave of British Heavy Metal and speed metal. As a wholly metal album that attempts no pandering to mainstream radio rock unlike seemingly every other NWOBHM band, Court in the Act is by far the strongest studio album of that sub-genre/movement and incredibly influential to American speed metal bands Metallica, Megadeth, and Slayer.

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Suffocation – …Of the Dark Light (2017)

Review contributed to Death Metal Underground by Edward Colt.

Suffocation overreaches on this one. Favoring the pubescent Call Of Duty crowd, they have fully bent over and accepted that their last handful of albums are: video game music. With new artwork that looks like something out of Mass Effect, all …Of the Dark Light invokes is some strange ground between nerd-rage and ravehead drug bingers. The cover artwork could be the poster of some corn field sponsored outdoor rave event in your nearest rural area away from seemingly never-ending suburban sprawl.

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Judas Priest – Painkiller (1990)

Article contributed to Death Metal Underground by George Psalmanazar, continuing his series of Judas Priest reviews.

Painkiller is Judas Priest‘s most consistent studio album coming out right after the band spent the entire decade of the 80s pandering to mainstream arena and glam rock fans. Slayer were a tremendous influence this time around; Judas Priest toured toured with them in the late 80s and subsequently listened to most of Slayer’s studio catalog. Painkiller there is a heavy metal album heavily influenced by the heaviest speed metal bordering on early death metal. Early power metal took a similar approach but in much more limp-wristed way.

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Sadistic Metal Reviews: 3-9-2017

The Death Metal Underground staff subjects themselves to countless nights of toilet diving in order to bring you gems crapped out by the dessicated undead corpse of the music industry. These are what we left in the latrine.

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Anders Björler Quits At the Gates

Anders Björler has quit At the Gates according to a statement posted on the band’s Facebook page. Nevertheless At the Gates is pressing forward with more new, lame material that nobody wants to hear as it won’t match the band’s prime period headed by Alf Svensson capped by Gardens of Grief and The Red in the Sky is Ours. Nobody was particularly fond of At War With Reality. The rest of At the Gates should join Alf Svensson and Anders Bjorler in throwing in the towel for good.

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