I’ve gotta be honest, Black Breath’s Razor to Oblivion EP didn’t do a whole heck of a lot for me, so I was a bit skeptical when the band’s debut full length arrived in the post. I certainly wasn’t expecting to have my ears ripped off and fed to me by what can only be described as a gnarlier, burlier and more bloodthirsty version of Black Breath than the one that recorded Razor to Oblivion, like someone injected them with death metal steroids imported from Stockholm, Sweden circa 1991. But, that’s exactly what happened when I threw Heavy Breathing on the ol’ hi-fi. This is the kind of album that makes you want to drink too much beer, smoke too much weed, and punch your friend in the face too f**king hard.
Continue reading ‘Black Breath – Heavy Breathing (Southern Lord, 2010)’
Tag Archive for 'death metal'
Vancouver, British Columbia’s Tyrants Blood is hands down the best metal band you haven’t yet heard of. Incorporating a heady mixture of extreme influences into an all-out assault that is both highly complex and brutally savage, this quintet is more than capable of both wowing you with amazing musicianship and shattering your skull with hammering heaviness. I contacted vocalist Brian “Messiah” Langley via e-mail to discuss the band’s impressive new album, Crushing Onward Into Oblivion, which has just be released through Invictus Productions.
Sonic Frontiers: For our readers who might not be familiar with the band, can you give us a rundown of the history of Tyrants Blood up to this point?
Brian Langley: The band formed in the Summer of 2005. In that time we have put out 2 full length albums, an EP, and appeared on several split albums with bands from all over the world. Played with many great bands and just recently got back from a successful stint in South America. We have a few big shows in the planning stages and we are halfway through writting the 3rd album as well as working on the editing for the Tyrants Blood Live in Brazil album.
Continue reading ‘Interview: TYRANTS BLOOD’
With a collective resume that includes Angelcorpse, Axis of Advance, Revenge, Conqueror and Order From Chaos (just to name a few), it is a well established fact that the duo of vocalist/bassist Pete Helmkamp and drummer J. Read can do absolutely no wrong when it comes to creating some of the darkest, nastiest and most violent extreme metal on the goddamn planet. But, with their new project Kerasphorus, these two battle-hardened underground warriors just might have created their most vicious musical war machine yet.
Continue reading ‘Kerasphorus – Cloven Hooves at the Holocaust Dawn (Nuclear War Now!, 2010)’
Possessed by evil and obsessed by morbidity. A bath in virgin’s blood and stale whiskey. The foul/sweet stench of demon weed. Two southern maniacs wielding buzzsaws and sledgehammers, high on Satan and the fumes of burning Incantation lps. This is Vasaeleth. This is Death Metal.
With their debut album Crypt Born & Tethered to Ruin, multi-instrumentalist /vocalist OA and drummer Antinom have created what might be the finest example of undiluted death metal to come out of the United States in years. I struggled for quite awhile to write a standard review of this release before finally coming to the realization that a far more in depth analysis was required. In my extensive listening to Crypt Born & Tethered to Ruin, it became increasingly obvious with each spin that Vasaeleth is not a band that can be summed up in a mere 500 words.
Continue reading ‘Dethroned Emperor #26: Dissecting Vasaeleth’s Crypt Born & Tethered to Ruin’
Some of you are probably looking at the headline of this review and thinking, “it’s 2010, why in the world are they posting a review of an EP that originally came out in 2008.” The answer is quite simple, really. Enemy Reign flat-out slays, and their self-financed debut Means to a Dead End deserves the undivided attention of extreme metal fans regardless of what year it was released in. If you’re looking for a short, sharp, shock of unmitigated brutality, look no further than this sleeper release.
Continue reading ‘Enemy Reign – Means to a Dead End (self released, 2008)’
Well, what can I say? ‘Tis the season for year-end best-of lists, why should Sonic Frontiers be immune? In an attempt to keep to the spirit with which Dethroned Emperor was founded, I decided that this list must be constrained by two key parameters. First, no major label releases and second, only black and death metal albums allowed (although I decided to play it a little more fast and loose with the individual awards). I could go on a spiel about what a great year it was for metal in general, but no doubt if you’re bothering to read this monstrosity, you’re already a fan of the genre and don’t need me to tell you about it. Besides, every true ‘head out there knows that every year is a great year for metal. And so, without further ado…
Continue reading ‘Dethroned Emperor – Best of 2009 Edition’
Imagine awakening to find yourself in a nearly pitch black cavern. The only thing lighting your surroundings are a few torches which are slowly beginning to go dim. You look down at your feet, and to your horror discover that you’re standing knee deep in a pit of filthy black sludge. It bubbles and flows around your quivering limbs, occasionally bringing unidentified objects to the surface. You bend over and pick up one of the objects jutting out of the muck. You manage to wipe off some of the obsidian ooze, and realize you’re holding a human jawbone. You scream and drop the thing, listening to your outburst echo through the cavern and mix with the wind that howls through from some unknown opening that may or may not be nearby. You realize that the black ooze is now up to your waist. The torches grow ever darker. You wade around, trying to determine where the wind is coming from, but to no avail. The ooze is up past your neck now, it’s hard to keep your mouth above it. Another lupine howl of the wind and all the torches go black…
“Brutal” isn’t a word I typically use to describe black metal, but I honestly can’t think of a better one to epitomize the French quartet known as Temple of Baal and their latest album, Lightslaying Rituals. This isn’t the type of black metal that makes you want to slit your wrists in a pitch black room by yourself, this is face-ripping, skull-crushing, black f—ing metal that makes you want to run amok through heavily populated suburban streets wielding a chainsaw and a rocket launcher, looking for the nearest church to decimate.
Continue reading ‘Temple of Baal – Lightslaying Rituals (Agonia, 2009)’
“It has been established that persons who have recently died have been returning to life and committing acts of murder. A wide investigation of reports from funeral homes, morgues and hospitals has concluded that the unburied dead are coming back to life and seeking human victims…”, Night of the Living Dead
Just as the living dead terrorized Pittsburgh in the classic film by George A. Romero, so too is the sound of oldschool death shambling out of the heavy metal morgue in search of rare meat. Leading this pack of grisly ghouls is Fatalist, a California-based quartet hell-bent on dragging the stylistics of ancient, traditional death metal kicking and screaming into the present day. With their debut full length, The Depths of Inhumanity, the band presents us with an updated take on the genre that culls its strengths from a wide range of influences unearthed from death metal’s classic era.
Continue reading ‘Fatalist – The Depths of Inhumanity (Ibex Moon, 2009)’
In 2009, death metal is showing its age more than ever. A large number of bands have regressed to the sounds of the genre’s infancy, rendering themselves instantly obsolete due to the fact that we already have classic death metal albums to listen to, we don’t need new bands making a slew of inferior copies. Furthermore, much (if not all) of the shock value that bands like Entombed, Carcass, Cannibal Corpse and Deicide brought to the table has long since become commonplace. Death metal is no longer the scary, threatening genre it once was, populated as it is with bands more interested in aping records that came out 20 years ago than forging ahead into any unexplored, darker territories.
Enter Australia’s Portal, possibly the only band out there today that makes death metal sound truly terrifying and otherworldly. With their latest album Swarth, the quintet has solidified their frightening sound, which exists on the very fringes of the style. Try to imagine death metal being played somewhere in the far reaches of space by a band consisting of Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones, with Cthulhu himself manning the vocals, and you’ll start to get an idea of how dementedly alien Portal’s music sounds to mortal ears. Continue reading ‘Portal – Swarth (Profound Lore, 2009)’
It isn’t every day that an animated band heads out on a tour of the real world, let alone an animated death metal band. But that is exactly what Cartoon Network/Adult Swim sensations Dethklok are currently in the midst of, thanks to their mutli-talented creator Brendan Small and a stellar group of hired guns (including former Death/Strapping Young Lad/Dark Angel drummer Gene Hoglan, plus guitarist Mike Keneally and bassist Bryan Beller of Steve Vai’s band), bringing some of metal’s finest flesh-and-blood bands along for the ride to help spread the mayhem. I was lucky enough to catch the Des Moines, IA date of this improbable lineup, somehow managing to avoid being trampled by the thunderhorse or committing an act of murmaider.
There was a time when death metal truly sounded like death. Instead of suffering from overwrought production schemes and an emphasis on often mindless technicality, death metal was violent, dark and primitive, a sound permeated with a sense of impending doom and fear of the unknown. Death metal made the listener feel as if life truly is meaningless and illusory, “only death is real”. In a time when few modern bands are able to capture these ancient feelings, Embrace of Thorns serve as a gasping breath of fetid graveyard air with their second full-length, Atonement Ritual.
Continue reading ‘Embrace of Thorns – Atonement Ritual (Nuclear War Now!, 2009)’
Trudging out of the charnel house with a rusty chainsaw in one hand and a sledgehammer in the other, Bone Gnawer is a gruesome collision of Floridian and Swedish death metal with a taste for blood and a lust for human flesh. Drawing inspiration from horror, gore and sickness, the band has released one of the year’s finest slabs of groovy oldschool death metal in the form of their debut album, Feast of Flesh.
Fronted by the legendary Kam Lee (ex-Death, Massacre, Hateplow, Denial Fiend) and featuring current members of Ribspreader and Naglfar, the band plays death metal the way it was meant to be; sick, twisted and spine-smashingly heavy. Indeed, Feast of Flesh is a bulldozer of an album, designed to level listeners like a power drill between the eyes. But what really sets Bone Gnawer apart from the death metal pack is an emphasis on catchy songwriting, as tracks like “The Saw is Family”, “Cannibal Cookout” and “Feast of Flesh” will remain stuck in your head for days on end.
I had the opportunity to pique Mr. Lee’s brain via e-mail about what is easily one of the year’s heaviest and hookiest death metal albums, not to mention a perfect record for the truly gore-obsessed. The following interrogation is what transpired.
For nearly twenty years, Singapore’s Impiety have been bringing their patented black/death hybrid to the metal masses with absolutely no signs of mellowing out or losing their barbaric ‘n’ brutal edge. Although their core sound has evolved little (if at all) over the years, they have managed to make each release even more violent and war-like than the last, and Terroreign (Apocalyptic Armageddon Command) is no exception to the rule.
Continue reading ‘Impiety – Terroreign: Apocalyptic Armageddon Command (Agonia, 2009)’
As many a seasoned headbanger knows, the San Francisco Bay Area is rife with heavy metal tradition, as well as a reputation for producing some of the most unique and progressive acts the genre has to offer. From thrash trailblazers like Metallica and Exodus, to the death metal filth of Autopsy, to the prog-metal ecstasy of Hammers of Misfortune, the region has earned a deserving reputation for being the primordial ooze which gives rise to some of the best and brightest in American extreme music.
Lead by guitarist/vocalist Leila Abdul-Rauf, Saros carry on the this fine tradition, churning out a heavily blackened brand of progressive death metal that balances beautiful, crystalline atmospheres with twisted, gnarly bouts of crushing heaviness and positively infectious melodies and solos. The band has recently released Acrid Plains, an album which sees Saros firing on all cylinders and releasing one of 2009’s finest slabs of metallic extremity. Fascinated by this stunning recording and curious to know more about the band behind it, I got in touch with Abdul-Rauf via e-mail and conducted the following interrogation. Continue reading ‘Interview: SAROS’
