Metal playlists from the underground
THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER: DEFLORATE The Black Dahlia Murder returns with a terse homage bountifully bursting with Swedish metal influence with their unique blackened thrash twists embedded within on their 10-track, 34-minute collection Deflorate. Showcasing swift jabs of focused aggression with a familiar brutality behind it all (“Eyes of Thousands”), this Michigan troupe’s delectable twin […]
ARCH ENEMY THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL Metal mavens Arch Enemy have excavated some of their favorite cuts from the first three non-Angela albums, rehearsed (and in some instances rehashed) the hell out of them and went to the studio and laid down new versions to comprise their latest 13-track endeavor The Root of All […]
VOIVOD INFINI Finishing up where Katorz left off, the final round of posthumous musical output from deceased guitarist Denis “Piggy” D’Amour has arrived in the form of Infini, a 13-track collection dutifully piecing together the remainder of the compositional odds and sods D’Amour left behind on his laptop before succumbing to cancer in 2005. The […]
NAPALM DEATH TIME WAITS FOR NO SLAVE Pioneering grindcore unit Napalm Death continue their trademark trail of wreckage, willfully destroying everything in their way with lethal rounds of speed and a rabid sense of aggression on Time Waits For No Slave, the British troupe’s 14th studio endeavor. Exhibiting the ravenous thirst for domination they’ve built […]
NECROPHOBIC DEATH TO ALL With song titles like “For Those Who Stayed Satanic” and “Celebration of the Goat,” it’s pretty evident what to expect from Necrophobic’s no-frills eight-track audio sacrifice to Satan Death To All. Blistering black metal a la Dissection exalting Beelzebub is precisely what’s on tap from this veteran Swedish squad, complete with […]
TIM RIPPER OWENS PLAY MY GAME After providing vocals for the most notable metal bands in the world for well over the past decade, Tim “Ripper” Owens finally steps out as a solo artist on his 12-track debut PLAY MY GAME. Bringing a mind-blowing cross-section of the metal friends he’s made along the way to […]
Warmongering German black metal squad Endstille attack once again with VERFUHRER, a scathing and abrasive nine-track affair. Incessantly blasting your skull with pounding percussion and decaying your ears with blood-curdling vocal rasps, this maliciously militant outfit doles out diabolical doses of mid-paced malevolence (“Symptoms”) whose razor sharp buzzsaw guitars cut to the bone (“Depressive/ Abstract/ […]
There’s nothing deceptive regarding the 10-track lean and mean high-grade meets lo fi old school assault Sweden’s Deceiver lays on the ears, as this trio’s tumultuous din captures the darker nuances of the golden age of thrash without sounding rehashed or forced. Whether it be the tortured vocals and primitive skin bashing tandem heard on […]
Swedish death thrash outfit Arise provide 10-tracks of straight from the textbook Gothenburg-style metal on THE RECKONING. Despite this nimble quintet’s far from groundbreaking delivery, the spot-on fury (“No Memory of Light”) and enormous arsenal of breakneck riffs and melodic breaks they employ are cleverly composed with a well-proportioned mix of familiar twists and meat […]
An authentic blast of malefic black metal arrives from the depths of depravity courtesy of Norwegian troupe Orcustus, whose eponymous full-length debut comes some seven years after this troupe’s initial introduction. Serving a barrage of vintage buzzsaw riffs (“Jesus Christ Patricide”) and hellacious vocal rasps that wouldn’t sound out of place from lauded black metal […]