Metal playlists from the underground
THROUGH THE EYES OF THE DEAD: SKEPSIS South Carolina’s Through the Eyes of the Dead have endured a revolving door’s worth of lineup changes in their short span, yet have held enough together to unleash a seething 10-track death collection of songs entitled SKEPSIS. Shaded with more hues of traditional death metal while keeping its […]
ORPHANED LAND: THE NEVER ENDING WAY OF ORWARRIOR Israel’s Orphaned Land dazzles the senses and gives a bang for your buck with their latest 15-track offering. This unit’s multi-faceted metallic approach contains an abundance of ingrained native musical influences with genuine instrumentation intertwined with a progressive mix of ornate death metal underpinned with elegant epic […]
BARONESS: BLUE RECORD Baroness follows up their stunning previous effort THE RED ALBUM with another colorfully titled endeavor BLUE RECORD. Despite taking discernible steps away from their comfort zone this time around, most notably by choosing burgeoning producer John Congleton known more for indie rock savvy than sludge metal salvation, this unit’s unbridled spirit and […]
NILE: THOSE WHOM THE GODS DETEST Those Whom The Gods Detest is the sixth studio endeavor from South Carolina’s technical death metal mavens Nile. Blisteringly brutal as previous works while maintaining the band’s trademarked Middle Eastern influence both lyrically and musically, Nile’s flurries of dastardly twin guitars and consistently jaw-dropping percussion work remain the envy […]
AUSTRIAN DEATH MACHINE: DOUBLE BRUTAL When will it end? Tim Lambesis returns with his brand of Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonation metal with Austrian Death Machine’s double album aptly titled Double Brutal. The first disc contains 13 new metal jams served with a wink and a nod thanks to the subject matter and the rapidly getting stale […]
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 […]
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 […]
By Mike SOS ____________ When catching up with VOD and Bloodsimple vocalist Tim Williams in early 2009, we talked about the return and immediate future of seminal unit VOD, where that leaves Bloodsimple in the mix, lamented over the NYC scene and relived some of the rich NYHC history Williams played a big part in. […]