Dark pop is a niche genre at best, but thanks to a few indie artists, the genre whispers on in the shadows. Colorado-raised California-resident Roniit is no stranger to the undercurrents of the indie electropop and darkpop scene, and her newest record “XIXI” is less of a music album and more a contiguous journey through the wilderness of her subconscious. The crickets overlaying the introduction to opening track “Noumenia” is…
Canadian indie-rockers Wolf Parade have been around the scene for a while, yet their five-year hiatus in 2011 gave fans pause and wondered if the magic would come back. Following Cry Cry Cry in 2017, the band seems to be back on steady ground and are back with their latest full-length Thin Mind. Granted, Wolf Parade hadn’t popped up on my radar, I took a dive into their back catalog…
The British indie dream-pop duo have a heartfelt and wholesome story to tell us with their newest record My Resignation. This is the third record from Geowulf and is a narrative follow-up to 2017’s Great Big Blue. To cut a long story short, My Resignation is among those records which will prompt a listener to take a dive into the archives and dig out past records, and is a stellar…
When you think of Japan, you think of sushi, manga, anime, bullet trains, and the samurai; what you do not think of is solid death metal. And Coffins are a prime example of why we cannot spend any more time sleeping on Japanese death metal. The death/doomsters are back with their fifth release “Beyond The Circular Demise” an infernal release with grit and teeth. It is a crime that after…
If there was ever a big 4 of Deathcore, Whitechapel would be among them, along with Job for a Cowboy, Suicide Silence, and perhaps All Shall Perish. These are the bands that invented the genre and created the foundation for what would become nearly a decade of future copycats and a mire of mediocre ripoffs. But Whitechapel are back in 2019 to show us why they truly deserve their seat…
Few names in technical death metal actually stick around to be instantly recognizable in the genre, and with Diluvium, German sluggers Obscura find themselves genre veterans, often in the same breath as critically acclaimed acts like Necrophagist and Death. This new offering is the fourth and final chapter in the album-saga and is a direct sequel to the 2015 banger, Akroasis. Is Diluvium the crescendo of the story?
Doom metal is usually a miss for me owing to a slew of bands devolving into a formulaic trudge through molasses of mediocrity. But ever so often, there comes a piece of music so gargantuan and animalistic that you cannot help but get excited. The fifth release To The Night Unknown by Boston doomsludgers Morne released on Armageddon Records and the first to be released on the band’s own eponymous…
The Swedes in LLNN understand abuse, they understand depression, anxiety, fear, nausea, and pain. On Deads they have given voice to everything we lose, and every time we hurt, carving out a landscape with the listeners’ fingernails.
At the Gates did a lot for metal music, giving a melodic edge to the oft-brash death metal genre, birthing melodic death metal, a genre now as established as any other, and Light This City are back after a decade long hiatus to rekindle our love for the band and genre with their newest record Terminal Bloom.
Let’s face it, we all have genres and subgenres and microgenres that we don’t get into not for any reason but because there is just so much content from bands in genres that we do like that we rarely find reason to stray. Doom and it’s microgenre drone metal is one of those genres, that I hear only good things about, but seemed so far away from the metal I…
At the Gates requires no introduction, not from someone the likes of me at the very least. Hailed among the forefathers of the Gothenburg melodic death metal scene, these Swedes have been iconic in shaping a genre and spawned a legion of like-minded bands in their decades-long career.
Dying Fetus is one of those artists that are always on the list of bands I use to scare away my non-metalhead friends, especially those who subscribe to the “metal is noise” school of thought. Just to bristle their jimmies some more, the band name itself is like adding cayenne to their already bleeding ears. I cannot get enough!
Imagine the metalcore-world we live in now, where Asking Alexandria is still trying to find its way back to its metalcore roots, and Bring Me The Horizon have arguably made the decision to go in a more commercialized direction with their new record. Pray tell where should we find our new Warped Tour-core messiahs now? I have found the answer: Bad Omens. They are setting the scene on fire with…
Sumerian Records are one of my favorite modern metal record labels and its founder Ash Avildsen has a keen eye for up and coming artists. Veritable modern metal juggernauts like Periphery, Animals as Leaders, Veil of Maya, Born of Osiris, etc. have been pushed into the limelight by Sumerian Records and they have instantly become crowd favorites in the metal scene. So when Sumerian signed Dræmings, I was admittedly confused.…
Belgium, home to arguably the best waffles, arguably the best beer, and certainly, the best deathgrind band in the world, Aborted. It seems that the Lords of Gore decided to turn the crazy dial to maximum insanity on the 12 track, 43-minute carnivorous abomination that is their newest record, Retrogore.
You cannot talk about German melodic death metal and metalcore and not mention the two giants, Caliban and Heaven Shall Burn. We are lucky to see stellar new releases from both bands. Gravity by Caliban is already on my lists of must-listen albums, and HSB’s new banger Wanderer proves to be another favorite for a long time to come.
Oh boy, this one yanked me straight back to my high school days. I grew up as a melodic death metal and metalcore fanboy, and the German dudes in Caliban were always a staple on my playlist. To tell you the truth, in my earnest effort to be a trve metalhead, Caliban were one of the unfortunate bands to fall through the cracks, but when I was asked to…
Deathgrind has always been one of those genres that I can only listen to for a few songs by a few bands before I move onto something else, but I definitely love those few songs. Seattle natives Theories have definitely cemented themselves on my list of formidable artists in this niche genre. They can be easily hailed among the ranks of Aborted, Misery Index, and even grind-ier bands like Napalm…
In the beginning there was Death, then there was Necrophagist, and now there is Obscura, paving the way for technical death metal in the new era. I loved their last offering in 2011’s Omnivium, but was dismayed by the amount of line-up changes that were happening in the German camp leading up to the writing of what would be Akróasis. As soon as the first song Sermon of the Seven…
The first time I heard the name Toothgrinder, I was instantly thrown back to San Francisco’s now defunct metal juggernauts Animosity and their 2007 song of the same name. I loved Animosity’s brand of metal, so I secretly hoped that this New Jersey five piece would live up to the hype created by its name alone. And my God, they did!