Reviewed: October 2020 Released: 2020 AFM Records Rating: 4/5 Reviewer: Peter Atkinson After 20 years and six previous albums, the one-time Finnish sextet Mors Principium Est have whittled themselves down to a mere duo for album number seven, which fittingly bears that as its title. In the time since 2017’s…
Demonical – World Domination
Reviewed: [October 2020] Released [2020 Agonia Records] Rating [4.5/5] Reviewer: Peter Atkinson While there have been some big changes in the Demonical camp since 2018’s Chaos Manifesto, the Swedish death metal brigade sound as surly and brutal as ever with their sixth offering. World Domination kinda puts it right out…
Oria – Sublimation(s)
Reviewed: [October 2020] Released [2020 Self-released] Rating [2.5/5] Reviewer: Peter Atkinson If you’ve been jonesing for a new Gojira album since the band dropped its first new music in four years with the standalone single “Another World” – and its awesome yet ultimately depressing animated video – two months ago,…
Spirit Adrift – Enlightened in Eternity
Reviewed: [October 2020] Released [2020 20 Buck Spin] Rating [4/5] Reviewer: Peter Atkinson The traditional metal duo Spirit Adrift manage to capture the, well, spirit of metal past yet present it with a modern feel and panache like few others. Instead of slavish devotion to aesthetic or sound – in…
Sadistic Embodiment – Blood Spell
Reviewed: September 2020 Released: 2020, CDN Records Rating: 3.5/5 Reviewer: Peter Atkinson When a band takes its name from a Cannibal Corpse song, I guess you kind figure they are going to end up sounding a bit, well, Cannibal Corpse-y. So it might come as a bit of a surprise…
Scordatura – Mass Failure
Reviewed: [September 2020] Released [2020 Gore House Productions] Rating [3.5/5] Reviewer: Peter Atkinson I learned something today. Assuming Scottish death metal brutes Scordatura took their name from some hideous disease or medical anomaly – a la Vulvodynia, Katalepsy, Ebola or even Anthrax – or some such, I Googled it for…
Desolator – Sermon Of Apathy
Reviewed: [September 2020] Released [2020 Black Lion Records] Rating [4/5] Reviewer: Peter Atkinson Sweden’s Desolator have been around for more than a decade, but to this point only have an EP and a nearly eight-year old full-length debut to show for their efforts. Yet these guys seem to be from…
Sensory Amusia – Bereavement
Reviewed: [September 2020] Released [2020 Lacerated Enemy Records] Rating [4/5] Reviewer: Peter Atkinson Sometimes good things really do come in small packages. The new EP from Australia’s Sensory Amusia delivers some of the most corrosive and fearsome extreme metal around in a murderously efficient 18-minutes that will definitely leave you…
The Acacia Strain – Slow Decay
Reviewed: [August 2020] Released [2020 Rise Records] Rating [4/5] Reviewer: Peter Atkinson Massachusetts brutes The Acacia Strain seem to be full of surprises these days. First, there was the unannounced Christmas time release of the epic EP It Comes In Waves, a single 30-minute song split into seven individually named…
666 (Norway) – 666 (Norway)
Reviewed: [August 2020] Released [2020 Nuclear War Now! Productions] Rating [3/5] Reviewer: Peter Atkinson If Mayhem were the literal and figurative poster children for early Norwegian black metal’s dead seriousness way back in the day, the ironically named and short-lived 666 were perhaps just the opposite. Despite the satanic connotations…
Vampiric – Supernatural Tales
Reviewed: [August 2020] Released [2020 Self-released] Rating [3.5/5] Reviewer: Peter Atkinson Supernatural Tales is the second full-length from Arizona-based one-man band Vampiric. Self-released less than a year after 2019’s The Magic Of The Night, it shows some notable and impressive growth and lessons learned by master-mind and sole studio member…
Abramelin – Never Enough Snuff
Reviewed: [August 2020] Released [2020 Self-released] Rating [3.5/5] Reviewer: Peter Atkinson Abramelin may have helped pioneer Australian death metal way back in the day, but after doing so they essentially did an epic mic drop and fucked off into The Outback or somewhere. The band issued their second album, Deadspeak,…
Ulthar – Providence
Reviewed: [July 2020] Released [2020 20 Buck Spin] Rating [3.5/5] Reviewer: Peter Atkinson With tracks like “Churn” and “Cudgel,” the Bay Area underground all-star team trio Ulthar paint a pretty accurate picture of the material on their second album. A leaner, meaner, more potent offering than 2018’s meandering Cosmovore –…
Khthoniik Cerviiks – Æequiizoiikum
Reviewed: [July 2020] Released [2020 Iron Bonehead Productions] Rating [4/5] Reviewer: Peter Atkinson Take vintage Voivod and mash it up with old Behemoth, and you’ve got the rough and tumble but futuristic prog/death/black metal – and affiiniity for curiious spelliing! – of German odd-balls Khthoniik Cerviiks in something of a…
Inter Arma – Garbers Days Revisited
Reviewed: [July 2020] Released [2020 Relapse Records] Rating [4/5] Reviewer: Peter Atkinson As they wait like everyone else to see what the future might bring, Virginia’s Inter Arma offer a look to their past with an intriguing, and wide ranging, cover song collection that is named after their practice space…