Beyond Vision (Blues Funeral Recordings) marks Acid King‘s fifth full-length album to date and its thirtieth anniversary as a band since their formation. It’s also the follow-up to 2015’s overlooked Middle of Nowhere, Centre of Everything album which Lori referred to in a recent interview on Conan Neutron‘s Protonic Reversal show with a hope of reissuing it at some point. Fingers crossed.
Bergen, which is located in the heart of southwestern Norway, is widely known for producing an army of all-around great bands in the extreme metal scene – Borknagar, Enslaved, and Immortal, to name a few. Being the home of the renowned Norse sonic warriors Wardruna as well, there are almost always exciting things to look forward to in the Bergen scene. One of them is definitely the newest self-titled release by the up-and-coming psychonauts Søstre!
Like Status Quo did with their unexpectedly good Aquostic I and II albums in 2014 and 2016, British Folk Rock band The Levellers are remodelling hits from their back catalogue for their latest self-released album Together All The Way. This is a spiritual sequel to their 2018 album We The Collective, but instead of acoustic versions, they have stripped everything back to a more traditional folk sound.
Deviating slightly from the science fiction themes of their first three albums, magnificently named Colorado thrashers Necropanther base their latest record, Betrayal (Self-Released), on a combination of Walter Hill‘s 1979 seminal classic The Warriors and Xenophon‘s Anabasis, the ancient Greek story from which The Warriors was originally adapted.
Having previously chosen The Terminator, Dune, and Logan’s Run for inspiration, the science fiction element might have been pushed somewhat into the background on Betrayal but the dystopian landscape of cult cinema remains firmly in focus. A story about a small group having to fight their way across enemy territory to get home is prime pickings for thrash metal and Necropanther don’t let the opportunity slip.
It’s probably fair to say that when Venom Inc. released full-length “debut”, Avé in 2017, expectations weren’t too high. Formed by guitarist Mantas (aka Jeff Dunn) and frontman Tony “Demolition Man” Dolan in the wake of the duo’s former band M:Pire of Evil, Venom Inc. appeared to some as a simple rebranding. A change of name with little hope of successfully rekindling past glories. They were wrong.
Hailing from the land of Hans Christian Andersen, Vikings and Lego, Danish melodic death metal act Defacing God exist in the world of witchcraft and the occult, their debut album The Resurrection of Lilith (Napalm Records) a monstrous slab of European extremity with a heavily symphonic touch.
Founded in 2006, Finnish melodic death metal overlords Brymir didn’t break ground until their debut five years later. Therefore, it’s easy for them to be overlooked within the bloated landscape from that half-decade. Consider the releases from around that time: Kalmah’s The Black Waltz (2006), Dark Tranquillity’s Fiction (’07), Amon Amarth’s Twilight Of The Thunder God (’08), and Be’lakor’s Stone’s Reach (’09), to name but a few.
Although lockdown was undeniably a desperate time for the entertainment business, for some, the time spent in isolation actually created opportunities. With schedules and timetables suddenly emptied, many long-standing ideas and projects, that for whatever reason, looked set to never get off the ground, were finally able to grow and develop into something more than a mere hopeful nucleus of an ideaContinue reading
One of the most influential thrash metal acts of the eighties, progressive Canadians Voivod have never been content with sitting back and churning out the same record over and over again. A constant desire for change and reinvention has meant the quartet from Jonquière, Quebec has had to endure much unnecessary and often ludicrous pigeon-holing over the years. Post-Thrash. Punk. Speed. Proto-Industrial. Avant-Garde. Progressive. And even Nuclear Metal (whatever that is).
North Carolina’s Wailin Storms are intriguingly described as shapeshifting, atmospheric noise rockers, and I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that particular epithet at first. However, within the first few minutes of their latest album The Silver Snake Unfolds, (Gilead Media), I got the idea, and after subsequent listens I knew exactly what they meant. Continue reading