Music is routinely used as an avenue to either express one’s feelings or to make sense of them. Oftentimes used as a crutch in our darkest of hours, it’s safe to say music has helped countless people crawl out of their lowest of lows, both through listening and writingContinue reading
When ordering from McDonald’s, you don’t complain about how the burger was grilled. When watching a movie from the Saw franchise, you don’t complain about how gory the film is.
Grindcore by its very nature, is polarizing. It’s either unapproachably abrasive or energizingly frenetic; disorganized noise pollution or homicidally refreshing.
No/Mas stakes their claim by presenting a grindcore record peppered with intricacies that are as subtle as they are appreciated. One or two cycles isn’t enough to fully absorb the wonders that lie within Consume/Deny/Repeat (Closed Casket Activities)
If I ever have the misfortune of finding myself trapped alone at night in a haunted cathedral, I at least found a soundtrack to get me through the ordeal.
No two ways about it, this shit is terrifying Black Metal as it was meant to be presented: in a haunting display of magnificently uncomfortable, anxiety inducing foreign sounds. The purveyors of such unsettling filth, Black Death Cult, do so with six “WTF” tracks on Diaspora (Profound Lore). It’s a release in 2022 that could find familiar company just as well in the early nineties. Primitive production and unsavory wailing that inexplicably left the mouth of an actual human.
These days, with technology readily at our disposal, music isn’t always created directly by humans. Programming has significantly widened the plains of the musical landscape, for better or worse.Continue reading
Black Metal and groove seem to be fonder of each other as the genre diversifies and the landscape shifts evermore, progressing from the cavernous affair that was early Black Metal. The way in which Agathodaimon takes this trope to task results in an elegantly haunting experience, encapsulated in 10 tracks collectively titled, The Seven (Napalm Records).
Simply put: Allegaeon manifested 10 dizzying tracks of utter brilliance; gave (further) proof the band is profusely proficient as a whole and individually; and created a Technical Melodic Death Metal album packed with so much aggression and speed, it sounds like Monster fornicated with Red Bull.
Shape of Despair are no strangers to the Funeral Doom Metal scene. In fact, they are arguably pioneers of the quite-niche genre, having debuted in 1998.
Some bands fit easily into a singular genre. And though it makes for much simpler categorization, it can inhibit an artist or artists that feel they want to branch out or try something new without alienating a fanbase. The French foursome Celeste do away with this notion entirely, and have dipped their toes in many different areas of music, most recently on their sixth album, Assassine(s) (Nuclear Blast), an effort that brings forth elements of Doom, Black Metal and atmospherics.