Maryland Deathfest organizers postponed this year’s festival. They have just announced new dates for 2021 (May 27-30, 2021) and revealed that almost the full 2020 lineup will play. The new dates for MDF XVIII are May 27-30, 2021. Also, take a look at our massive recap and photo set from MDF 2019 by Hillarie Jason. Continue reading
Maryland Deathfest has announced its 2020 running order! Already featuring Dismember, Bloodbath, Exhorder, Monstrosity, Onslaught, Cadaver, Cancer, Graveyard, Vio-lence, Necrophobic, Demilich, Acid Witch, Fabio Frizi and many more, the eighteenth edition of MDF, taking place at Rams’ Head Live and Baltimore Soundstage. Check out the announcement and the full list of bands so far below. Also, take a look at our massive recap and photo set from MDF 2019 by Hillarie Jason. Continue reading
Maryland Deathfest XVII, May 26, 2019
Right on the heels of another incredible Maryland Deathfest, MDF 2020 has announced its first spate of dope bands! Dismember, Monstrosity, Onslaught, Necrophobic, Demilich, Acid Witch and many more are set for the eighteenth edition of the fest, taking place at Rams’ Head Live and Baltimore Soundstage. Check out the announcement and the full list of bands so far below. Also, take a look at our massive recap and photo set from MDF 2019 by Hillarie Jason. Continue reading
If you don’t follow The Punk Rock MBA, the YouTube channel run by music and marketing expert Finn McKenty, you are missing out! We are huge fans of his! His videos explore all of your favorite genres of music, their rise and sometimes fall. He uses the “what killed____” tag to get people interested, but clearly, he means in a commercial cultural way, not the death or a genre, as in the case of death metal. He discusses the main bands like Cannibal Corpse, Death, Morbid Angel, Deicide, Bolt Thrower, Mortician, Incantation, and Suffocation, Cynic, Suffocation, Pyrexia, Internal Bleeding, Entombed, Dismember, the cultural forces that led to its popularity (Ace Venture Pet Detective and Beavis and Butthead) and more! Watch the clip below and like and subscribe to the channel. Continue reading
From the team that brought you Maryland Deathfest, Quebec Deathfest, California Deathfest and, we now have a Scandinavia Deathfest! It makes almost too much sense, as the region has been the birthplace of some of the greatest bands and albums of the metal genre. Right off the bat, headlining the festival are the reunited original-LAEFS-lineup of Dismember are making an exclusive European appearance. Other bands confirmed are Benediction, Birdflesh, Centinex, Death Toll 80k, Demilich, Demonical, Entrails, General Surgery, Interment, Iron Lamb, Martyrdöd, Massgrav, Nuclear Assault, Purtenance, Putrid Vision, Rippikoulu, Rotten Sound, Sarcasm, Soils of Fate, Sorcery, Toxaemia, Unanimated, Undergang, and Wombbath. Taking over Stockholm on October 11-12 at Kraken Sthlm and Slaktkyrkan. , 2019, the ticket information can be found below. Weekend passes go on sale today!
Take three unashamed Deff Metulz heads from that most renowned city of Stockholm, give them an HM-2 pedal, a huge guitar stack, a heritage that includes Dismember, At The Gates and Entombed and, courtesy of Lawrence Mackrory, a stunning sonic assault that takes all the best aspects of Sunlight Studios merged with today’s production values of volume and clarity, and stand back and wait… for your face to be pinned to the wall behind you as the hurricane of Swedish Death Metallage assaults you with unrestrained glee. Continue reading
When your primary musical focus consists of playing in At The Gates, Skitsystem, or Martyrdöd, any and all accompanying projects are going to be subjected to some level of scrutiny. “Yeah, but it’s not Slaughter Of The Soul, is it?” you may hark, but Sweden’s Agrimonia have never been ones to rely on paying lip service to their associated Death Metal and Crust Punk outfits. Five years removed from their last record Rites Of Separation, Agrimonia have presented us with their most ambitious, thematic and musically realised record, Awaken (both Southern Lord). Continue reading
I’ve mentioned before (and will again – us writers, like bands, have our favoured phrases we come back to, like the metaphoric pooch returning to its gut-chunks), but predictability is underrated. And a bloody good thing, too, at times, because back for the fifth time of asking, and spilling their fetid guts for the baying hordes in time honoured Sunlight styled fashion, is Sweden’s Entrails with World Inferno (Metal Blade). Continue reading
“Not another Swedish death metal band!” I hear you cry. Surely a scene stuffed to the gills with those who worship at the putrid altars of Dismember and Entombed doesn’t need another body to distract attention and replicate clichés? Well you’d be dead wrong of course. Newbies Cut Up have actually been round the block several times, via the local graveyard and abattoir of course, in their previous incarnation as gore merchants Vomitory, who made a lot of noise in their lengthy career but won few hearts and minds. Do these seasoned veterans still have the bit between their teeth?
The answer is a resounding yes. Cut Up doesn’t so much have the bit between their gnashers as the leg of a freshly slain corpse. Debut album Forensic Nightmares (Metal Blade) is a full-blooded beast of a death metal album that while resolutely old-school in its approach, is possessed of its own, fierce identity and not interested in merely copying the greats of the genre.
No, Cut Up wants to brutally violate your eardrums with a barrage of lethal riffs, thick, serpentine grooves and some truly nasty guttural vocals. Every track served up here is cooked to bloody perfection, from the sickening gut-punch of brief opening tracks ‘Enter Hell’ and ‘Burial Time’ to the lurching filth of ‘Order of the Chainsaw’ and the raging violence of the title track.
The lyrics may deal with the usual blood n’ guts but what do you expect from a band called Cut Up? However, the real surprise is the thick, meaty production that truly gives each instrument some serious heft with the drums in particular sounding utterly devastating. So if the last Bloodbath album left you cold, check out Cut Up’s brand of shit-hot death metal and marvel at how sometimes shedding your skin and being reborn (in blasphemy, of course) is the best way to go.
8.0/10
JAMES CONWAY
To celebrate the release of Bloodbath‘s excellent new album Grand Morbid Funeral (Peaceville) Anders Nystrom (aka Blakkheim) talked us through his ultimate all time Top 5 Death Metal albums (and couldn’t resist sneaking in a sixth…)
Entombed – Left Hand Path (Earache) “It features the guitar tone pedal called Boss HM-2 and that’s enough said. That pedal represents the ultimate guitar tone in the world so if you want to discover where that came from then this is the album to go to.”
Morbid Angel – Altars Of Madness (Earache) “Probably the classic Death Metal album of all time; where every band, directly or indirectly, draws their influence from. It’s pretty much what started the whole thing. I’m not saying it necessarily needs to be the best in their discography but it’s definitely the essential choice.”
Autopsy – Mental Funeral (Peaceville) “It represents a very morbid side of death metal; it’s sludgy, rotten to the bone and very dark. It also shows it’s not just about production values, you can also create magic with Death Metal by going more primitive and having imperfection as your guide.”
Dismember- Like An Ever Flowing Stream (Nuclear Blast) “This is pretty much up there with Left Hand Path. It’s a little bit more underrated, they always came under the shadow of Entombed, but the song writing on that album is amazing and the production is at its peak and represents Sunlight Studio in Stockholm at its very best. The whole album is very much worth buying just for the opening riff of the first track ‘Override Of The Overture’ that riff is one of my all-time favourites. If you could just bring one Death Metal riff into space for an alien to discover it would be that one.”
Deicide – Deicide (Roadrunner) “At this stage, there was no band as outrageous and controversial, they were outspoken Satanists and this album really shows it. It wasn’t just talk, they were living it. It’s a demonic album, it’s a very violent death metal album and it’s also representative of the whole Florida scene.”
Obituary – Slowly We Rot (Roadrunner) “This comes down as well to Obituary, again an album that is almost loose in a way, it also has a hilarious lack of lyrical tendency! A lot of the growls on this album are made up of just sounds, which was an insane idea to start with. It has a really big Celtic Frost influence, so is good for people to go back with.”
CHRIS TIPPELL