Band: TANK DESTROYER
Country: USA
Title: Head of the Demon
Label: Dissected Angel Records
Year: 2009
Style: Heavy Stoner Doom
Review:
Here is a review/preview of Tank Destroyer's album "Head Of The Demon". This is one highly anticipated album and from the time the first track starts cranking out you will be blown away by the production. This album shreds and everything is pushed to the limits, heavy as fuck!! First track "Broken Sermons Of False Prophets" is a punishing slice of Stoner Doom with a riff and a guitar attack that slays, they couldn't have picked a better way to kick off this album. The vocal sound is just as bruising as the guitar sound! I am not going to do the usual and try and compare them with anyone else because this really can standout on its own. "Human Epidemic" keeps up the momentum with a riff that slices and cuts through with some powerful distorted riffage. The solo is a highlight of the track, really classy playing while keeping the heaviness at the maximum. "Withered" follows with a slower more melodic intro piece that adds a bit of a different flavor to the album. This track flows real nice, beautifully constructed but with some twists that make it a stand out track on the album. "Bonfires And Bloody Knuckles" is a surprise with the acoustic guitar making a appearance, the speech going on in the background gives the track a ethereal feel. Somehow haunting and melodic at the same time, a interesting track indeed. "Saints Amongst The Begotten" brings the band back in full tilt mode, another great riff and vocalist Chris Sherrod giving another killer vocal performance. Some more awesome guitar work is featured, this band really has all the chops. One thing that also has to be touched upon is the great sound and playing of bassist Mike Sliclen, the bass lines are a real feature of this album. Once again, killer guitar solo's and shredding!! "Apathy Lullaby" follows with a Doom ridden riff and more of the same relentless attack that this album seems to have no lack of. Really good tune that passes the six minute mark but never feels like it while you are listening. "Remnants Of Lost Days" starts off with a moody intro section which has a kind of Psychedelic mood about it before launching into total heaviness complete with some excellent lead guitar work. This is a instrumental, every good album needs one of these and this is a fine piece of work. Dramatic and Intense, the track builds up to powerful climax before grinding to a halt. Final track is the title track and its a 10 minute plus epic, epic in length and in musical arrangement. One of the highlights of the album, i listen to this track 3 times in a row when i first heard it. The way the vocals blend with the guitar work is exceptional and once again there is more killer riffage to indulge in. The solo in this track is particularly outstanding, the way it swirls around your head. At the 5 minute mark there is a great tempo change as they bring things down to total Doom mode, once again it has to be pointed out how over the top the production and sound on this album is. The final track is a fitting end to what is one of the albums of the year, made to be played as loud as possible. Out now.
Reviewed by Ed
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Band: TEUTOBURG FOREST
Country: England
Title: Chao ab ordo
Label: Selfreleased
Year: 2009
Style: Harsh Black Metal
Review:
This is the debut release from the UK's Teutoburg Forest. Raw/harsh blackend death metal is what this young band is creating. The music: the guitars are harsh and chaotic sounding and the drums are fierce and intense blasts of blasphemous noise. Donn {vocals, all instruments} does mix in some doomish style while keeping the guitars harsh sounding. Fans of the more noisy, harsh black metal will enjoy this release.
Reviewed by Patrick
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Band: TEUTOBURG FOREST
Country: England
Title: Anti-Subhuman Scum
Label: Selfreleased
Year: 2009
Style: Harsh Black Metal
Review:
This is the second release from the UK's Teutoburg Forest. Starting off with a fuzzy, distorted guitar riff the musicial insanity of this one man band soon follows. The drums are played with vicious and intense beats, the vocals are the harsh sreechy traditional black metal vocals but also you will hear a slight death metal influence with some deeper growls and the guitars have some heavier chords that remind you of the earlier days of brutal black/death metal. Teutoburg Forest is a band I enjoy and see them having a good chance to make it within the cult underground. But fans of the more polished sounding black metal bands of today will proably not enjoy this band. Teutoburg Forest are pure, harsh blackend hate.
Reviewed by Patrick
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Band: TEUTOBURG FOREST
Country: England
Title: Cult of the Individual
Label: Sefreleased
Year: 2009
Style: Harsh Black Ambient
Review:
This is the newest release from this donn and his blasphemous creation Teutoburg Forest. The music seems to be less chaotic and more controlled this time around but no worries to all fans of this band it is still harsh and raw in production and delievery. The 5th track on here "As One" is a real surprise adding a extra element of experimental and ambient music within the harshness."Cult of the Individual" is defintly Donn's best and most diverse release to date. It will be interesting to hear if Donn takes Teutoburg Forest back into the harsh blackness of the previous two releases or continues to add more ambient/experimental sounds.
Reviewed by Patrick
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Band: TOWARDS GLOBAL HOLOCAUST
Country: USA
Title: ...ever onwards
Label: Scattered to the Wind
Year: 2009
Style: Death Black War Metal
Review:
Towards Global Holocaust is a band you will either love and listen to non-stop or totally hate it with a passion. Towards Global Holocaust are a band that defies anyone who tries to put them into one set-catagory of music or metal. The band begins with some very violent experimental sounds and indusrial influences. But it is not long until the bands runs over the listener like a tank with some brutal intense black/death metal guitars and equally heavy drumming. The vocals are also hard to guess and keep the listener guessing as to which will be heard next.. The vocals range from very disturbing screams of pain and suffering to a more demonic death metal growls combined with occasional black metal shrieks of insanity and depravity. I really do not want to label or use the word "noise" within this review for the simple fact the band is not a noise band. The band at first listen might appear to have alot of this style influenced into their sound but you will also hear most other metal genre's as well. Fans of dark, creative and just pure insane music will love this. All others should give it a try just to see if it suits them. But remeber we warned you this is not a band creating pretty metal music.
Reviewed by Patrick
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Band: TRAVMA
Country: Italy
Title: Re-Animated
Label: Selfreleased
Year: 2009
Style: Thrash Death
Review:
Travma was formed back in 2006 and since then they have released a demo and this EP now, in 2009. Re-Animated is a powerful release, fast, aggressive and technical, but it has its melodic lines as well. the band plays a bland of US '90's death metal with '90's European thrash metal, but an interesting fact about this CD is the opening track, a track that's out of their style and can be labeled as Scandinavian black death. They are good instrumentists (+ a good vocalist), but from this EP that lasts for only 13 minutes you cannot make yourself a proper opinion. Give it a try yourself, it's an entertaining Thrash Death (Black) release well executed, with good sound and very interesting concept.
Reviewed by Adrian
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Band: TVERD
Country: Russia
Title: Follow the Sun
Label: Selfreleased
Year: 2009
Style: Pagan Folk Black Metal
Tverd is possibly one of the best pagan/folk metal bands out today! This band hails from the great Russian lands. Combing elements of traditional folk music and more up-beat energetic style of heavy metal; the vocals are sung in the bands native language and shared between Alexander Ivanov {male operatic vocals} and Svetlana Lebedeva {female folk/opera vocals} the pair do an amazing job working together as well as keeping up with the pace of musicans. Tverd is simply brilliant in all aspects from the vocal patterns, creative music and superior sound quality. This is a band all fans of pagan/folk metal will want to add to their collections.
Reviewed by Patrick
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Band: URT
Country: Estonia
Title: Ex mortuis
Label: Beneath The Fog Prod. / Arhailised Helid
Year: 2009
Style: Pagan Black Death
Review:
This is already the 4th album of a band formed only 5 years ago, so these, together with the 2 Splits they partecipated on, make from Urt (soul of death in Southern Estonian dialect) a highly productive band. This one, their fourth, is the first album that is released through a bigger label. Urt is the kind of band that will appeal to the Pagan Metal followers that want something more brutal and aggressive than the typical bands of this genre. The Estonians mix in Pagan Metal with a lot of Death Metal and Black Metal elements, they play mainly fast rhythms, but ad some epic, melodic and even some acoustic touches here and there. This is a 9 tracks album that lasts for almost an hour, so long tracks, but I think their followers won't be disapointed at all of the final outcome. A band that, if well promoted, can reach higher grounds in the Extreme Metal Scene.
Reviewed by Adrian
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Band: VISIONS OF THE NIGHT
Country: Canada
Title: Nocturnal Militia
Label: Fall Of Eden Rec.
Year: 2009
Style: Death Metal
Review:
Visions Of The Night are a Canadian band formed 10 years ago, which released 1 album and 1 EP so far, and this is their second opus, a whirlpool of aggressive sounds, basically into Death Metal, but spiced with many Thrash and Black Metal influences. Overall the band gives the impression they want to go the old-school way (by adding simple, primitive keyboards backgrounds, and old-school in-your-face guitar sound), but their skills clearly show they can and maybe want to go further, to experiment. Maybe for that reason Visions Of The night get to be a very interesting band. They mix in everything into extreme metal, you can even find some new school brutal death influences, too. By the atmosphere created I would say they resemble Acheron, a very wicked, sadistic and obscure form of death metal.
It needs multiple listenings to get this album and that's the point. Good band, good release. Recommended!
Reviewed by Adrian
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Band: VOLKSMERINK
Country: USA
Title: The Suffering of One
Label: Earzit Records
Year: 2009
Style: Death Thrash Metal
Review:
This is another new Death/Thrash band from the mighty California scene. The drums (which are programmed) are mid-paced to all-out attacks on your ear-drums even treading onto blast beats in a few songs. But I wouldn't label Völksmerink a Grind band. The bass/guitars are intense, insane Thrash riffs that would make the masters of Thrash proud! The vocals are gruff with the traditional Thrashing screams. I also noticed it sounded like some effects were used on the vocals (but thankfully) only on a few tracks. This is not a bad release and should be checked out by fans of 80's Thrash, and early 90's Death Metal. I for one look forward to seeing/hearing what Völksmerink do next.
Reviewed by Patrick
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Band: WELTSCHMERZ
Country: Holland
Title: Cry for War
Label: Selfreleased
Year: 2009
Style: Black Metal
Review:
Weltschmerz is a new Dutch Black Metal band formed this year, so we are dealing here with their debut EP. "Cry for War" consists of 4 tracks + intro, lasting for almost 20 minutes. It all starts with a good war-like intro, but the first track is really a weak one, nothing but an unsuccessful Scandinavian black metal copycat with linear vocals. The following two tracks are a bit better, but still very simple and not interesting. They are not evil, nor dark, nor technical, just attempts. The last track lasts for over 6 minutes and is the one that shows these guys can do better (guitars are more varied, drums a better - maybe programmed better, who knows, and the final synth outro shows a devilish atmosphere also) but haven't, at least on this debut EP. Maybe a good mixing could have helped them more, but here the vocals are in front, followed by the twin guitars and drums that are barely hearable sometimes. Hope they'll do better next time.
This EP is available for free download from the band, so you won't loose anything giving it a try, maybe you'll like it better than I did.
Reviewed by Adrian
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Band: WO FAT
Country: USA
Title: Psychedelonaut
Label: Selfreleased
Year: 2009
Style: Stoner Metal
Review:
With the stacks cranked up to 11,Wo - Fat dishes up a smorgasbord of fuzzed out Stoner delights of the finest order.This is a electrified,riff-filled journey of Psychedelic 70's Metal infused with Bluesy Acid Filled "Hendrix" inspired jams.They take the feel of 70's giants like Sabbath, ZZ Top, Humble Pie, Deep Purple, Mahogany Rush, Night Sun, Mountain and mixed up with the Stoner Doom Monolithic sounds of Sleep, Church of Misery and Fu Manchu.Some of the songs have a trance like vibe sucking the listener in to a never ending groove while others have some sort of Country Stoner Doom Blues recipe that strangly works in delivering the Riff Rock in a unique fashion.Wo Fat certainly have thier own way of doing things,even though this fits in well within the whole Stoner/Doom genre there is something different about this band.They have a huge sound that sounds like a five piece band most of the time even though this is only a 3 piece band.Psychedelonaut,Enter the Riffian and Analog Man are the first three assaults on the eardrums on the album with some mind bending guitar tones and some colossal drum sounds.The middle of the album is the weaker section for me anyway as the tracks seem to lack the constant drive that the previous songs have but yet are still bombastic enough to keep you engaged in the running order of the album.Shake Em On Down,Not of This Earth and The Spheres Beyond bring the album to a close in similar gigantic fashion.These songs are pretty intense Stoner Workouts with the average length of the songs being around the 7 minute mark.They have a knack for working a groove to death which after all was the gift of so many 70's Hard Rock groups.This is 70 + minutes of Heavy Stoner Doom but with another dimension that sets them apart from the pack.Out on Brainticket Records.
Reviewed by Ed
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