Is there anything better than superbly written death metal? What else gets the blood pumping or gives you enough adrenaline kick to bite through a chain-link like some good old-fashioned death metal? Weirdly, I also consider death metal to be somewhat of a comfort food for me nowadays. When I don’t know what else to listen to, I typically grab an Autopsy or Bolt Thrower album and just vibbbbeeeee, dude. They always seem to hit the spot. In 2024, I’m probably more fascinated with the genre than ever due to the influx of great bands to choose from—especially in the last 15 years. Among those ban ..read more

[Cover art by Alli Tuttle] Have you ever hung out with a dumb, smart person? You know, the kind of person that will blow your mind by saying one of the most compellingly intelligent things you’ve ever heard and then immediately break your brain because they have no idea how to work a toaster. I’m talking about the kind of person you spend an hour with, and then you go, “How the hell does this person get by on a daily basis? Also, I’m terrified of what they might achieve in certain industries.” Well, Replicant is the music equivalent of that anomalous individual we’ve all met at least once. Lis ..read more

[Cover art by Grindesign] Fans of the grim and foul music we so enjoy will always need the serious side of the tunes. We crave those albums that make our skin crawl, send a cold shiver down our spine or make us rethink our perspective on a vital topic. We also need albums that are ludicrous, allowing us to sit back and temporarily be a drooling mouth breather for a while. Martyrs is a phenomenal film for a horror movie comparison, but it is not made for many repeat viewings, so it’s important to balance that out with a goofy-ass gore fest like Freddy vs. Jason. On album number 10, Benighted i ..read more

[Cover art by Ettore Aldo del Vigo] Scenes like heavy metal tend to be rather incestuous. I don’t mean the kind that all the adult sites are such big fans of these days, but rather the fact that so few people seem to ever only be in one band. “But whatever happened to the purest form of love that is monogamy?” said the True Patriot cranking one out to his Punisher flag alone in his mom’s basement. Shut up, nerd; having multiple outlets means we hear from a greater variety of an artist’s muses! What the hell was I talking about again? Oh, right, musicians in multiple bands. Suffer happens to sh ..read more

[Cover Art By Justin Hast / bassist] Mechanical can often be a word levied against a band as a negative. The term can mean the production sounds too clean or that the music lacks a sense of the human touch. However, mechanical can also be a positive, particularly in the realm of any music with an industrial influence. To add a sense of churning gears to filthy death metal or punk-inflected tunes can create a sense of unease. Prisoner creates music that provides a sense of unnatural order to music that should be all about chaos to great effect. Release date: March 15, 2024. Label: Persistent Vi ..read more

[Cover art by Samuel Nelson] When I reviewed Soulmass’ previous album, Let Us Pray, and when I named it to spot number 20 on my best-of list last year, I mentioned that while part of my enjoyment of the album was the source material that inspired their theme, you needn’t be interested in the game Bloodborne to enjoy that 50 minutes of fantastic death doom. Well, Soulmass decided to test me on that theory by releasing an album inspired by Mobile Suit Gundam, which I know next to nothing about. In fact, when I saw references to colony drop, I thought they might be talking about that syndrome tha ..read more

Ah, fear—a souvenir for the living. Fear, in and of itself, is subjective. However, certain situations and experiences fall into the “objective” category. For example, suppose you find yourself the victim of insects burrowing, bulging, and crawling beneath your skin, or with the sudden knowing—while sitting in an empty room—that you’re not actually alone. But let’s look at the glass half full, friends: the sight and sensation of a little pest sneaking its way below your dermis or a dreadful encounter with an entity from another plane of existence, at the very least, remind you that y ..read more

[Artwork by Jesse Draxler] Being three heavy metal fans from Montreal, Quebec, Dissimulator grew up listening to Voivod, who is the most obvious influence at play on the band’s debut album, Lower Form Resistance, and evident in every aspect of the album from that art to sound and style to song composition. Of course, they listened to lots of other great heavy metal, too, and were clearly drawn to the darker and heavier side of things, as clearly reflected in the other music they make as members of Chthe’ilist, Atramentus, and Worm, but also the very technical side in Beyond Creation, First Fra ..read more

There’s a consensus among the extreme music faithful that death metal is more popular than ever before. If you’re a sadomasochist and enjoy the torture of social media, just keep an eye out. These opinions ring out like the snare on Bathory’s Octagon or on Metallica’s St. Anger. But in terms of its global exposure, it may actually be true. Although I’m too lazy to find the numbers, surely statistics exist to back that point up—merch numbers, ticket sales, streaming, and so on. I will say, however, that the notion that death metal paralleled Tom Hanks in Cast Away after the ’90s—stran ..read more

Fire and ice have always entangled themselves in a tug-of-war, a relationship as old as time. Together, fire, the more aggressive, grandiose element, and ice, the solid, more submissive counterpart, create a symphony of symbiosis. Upon the flames, ice sizzles away, transitions into vapor, drifts with the wind and is set free. In 2019, Australian melodic blackened death metal outfit King followed up their debut full-length Reclaim the Darkness with their sophomore effort Coldest of Cold. While Coldest of Cold was a significant improvement, this isn’t to say Reclaim the Darkn ..read more