This is the third album from US death metallers Carrion Vael.
Carrion Vael play a modern form of death metal, and within this they combine the technical and melodic styles into a 39-minute juggernaut of an album. Continue reading “Carrion Vael – Abhorrent Obsessions (Review)”
This is the third album from Italian brutal death metallers Cerebral Extinction.
Escape from Illusion delivers a punishing technical assault across 47 minutes of brutal material. Continue reading “Cerebral Extinction – Escape from Illusion (Review)”
This is the debut album from US death metallers The Eating Cave.
Taking influence from a mix of bands such as Archspire, Origin, Beneath the Massacre, The Faceless, and Infant Annihilator, The Eating Cave spend 39 minutes terrorising, battering, and demoralising the listener with the sort of punishment that is as well-delivered as it is startlingly brutal. Continue reading “The Eating Cave – Ingurgitate (Review)”
Soreption are a Swedish death metal band and this is their fourth album.
I thoroughly enjoyed 2014’s Engineering the Void, so Jord was high on my list of albums to check out. Clocking in at a lean 31 minutes Jord doesn’t mess around. Rarely have the gods of technical groove found such a fitting outlet as Soreption. Continue reading “Soreption – Jord (Review)”
Yes, it’s that time of year again! 2021 gave us some very, very good metal, and I feel honoured to have been able to have listened to as much of it as I have done. There are some notable absences, (for me at least), from the below list, but there’s just not enough time or space for everything, dammit!
2020 was a very blackened year for me; I listened to a lot of black metal, and the list for that year reflected that. At the start of 2021 I decided I’d consciously try to ensure I cast my net a bit wider again, reconnecting more deeply with some of many other styles of metal that I enjoy. 2021’s list reflects this. However, I’ve still ended up with much more of a black metal presence in the list than I was initially expecting. What can I say? I’m a sucker for all of the myriad blackened flavours of the style. However, there’s also a lot of other stuff here that I hope you’ll dig into and enjoy too. I felt that there was a notable absence of grindcore in 2021, as well as some of the more extreme styles of doom. What do you think?
I hope you enjoy perusing some of my favourite records from this year, and I hope you find something new to tickle your fancy. What’s your number one this year? Continue reading “Wonderbox Metal End of Year List – Best Metal of 2021”
October was an absolutely stacked month for great albums! It was very hard to choose just a handful below. There were so many high quality releases and I know whatever I ended up choosing I’d miss some out that deserved to be highlighted, so I’ve just gone with whatever felt right in the moment – if had to do this list again, I’m sure there would be some changes. Having said that, all of the below are superlative albums. Continue reading “Monthly Overview – the Best of October 2021”
This is the fourth album from Canadian technical death metallers Archspire.
Greatly anticipated after 2017’s highly regarded Relentless Mutation, Bleed the Future is another ferocious slab of unstoppable tech death mastery. Archspire spend 32 minutes showing the world very precisely why they are considered by many to be top of the technical death metal pile. Continue reading “Archspire – Bleed the Future (Review)”
This is the fourth album from South African death metallers Vulvodynia.
After 2016’s Psychosadistic Design and 2019’s Mob Rules, it’s great to once more be exposed to Vulvodynia’s brand of deathcore-laced brutal slamming death metal. There’s a whopping 57-minutes of violent content on Praenuntius Infiniti. Although I was initially concerned about this, as that length is a bit of a push for this sort of punishing material, it turns out that the band have done their best to make good use of the time. Continue reading “Vulvodynia – Praenuntius Infiniti (Review)”
The Scalar Process are a technical death metal band from France and this is their debut album.
When a band is described as for fans of Coexistence, The Zenith Passage, Beyond Creation, Necrophagist, The Faceless, Hateful, Archspire, Cynic, and Inferi, and when words such as technical, melodic, and progressive are bandied around Continue reading “The Scalar Process – Coagulative Matter (Review)”
This is the third album from US death metallers Abiotic.
Abiotic play modern death metal that takes influence from the technical and progressive strains of the style, as well as from some elements of deathcore. The promo blurb states that Ikiagi is for fans of bands such as Continue reading “Abiotic – Ikigai (Review)”
Wonderbox Metal 