Death Metal – Page 201 – Wonderbox Metal

Eternal Storm – Elemental Nightmares V – Split with Kaos Vortex, Will of the Ancients and Stortregn (Review)

Eternal Storm are from Spain and this is their latest release. They play Melodic Death Metal.

I enjoyed their début EP, so was looking forward to hearing this new track.

The song starts out fast with a slight Blackened feel to the riffs. Melodic leads soon break out before the track has a mellow moment. I’m reminded of bands like Dark Tranquillity, Insomnium, In Flames, At the Gates, Opeth, etc.

The song is well recorded and the band can clearly play well. The main solo is played like liquid and the musicianship in general is of a high standard.

Vocally we get a mix of deep growls and higher screams, sometimes at the same time. There’s also a guest spot from the singer of Valtari to spice things up.

The song has a good feel to it and does pretty much everything you would want a Melodic Death Metal song to do. The band mix aggression and lighter parts well, and I particularly enjoy the slower end section after the guitar solo, where it initially relaxes before building up in intensity with a mournful lead just under the surface.

This bodes well for a future début album. Bring it on!

Infested Entrails – Defiling a Piece of the Deceased (Review)

Infested Entrails are from Australia and this is their début album.

Ahh this is just the thing for a lazy, wet, Sunday morning. Brutal, heavy Death Metal with plenty of blasting, rhythm and aggression.

Taking their cues from Cannibal Corpse, Dying Fetus, Severe Torture, Suffocation and Deeds of Flesh; the band rip, tear and carve their way through 33 minutes of grade A Death Metal.

Defiling a Piece of the Deceased features a sound that’s strong enough to bruise. The band have a great production that does their crushing music justice.

Chunky rhythms and bouncing riffs explode out of the speakers as Infested Entrails do their best to flatten everything around them.

This is Death Metal with a lot of energy and boundless passion for the cause.

A thoroughly enjoyable and satisfying blend of brutality and murderous intent. Infested Entrails have created an album that is very good indeed.

A recommended listen. Play loud.

Chapel of Disease – The Mysterious Ways Of Repetitive Art (Review)

Chapel of Disease are from Germany and play Death Metal. This is their second album.

The album art alone made me expect something a bit special from this band; I just couldn’t imagine a “normal” Death Metal band having a cover like this.

As soon as I pressed play it seemed I was right. The Mysterious Ways starts out with a Doom-heavy riff that’s slow, tortured and enhanced with subtle keyboards. Top stuff. After this short intro of sorts the band ramps up the tempo but still manages to foster the air of occult mystery and ancient lore that the cover implies.

Overall I’m very impressed with this release. There are some Hellishly good riffs and melodies on here. The songs are exquisitely written and the moods and atmospheres that they cover are impressively realised.

This is clearly a band who are comfortable with their brand of horror and not afraid to be themselves. All credit to them for this, as The Mysterious Ways Of Repetitive Art is a Death Metal treasure of dark riffs and haunting melodics.

Imagine the best parts of bands like Hypocrisy, Usurper, Celtic Frost, Immolation, Incantation – essentially any band who have a penchant for atmospheric Metal that has a broad palette and creative soundscapes.

Chapel of Disease know how to be grimly brutal when they need to, but the main thing about a band like this is their recognition of the importance of dynamics and grand riffing. Their skilled songcrafting has resulted in Death Metal songs that perfectly capture the appeal of the underworld and the dark gifts and treasures that can be bestowed on those true believers that persevere in their art.

There’s a lot to absorb here. This is a compelling album of high Metal art. Get this.

Carnality – Dystopia (Review)

Carnality are a Technical Death Metal band from Italy. This is their second album.

The singer has the kind of infectious growl I love. It’s deep and rough but focused and compact as well. It’s more like precision strikes with a blunt weight than wildly flailing something around and hoping for the best. There’s enough variation in tone and delivery to show real character too.

This is ferocious, Modern Death Metal with barbed riffs and a murderous attitude. The songs are manufactured with nothing but destruction in mind.

Dystopia boasts a strong and clear production which allows the musicianship of the band to shine. They shred, peel, batter and tear their way through the songs with Hellish abandon.

The band are adept at fusing technicality with songwriting ability so that the tracks are both complex and involving. It’s great to hear when a band embraces the importance of a coherent and flowing song structure in addition to ensuring the requisite levels of brutality and technicality.

Carnality have put out a hugely impressive second album. If you like your Death Metal crisp, heavy and brutal then you must check out Dystopia.

Warcode – Vortex of Chaos (Review)

This is the début album from Greece’s Warcode, who are a Death Metal band with a Thrash influence.

This is well-recorded Death Metal with a good ear for catchy riffs and songs that probably go down a storm live.

Warcode have a nice Thrash Metal influence to their riffs which means that the songs have high energy levels and plenty of hooks.

Rather than generic riffs simply strung together, thought has gone into progression, pacing and the general dynamics of the tracks; this shines through repeatedly.

These songs feature some good playing and some really nice solos. It always comes back to the rhythm guitars though for me as there are some really choice riffs going on here. Pick pretty much any song and almost straight away you’ll encounter some quality riffing and catchy tunes.

The drums are solid and it’s always good to be able to hear some bass as well. The vocals are deep, dark and sound like the singer is gargling gravel. Nice.

Warcode have put together a good collection of tracks that should hopefully see them increasing their profile.

Check them out and show your support.

Born Undead – Violator of Humanity (Review)

Born Undead feature members from both the UK and France. They play Death Metal and this is their début EP.

Taking influences from bands like Autopsy, Born Undead play their particular brand of Death Metal with bloody abandon and gore-stained clothes.

The music is primitive and reeks of corpses, but the simplicity of their attack is no less lethal for it. This is ugly music for ugly people.

They have a non-standard sound which differentiates them a bit from so many other Death Metal bands. They’re riff-oriented but not in a flashy way and the deep growling vocals appear to have been dredged up from the remains of a huge daemon, at least that’s what it sounds like to me…

The first song Violator of Humanity has a good energy to it, with a mechanistic-marching quality to the main riff that unexpectedly erupts near the end into grand melodics. Nice.

Second track Revenge of the Necrovore starts faster and features riffs plucked from the bowels of Hell. Once again the band show that they have the ability to write guitar parts that are full of energy and feel like they’re going places rather than just filling time until the next riff comes along.

After this we have Splatter Fuck, which is the longest track at just over 4 minutes. This slows the pace again, mostly, and Born Undead get to show off their grasp of dynamics and pacing. A tasty main riff once again powers everything whilst the vocals chew and belch their way through the carnage. Some dark melodic guitar work also rears its ugly head here.

The EP closes with Undead Torment which rounds up everything in a suitably brutal fashion. It has a merry old time of it, chugging and thrashing around all over the shop, beheading with glee. Most enjoyable.

A very promising release from a very promising band.

More please.

Disinterred – Incantation (Review)

Disinterred are a Death Metal band from Belgium and this is their latest EP.

Ahhh I do love a bit of Swedish Death Metal. Yes they’re from Belgium but who cares? Your general tolerance levels for this much loved/maligned genre, (depending on your viewpoint), will dictate how you get on with Disinterred.

If you like Grave, Dismember, etc. then Disinterred should be right up your gravestone-lined alleyway.

The songs are short, heavy and full of quality Death Metal riffage. They have that classic chainsaw sound and all of the requisite parts are in place, including the sinister melodies.

The vocalist has a very nice voice indeed. Dark, deep growls are barked out with precision and hatred. Nice work that man!

At only 13 minutes in length there’s no messing around here; straight to the point Death Metal in the Old-School Swedish style.

Good sound, good songs. What’s not to like?

Assumption – The Three Appearances (Review)

Assumption are a Doom/Death Metal band from Italy. This is their début EP.

Assumption sound grim, dark and evil. Featuring members of the gruesome Haemophagus it should come as no surprise that The Three Appearances is full of mouldy and decomposing delights.

Cavernous, echoing Death Metal growls seem to be generated through an abyssal fog of misery and pain. Surely something like this can’t be good for you?

The music is murky and ancient, lumbering around like a forgotten, decaying god that’s slowly transformed over the millennia into some form of shambling horror.

Reminding of recent albums from the likes of Encoffination, Ævangelist and Sempiternal Dusk, this is the latest album to blend both Death and Doom into an absolute terror of an album that’s designed to loosen the bowels and scar the soul.

As rotten as what’s left in the sewer and as black as the void, Assumption do a great job of describing the essential futility of life; decay always sets in, entropy will get everything in the end and ultimately there’s very little point. So why bother? Why bother at all?

Well, paradoxically Assumption themselves have given us a reason to continue; their music. This is worth taking the time to listen to.

What a glorious, rancid, noxious find this has been. All hail Assumption!

Baring Teeth – Ghost Chorus Among Old Ruins (Review)

This is Baring Teeth’s second album. They are from the US and they play Progressive/Technical Death Metal.

With a cover that gives nothing away, I was intrigued to find out what lay within…

Baring Teeth play dense, complicated music that mixes technicality and progressive forays to create an unusual beast of an album.

This is an interesting and unusual listen. Like a Jazz-Metal fusion of Uphill Battle, Converge, Crowpath, Gorguts and Pyrrhon.

Angular riffs and complex drumming make for impenetrable songs that take time to reveal their hidden treasures. The bass has a good presence and role to play too.

The songs meander along the highway of distorted frenzy. Sometimes restrained and relaxed, in no hurry to get to their destination; sometimes frenetic and unhinged, desperate to get somewhere, anywhere; sometimes the calm before the storm takes over; sometimes the controlled chaos of true genius.

Frequently; all of the above at the same time, and then some.

The vocals sound like they’re struggling to be heard behind the wall of noise that the band make. They’re perfectly serviceable but it’s the chaotic music that provides the real focal point here. Human noises are simply an addition to the trauma of the rest of the band’s cacophony.

Definitely an acquired taste this one, but definitely one worth persevering with.

Zero Gravity – Holocaust Awaits (Review)

This is the début album from India’s Zero Gravity – a Thrash/Death Metal band.

After a pointless intro, the band start the album properly and they introduce us to their rather fetching take on Death Metal. Think Old-School Death Metal with a sharp Progressive edge and an added splash of Arch Enemy’s modernity and catchiness.

If you think Arch Enemy are too clean and polished sounding; if you’d prefer it if they had more of an underground, raw feeling then look no further. Arch Enemy combined with Death is as good a reference point as any. And do you know what? It sounds bloody good.

The singer has a good bark and she delivers the lines with passion and bite. She has a great voice and it works with the aggressive riffs to fuel the band to greater heights of attack.

The riffs and licks flash out like lightning and the technical/progressive elements of their sound are abundant but relatively subtle. These are clearly people who know how to play their instruments well and don’t need to be overtly flashy or ostentatious to prove this.

Holocaust Awaits is an album full of hooks and has plenty of catchy parts to it. Sometimes this kind of songwriting can be a recipe for acute gratification at the expense of chronic satisfaction, however Zero Gravity are just damn Metal enough for the acute to bleed into the chronic and we could very well end up with an album that has some longevity to it. Only time will tell but I know what I think the outcome will be…

Minus the intro there are 8 songs on this album and the entire thing lasts just over 40 minutes – it’s a good length as it allows the band to show what they’re capable of but doesn’t let them outstay their welcome.

This is the kind of music that’s actually surprisingly hard to do well – this style of Melodic Death Metal with a bit of groove, a bit of Death, catchiness and hooks…on paper it sounds all very good but unfortunately a lot of bands who try this style end up sounding very mediocre and stale.

It’s all in the execution of course and Zero Gravity avoid all of this this by simply writing kick-ass riffs that are artfully arranged into actual songs, and decent ones at that.

A very enjoyable listen. Check this out and see what you think.