Back catalogue: Metal

Review: BMG reissue the second ever release by the pioneering Swiss extreme metal band Celtic Frost, originally released in 1985 as an EP. Emperor's Return often goes criminally undersung as a fleshing-out of black metal as a genre, with the bleak imagery surrounding it going on to cement the style as its own niche. Their first record to feature American drummer Reid Cruickshank (aka Reed St. Mark), the EP comprises five thrash-come-black metal rabble-rousers, ahead of their time for 1985.

Review: Following on from last year's crushing debut full-length, 'The Codex Of Flesh', Colorado Springs deathcore new schoolers, Crown Magnetar, return with the visceral 'Alone In Death' EP. Combining all facets of the genre from the brutally heavy to the obscenely technical, their myriad cacophony careens with zero warning into obliterating blast beats, mammoth breakdowns and caustic, malevolent shrieks. For a subgenre once so maligned and snobbed, it's releases like this that serve as testament to the vitality and staying power of such a twisted hybrid.

Review: Ever consistent Canadian hardcore punk crew, Cancer Bats, are seemingly set to return with their follow up to 2018's 'The Spark That Moves', which marks their first offering following the departure of founding guitarist Scott Middleton.

With the frenetic thrashings of latest single, 'Lonely Bong', the group haven't sounded this vitriolic or pissed off in the better part of a decade.

From the thunderous title-track alone, it's evident 'Psychic Jailbreak' marks a smouldering return to form with low end grooves and Southern snarl imbued within its hardcore bindings. Cancer Bats have always sounded their best when resembling Every Time I Die getting into a beer-soaked bar brawl with Down, and this could be the fight that leads to a hospital visit.

Review: Ever consistent Canadian hardcore punk crew, Cancer Bats, are seemingly set to return with their follow up to 2018's 'The Spark That Moves', which marks their first offering following the departure of founding guitarist Scott Middleton.

With the frenetic thrashings of latest single, 'Lonely Bong', the group haven't sounded this vitriolic or pissed off in the better part of a decade.

From the thunderous title-track alone, it's evident 'Psychic Jailbreak' marks a smouldering return to form with low end grooves and Southern snarl imbued within its hardcore bindings. Cancer Bats have always sounded their best when resembling Every Time I Die getting into a beer-soaked bar brawl with Down, and this could be the fight that leads to a hospital visit.

Review: Ever consistent Canadian hardcore punk crew, Cancer Bats, are seemingly set to return with their follow up to 2018's 'The Spark That Moves', which marks their first offering following the departure of founding guitarist Scott Middleton.

With the frenetic thrashings of latest single, 'Lonely Bong', the group haven't sounded this vitriolic or pissed off in the better part of a decade.

From the thunderous title-track alone, it's evident 'Psychic Jailbreak' marks a smouldering return to form with low end grooves and Southern snarl imbued within its hardcore bindings. Cancer Bats have always sounded their best when resembling Every Time I Die getting into a beer-soaked bar brawl with Down, and this could be the fight that leads to a hospital visit.

Review: The Cavalera brothers, Max and Igor, might keep busy in their myriad of current projects such as Soulfly and Petbrick, but have regrouped under their own name to offer re-recordings of the first two releases which marked their entry point into the metal maelstrom. Originally released in 1985, the Bestial Devastation EP would later feature as bonus content on the debut Sepultura album Morbid Visions. While they were young, broke and ill-prepared for the demanding energy and focus of studio recording in their earlier years, the duo have opted to revisit the material which is still much adored by fans to this day, and re-execute with their long-earned veteran chops. Signing to Nuclear Blast, this 2023 edition offers an entirely new form of vicious clarity and compositional nuance to the gritty, lo-fi, death metal-centric cuts.

Review: The debut full-length (not counting the Beyond Hypothermia compilation that came beforehand) from seminal Massachusetts metalcore/emo/post-rock/alternative giants Cave In, still stands as a monumental work that has maintained its position within the Venn Diagram intersection of a myriad of altering sonics two decades on. Tragically losing bassist/vocalist Caleb Scofield in a car accident in 2018, the band made a much-supported return with last year's phenomenal Heavy Pendulum while enlisting the help of Converge bassist Nate Newton. As the newly reformed group continue to tour the latest opus-like addition to their incomparable legacy, there's a bittersweet aura surrounding the 20 year anniversary of Until Your Heart Stops; both celebrating their enigmatic genre-fluid origins that have been an essential component of why Cave In are still paid such reverence, and a sobering reminder of the loss of such a truly underappreciated artistic voice.

Review: Following their early slew of EPs that would slowly begin to reshape the modern metal landscape, it was 1985's full-length debut, To Mega Therion, that would immortalise Swiss extreme metal provocateurs, Celtic Frost, as the macabre saviours of a scene unaware of the perils that awaited it. Credited alongside Venom's aptly titled, 'Black Metal', as the true genesis of a scene and formula still not altered too greatly in the near four decades since inception, it's little wonder how many classic acts from Mayhem to Darkthrone cite the band, and this project in particular, as an integral influence. Sporting some of the literal greatest extreme metal cuts to ever grace tortured ears, such as, 'The Usurper', and the twisted epic, 'Circle Of The Tyrants', along with the iconic H.R. Giger drawn artwork, this classic can be traced back from the vast majority of black, death, doom and almost any other horrific subgenre of metallic origin.

Review: Like Ronseal does exactly what it says on the tin, Procreation Of The Wicked: Rehearsal June '84 is a rare session recorded by Swiss extreme metal pioneers Celtic Frost, the same year they unveiled their debut EP/mini-LP Morbid Tales. Later expanded into what the band would retrospectively regard as their debut full-length, the bulk of material from this session comes directly from this project, with the notable inclusion of studio-version lacking 'Messiah', which has grown to become an underappreciated fan favourite in the decades since, largely due to its rehearsal session-only mystique. Raw, feral, and boasting the proto black metal thrash abrasion that would utterly reroute the metallic landscape for future generations, this early incarnation time capsule is a vital piece of extreme metal history, though its ragged edges require true fandom to appreciate the boundary-pushing genius being captured in real time.

Review: .By its very nature, Tenkiller is a very different beast to Chat Pile's other releases. Recorded in the winter of 2020 to be the soundtrack to Tenkiller, an indie movie about the lives of ordinary people in small-town America, it sees the noise-rock/post-hardcore combo focus on mood and tone, rather than form and function. As a result, fuzzy and forthright cuts of the sort you'd expect come supplemented by dystopian, industrial-influenced soundscapes, lo-fi alt-country, guitar-laden mood pieces, low-slung and effects-laden creepiness, intense electronica and the kind of slow-burn ambient-not-ambient that was once the preserve of cult bands such as Labradford.

Review: Clutch's cult and debut recording back in 1993 has never before been available on vinyl, but it is now thanks to Weathermaker Music who have pressed it up to a limited 180 gram sea glass blue vinyl and included a numbered and autographed insert. Transnational Speedway League is a great work from the band's Tim Sul and it comes with great artwork which has been redesigned by Dan Winters and Sult. The limited pressing is a must-own for fans that reminds of the band's very earliest sonic roots, raw riffs and guttural vocals that all make for an intense and arresting album still now all these years later.

Review: Originally released in 1999, Chamber Music served as the sophomore offering from Los Angeles nu-metal pioneers Coal Chamber, yet marked a notable departure from the groove-oriented sound of their self-titled debut following several comparisons to their peers in Korn. While still delivering a hefty sonic assault, the material introduced a slew of melodic, electronic, gothic and industrial elements, thanks in no small part, to the enlisting of session keyboardists such as both Amir Derakh and Jay Gordon of Orgy as well as DJ Lethal of Limp Bizkit, while Skinny Puppy's Dave Ogilvie provided valuable production assistance. Most known for the Ozzy Osbourne featuring cover of Peter Gabriel's 'Shock The Monkey', which would become the band's biggest hit to date, the project sits in a delicate sweet spot between nu-metal time capsule and a sonic striving to push beyond the confines of the increasingly claustrophobic genre, bolstered further by frontman Dez Fafara's later departure to focus on DevilDriver.

Review: Coheed and Cambria are often heralded to be some of the best rock music storytellers in the world. This much hyped new album Vaxis II: A Window of the Waking Mind goes some way to backing that up and was produced by the band's own Claudio Sanchez and Zakk Cervini. Early singles got a great reception from fans and critics and showcased what to expect from the full album - thrashing heavy metal-infused riffs with vast in scale melodic vocals that are this band's signature style.

Review: Originally released at the turn of the new millennium, America's Volume Dealer marked the sixth full-length from North Carolina sludging southern metal legends Corrosion Of Conformity, and would be the last to feature longtime drummer Reed Mullin before his return a decade later in 2010. Noted for being the band's most accessible or "radio-friendly" project due to the more polished production and increased reliance on melody, there's no denying that while the dank stoner-heft grooves of old are largely absent, the more alternative rock-leaning approach to their signature brand of metallic, southern blues, in hindsight, was a remarkable breath of fresh air within their back catalogue.

Review: Originally released in 2005 as the follow up to the more accessible, melodious alt rock endeavour that was 2000's America's Volume Dealer, the seventh full-length from Raleigh, North Carolina stoner/sludge legends Corrosion Of Conformity, boasting the epic title In The Arms Of God, would take a half decade of introspection and self-reappraisal to materialise. Rediscovering their incomparable knack for hefty trudging riffs that displace the Louisiana bayou blues to caverns of beer-soaked sludge, for many the album signalled a return to form with both critics and avid fans celebrating the band's more corrosive elements once again. The only project not to feature drummer Reed Mullin as this was during his sabbatical from the group, while most notably being the final work with primary songwriter and overall mastermind Pepper Keenan until his glorious return on 2018's No Cross No Crown.

Review: Self-described "putrid, drug-fueled gutter rock from the filthy streets of NYC", Couch Slut deal in ugliness, and boy is business a-boomin'! Meshing the most challenging facets of grindcore, hardcore punk, noise rock and black metal, the resulting cacophony is as unpleasant as it is impenetrable, yet the commanding presence of vocalist and primary songwriter Megan Osztrosits demands you suffer the audible torment while she details harrowing depictions of sexual violence, drug abuse and more singular inner-city horrors through subversive, vitriolic and grimly humoured phrases. Working with industrial hardcore manglers Uniform's Ben Greenberg (with previous production credits for Drab Majesty, Portrayal of Guilt, Metz), You Could Do It Tonight marks the fourth overall full-length from the group, and utterly refuses to dilute or smoothen their ethos of audibly healing through pain, or just pain for the fuck of it.

Review: Recorded in Florida's iconic Morrisound Studios, the second full-length from progressive power metal titans, Crimson Glory, is often heralded as, not only the band's finest accomplishment, but a high watermark for the scene overall. Cosmic and ambitious, the original 1988 release was inspired by the works of Edgar Allen Poe as well as exuding a central focus on mysticism and divinity, with a Kabbalistic Tree of Life even adorning the back cover. Noted for its unique recording technique, in which drummer Dana Burnell performed live drums into a synclavier without any cymbals, before re-recording the cymbal takes later in order to maintain a complete dichotomy between the two; the crispness of the impressive percussion may have served as a complicated, arduous process, but its pristine attention to detail still shines through over three decades on.