Tag Archives: by Wil Cifer

ALBUM REVIEW: Glorious Depravity – Death Never Sleeps

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Glorious Depravity features members of Pyrrhon, Woe, and Gravesend. Their new album Death Never Sleeps (Transcending Obscurity Records) takes you back to the days when death metal crawled from the bloody carnage of thrash, which left the knack for songwriting with hooks over sheer brutality intact. Doug Moore’s guttural growls are articulated enough to keep them from being just a gurgle, and allow them to give you a hint of what the song’s about. The riffing on “Stripmined Flesh Extractor” is coherent enough to give it an almost Megadeth-like groove. They tap into the darker tension that fuels Slayer’s vibe for “Freshkills Poltergeist.” They are not doing anything new here; they are just doing it right.Continue reading →


ALBUM REVIEW: Night Resident – Total Obscurity

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Total Obscurity is the third album from the Greek proto-Metal band Night Resident. They flirt with a similar brand of saccharine melodies to offset the rock edge. The double-tracked vocal harmonies are effective at times; for every song, they create a uniformity to their sound that is hard to shake, but first, let’s clear the air about something: these guys are marketed as being a “dark” rock band. As someone whose name is associated with being a purveyor of dark music, it would be a betrayal of trust for me to say anything that implies there is anything dark going on here.Continue reading →


ALBUM REVIEW: Cold In Berlin – Wound

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Despite being from London, Cold in Berlin once again lives up to their name, as it conjures, stark, wintry urban landscape at night. Wounds (New Heavy Sounds) finds the band going further down the path they wandered down on their previous album, which found them more fully committing to their crossover into doom. The opening track of their new album blurs the lines even further, carrying a darker, more pulsating beat. Vocalist Maya belts things out with the expected intensity of her aching alto. The hypnotic pulse of “12 Crosses” shares some common ground with grunge from the nineties, as more exotic flourishes of atmosphere are also employed. Continue reading →


ALBUM REVIEW: Softsun – Eternal Sunshine – Heavy Psych Sounds

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Going into silent moments before winter, a change of soundtracks is needed. This album helps to achieve that goal. Gary Arce from Yawning Man started Softsun a couple of years ago. On Eternal Sunshine (Heavy Psych Sounds), Arce uses guitar tones similar to those employed with  Yawning Man, but with a more melodic shoegaze vibe. This project’s strength actually lies in the vocals of bassist Pia Isaksen. She brings a more song-focused element to the table by creating a more tangible narrative. Her voice weaves sleepy melodies in the spaces left by the floating guitar parts.  The second song works off a similar formula, as the opening track that finds the band continuing to capture a languid mood as the vocals coo their way into a lonely sunset. Continue reading →


ALBUM REVIEW: Yawning Man – Pavement Ends

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If you have ever eaten a gummy and thought:

“This is not doing shit!”Continue reading →


ALBUM REVIEW: Cattlemass – Alpha 1128 – Seeing Red Records

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Alpha 1128 (Seeing Red Records) is the debut album from LA-based Cattlemass. They are a band that crosses heavy sludge with Hawkwind-like vocals. They do not get started roaring like lumberjacks, which makes them more interesting than most of the bands doing this sort of thing. More aggressive than doom, their strength as a band lies in the fact that they are not afraid of taking chances, nor are they slaves to the sludge bible. To their credit, they are also not just another band that is smoking weed and trying to be Black Sabbath. The chanted drone of the vocals seems to be the approach they are sticking with, going into the second song. The chug is a little faster on this one. Continue reading →


ALBUM REVIEW: Tombs – Feral Darkness

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The new Tombs album, Feral Darkness (Redefining Darkness), is another chapter in the sonic tome chronicling Mike Hill‘s travels to throb of the abyss. To say this sounds like a Tombs album is a broad statement that neglects the stylistic shifting due in some part to the band’s revolving lineup. The first thing you might notice upon first listen is that there are fewer Black Metal moments. Instead, the album is driven by the kind of aggression that characterizes Death Metal. The vocal approach is not all guttural. Forceful declarations, not unlike what you might have heard on a Celtic Frost album. Continue reading →


ALBUM REVIEW: Coroner – Dissonance Theory – Century Media Records

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Despite Dissonance Theory (Century Media Records) being Coroner’s first album in 32 years, there is little effort to ride the coattails of former glories and revisit what they did on masterpieces like “Punishment For Decadence”; instead, they have updated their sound to smooth out any of the wrinkles from the eighties to present something very vital for 2025. This means some things have changed. Tommy Baron and Ron Royce return without Marquis Marky behind the kit, a change that is more pronounced when you are a trio.Continue reading →


ALBUM REVIEW: Testament – Para Bellum

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On  Para Bellum – (Nuclear Blast Records) Testament continues to uphold the legacy of quality decades in the making. Despite not being the household name like the bands of the Big Four, these had chops that rivaled Megadeth’s most shredding line-up. Of the Big Four, Slayer was the only band darker and more aggressive than the classic mid-to-late Eighties period for this band. While this new order marks the debut of Chris Dovas, the former drummer of Seven Spires, whose youthful exuberance gets the job done. Bassist Steve Di Giorgio (Death, Death To All), who goes back to “The Gathering.”Continue reading →


ALBUM REVIEW: Sanguisugabogg – Hideous Aftermath

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Was the year’s best Death Metal album coming from the Goregrind/Slam side of the fence on your bingo card? 

Sanguisugabogg are here to fucking bring it on Hideous Aftermath (Century Media). 

Continue reading →