Havok have been thrashing and smashing their way to recognition ever since forming in 2004. 2009’s debut album Burn and 2011’s follow-up Time Is Up were both open love letters to late-80’s thrash metal in the vein of Nuclear Assault, Exodus and Anthrax, and Unnatural Selection, you’ll be pleased to hear, doesn’t deviate from the formula musically, although lyrically it seems they may be trying to be a little more serious.Continue reading
Tag Archives: Candlelight
Palehorse – Harm Starts Here
Palehorse don’t appear to take themselves too seriously, with a few tongue-in-cheek promo shots that include corpsepaint, cups of tea and the morning papers. What is serious though is the cruelty and severity of the cacophony that is their music held within this new album Harm Starts Here and it’s the clashing of these two opposing views that makes the album something worth exploring, if only once.Continue reading
Burzum – Sôl Austan, Mâní Vestan
Burzum is heralded as one of the black metal greats – however, Burzum and Varg Vikernes becoming household names within the metal community is undoubtedly for all the wrong reasons. If it’s not Varg’s incarceration for the murder of Mayhem’s Euronymous being talked about then it’s his far right political beliefs having the spotlight shone on them. If you were to actually put aside the infamous brand name that he has become, and pick carefully through his discography, you’d notice he hasn’t actually released anything groundbreaking since Filosofem back in 1996.Continue reading
Fallujah, Havok, Cephalic Carnage & Suffocation – Live @ Islington Academy, London
As the slow decent into arctic oblivion comes to an end, glorious sunshine spills over a bemused Islington who inhabitants are seemingly perplexed at the sudden appearance of the giant, yellow orb. In contrast, death metal patrons head to the cramped and stuffy surroundings of the Islington Academy for an evening of gloriously indecipherable grunting and frantic guitar bashing.Continue reading
Demon Lung – The Hundreth Name
The bright lights of Las Vegas, Nevada have spawned a dark debut in The Hundredth Name by doom quartet Demon Lung. (And I just have to say, if Demon Lung isn’t the coolest fucking band name you’ve heard in a coon’s age, I don’t know what is.) The Hundredth Name is a concept album based on the film Warlock. Specifically the story follows the Son of Satan reassembling the Devil’s Bible, thus allowing the name of God to be spoken in reverse, undoing creation. Heavy stuff.Continue reading
Nonexistence – Antartica
Austrian musician Philip Santoll bore his solo project Nonexistence into this world with the excellently received Nihil back in 2007 but since then he has been a little on the quiet side. Thankfully, that silence wrought the impressive Antarctica; a work in which Santoll brought on board Finnish artist Tuomas Saukkonen (Before the Dawn, Black Sun Aeon) in order to produce and offer creative input for the first time in Nonexistence’s life. Saukkonen also lends his talents to the bass and drums on the record and the effect of the collaboration is felt across the entirety of Antarctica – from the steady thrum that the bass injects to proceedings to the monolithic weight of the work as a whole.Continue reading