Tag Archives: music reviews

ALBUM REVIEW: Weft – The Splintered Oar

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Embodying a whole lifetime of exploration, growth, and the ever-dynamic passages of life’s trajectory, debut album The Splintered Oar by Weft, which was released via Bindrune Recordings, is a meticulous construction well-crafted by Panopticon’s Charlie Anderson, influenced by a vast range of names and references. While the core foundation of its soundscapes revolves around Atmospheric and Death/Black Metal undertones, Weft also incorporated influences from Prog, Country, Americana, Folk, and other means of passages that aren’t strongly inclined towards distortions and belligerent beats– and it distinctively shows in the wide range of the vocal palette that Weft presented on this album; that dynamic shift from intricate, harsh growls, to choir-inspired clean singing that appear ethereal and enchanting.
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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: Dysentery – Dejection Chrysalis 

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A decennary of anticipation since their last full-length, Fragments, brutal slam titans Dysentery have blessed the world with their fourth full-length bloody flux, Dejection Chrysalis (Comatose Music Records), an eruption of decay turned divine, mixed and mastered by Randy LeBoeuf (Graphic Nature Audio). Continue reading →


ALBUM REVIEW: Various Artists – Cult And Culture Podcast Compilation

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Cult And Culture is a podcast led by Justin Pearson, best known as bassist/vocalist for bands such as Dead Cross, The Locust, and Deaf Club. Pearson works alongside Luke Henshaw (of Planet B and Sonido de la Frontera), interviewing bands and artists across a range of genres.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: Bloodbound – Field Of Swords – Napalm Records

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If Metal – Power Metal, especially – can be relied upon for one thing, it’s headbanging history lessons. Teaching you the things school either thought unimportant or simply didn’t have the time for, Metal wants you to learn about the past rather than rewrite or forget about it. While teachers drone on incessantly about crop rotation in the 14th century, bands like Sweden’s Bloodbound take you onto blood-soaked fields of battle. On their previous record with Vikings, and now on eleventh full length studio release, Field Of Swords (Napalm Records) into the middle ages and the time of the crusades.

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ALBUM REVIEW: Kariti – Still Life

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One of the many things I love about being a music journalist is the never-ending stream of new music that comes my way on any given day. Sometimes it’s good stuff, sometimes it’s terrible, and sometimes it’s “where have you been all my life?”  The last one is how I felt after just one listen to Kariti’s latest album, Still Life (Lay Bare Recordings).Continue reading →


ALBUM REVIEW: Drill For Absentee – Strand of a Lake, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 – Expert Work Records

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Drill For Absentee are a Philadelphia trio whose original run lasted from 1995 to 1999. Their catalogue is hardly the most extensive. Since their 2021 covid era reunion the band, Kevin Kelly – Bass, Guitar, Vocals, Michael Nace – Guitar, Vocals and new Drummer Ken Kuniyoshi (replacing co-founding member Bryan Sargent) have been busy in the recording studio. What they’ve come up with are two EP’s which have been put together as one LP (Note – Vol. 1 was put out digitally on September 13, 2022) while Vol 2 was forged between August 2022 to March 2025, out now via Expert Work Records. Continue reading →


ALBUM REVIEW: VoidCeremony – Abditum

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Today we delve into an experimental, cacophonous take on progressive death metal as VoidCeremony unveils their third full-length album, Abditum (20 Buck Spin Records). The band continues its search for meaning within chaotic riff structures, though this time the journey feels more fragmented than illuminating. Their trademark fusion of astral dissonance and technical precision remains intact, yet the cohesion that made their previous release, Threads of Unknowing, so compelling seems to have fractured. Continue reading →


ALBUM REVIEW: Season Of The Dead – Zombie Chronicles Vol. 1

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Missing Halloween by a couple of weeks, but still coming in well before Christmas, if you prefer the the smell of decaying flesh to mulled wine and mistletoe then look no further than the collaborative efforts of Season of the Dead. An array of US and European talent that come together in blood-soaked disharmony on full length debut release Zombie Chronicles Vol. 1 (Time To Kill Records). Continue reading →