ALBUM REVIEW: MTVoid (Tool) – Matter’s Knot, Pt.1


 

Tool’s bassist Justin Chancellor and Polish Alt-Metal outfit Sweet Noise’s frontman Peter Mohamed first met at a European music festival. A shared desire to collaborate in some way or another finally came to fruition in 2013 with MTVoid’s first album, Nothing’s Matter. Now ten years on the pair release their follow up, Matter’s Knot, Pt.1 (Lobal Orning).   

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PODCAST: Episode 355 – Tom Osman Interviews A.A. Nemtheanga of Primordial


 

Ghost Cult scribe Tom Osman caught up with long-running Irish-based Pagan Black Metal group Primoridial! They new album “How It Ends” just released via Metal Blade Records and Tom and A.A. uncovered a lot of the back story of the album, the legacy of the band, and more! Continue reading


ALBUM REVIEW: Vertebra Atlantis – A Dialogue With The Eeriest Sublime 


 

There’s a solitary figure on a frozen plane, playing a strange melody, while a howling storm beats a furious march against his back. He’s probably being chased by goblins as well. That’s one way to describe A Dialogue With The Eeriest Sublime (I, Voidhanger Records) the second album by Italian (kind of one man) band Vertebra Atlantis. Another way would be as intricate, powerful, creative and atmospheric death / black metal. Evocative, lyrical, mysterious, magical. 

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ALBUM REVIEW: Autopsy – Ashes, Organs, Blood and Crypts


 

Autopsy is a band that understands itself. Like spiritual death metal brethren Cannibal Corpse, the band has core musical, thematic and visual staples you can almost always depend on (the poo-chomping album cover of Shitfun being an outlier). Think Autopsy, think the evil, Black Sabbath-inspired tri-tones, pulverising percussion, slow, menacing crawls blended with charging gallops, malevolent guitar lines, bowel-loosening bass, squealing bursts of lead guitar and rasping vocals, all tied up in a bloody bow of bodies being monstrously torn to pieces. 

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PODCAST: Episode 350 – Tom Osman Interviews Matt Young of King Parrot


 

Ghost Cult scribe Tom Osman caught up with Matt “Youngy” Young of the Australian metal band King Parrot! Youngy chatted about their recent US Tour performing at RPM Fest (Ghost Cult was a sponsor), touring with Pantera and Weedeater, the worst stage dive injuries he has ever sustained, making progress on a new KP album for 2024, and much more! 
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ALBUM REVIEW: Duff McKagan – Lighthouse


 

Duff McKagan is an interesting character. Having released his first solo album in 1993, a big gap followed till 2019’s Tenderness, with Lighthouse (BFD Records /Orchard/Sony) his third. This of course is but a fraction of McKagan’s musical story. Consistently coming across as the most likeable out of the classic Guns N’ Roses lineup (in which he played bass and for his part was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame), such a rock pedigree is already more than most mere mortals would ever get a sniff at. 

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ALBUM REVIEW: Teeth of the Sea – Hive


 

If the sea had teeth what would they look like? (You’ve probably never wondered). If you have asked yourself such a question, you’ll likely have to keep pondering. As to what they would sound like, well Sam Barton, Mike Bourne and Jimmy Martin, known collectively as Teeth of the Sea, have been providing an answer to that question since their first record (2009’s Orphaned by the Ocean). Hive (Rocket Recordings) is the group’s sixth full-length release. 

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ALBUM REVIEW: Fearing – Destroyer


 

Do you like to dress in black? Do you prefer a solitary pint of cider in the back of a smoky bar? (the smoky part might be hard to fashion in this day and age) Do you favour wearing a trenchcoat? Do you feel in a state of perpetual ennui? Maybe you are a Berliner! Or perhaps you’re a member of a Darkwave band… maybe both! 

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ALBUM REVIEW: Prong – State of Emergency


 

Tommy Victor is an unsung hero of Rock. The Prong frontman (and the band’s only constant) has been putting out great records under the Prong banner since 1989’s Force Fed. Between then and the band’s latest — thirteenth studio album State of Emergency (Steamhammer / SPV) — there’s been a brief flirtation with commercial success in the early-mid nineties, an extended hiatus before and after the band’s unfairly-maligned Scorpio Rising album from 2003, and a steady stream of quality material over recent years.

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ALBUM REVIEW: The Coffinshakers – Graves, Release Your Dead


 

Graves, Release Your Dead (Svart Records) is the latest album from Finland’s vampire-admiring (maybe “obsessed” is the word) The Coffinshakers. According to the band’s online blurb, they’ve been making horror comedy since 1995. Now if that feels like rather a long time to be riding this fairly simple gimmick, well it’s just a fleeting moment for a night walker, eh? 

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