With a highly elaborate theological foundation we have Sabbath Assembly, a gathering of musicians featuring Jex Thoth. Following the ideologies of Process Church of the Final Judgment a cult from the 60’s and 70’s, Sabbath Assambly’s “Restored to One” is a ‘re-charging’ of this cult’s hymns and brought to the general audience in form of psychedelic rock songs.

We love anything that has to do with theology, and especially stuff about cults so “Restored to One” is a very interest release for us. The whole idea of having three great gods of the universe in Jehovah, Lucifer and Satan, sound like a crack-pot theory that my friend would cook up during an acid trip. However, not all ideas behind the Process Church were as crazy as this one.

Fronted by Steffen Kummerer from Obscura, today we have a very impressive band from Germany. Thulcandra comes with the slogan of “the heirs to Dissection’s throne” and this could not be any more accurate. The band excels at making Death/Black Metal music unlike anybody these days.

The influences of Dissection and Emperor are clearly present, but the band takes this further with their own technical abilities. For a band that has been together since 2004, and has never release a full-length, “Fallen Angel’s Dominion” is an impressive achievement.

After an absence of 6 years, we finally get a new release from Canadian Necronomicon. Since the impressive “The Sacred Medicines” the band has been lurking in the shadows, but finally they make their big label debut with “The Return Of The Witch” out on Napalm Records.

Necronomicon combines straight-up Death Metal with some melodic influences. However, the band sounds nothing like all the Melodic DM bands these days. Their music is very brutal and less flashy than other bands. They have also added some minor Black Metal influences in the riffing, but nothing major and it’s just to enrich the band’s brutal sound.

After a very well received “Into the Night”, Enforcer is back with their 80’s inspired Heavy Metal, and with “Diamonds” they manage to pick up where they left off two years ago. The band is clearly very influenced by the 80’s and they sound exactly if they traveled through time in order to show us how it was done back then.

While some people might call them posers, we have to say that if the music is done correctly and it has the same feeling, then it does not matter that Enforcer is a flashback band, they kick ass and take names. Showcasing a perfect balance of Heavy/Trash Metal from the 80’s “Diamonds” is a pretty solid album that will make you want to dig out your favorite tapes and LP’s from those glory days.

With the logo calling for similarities from Voivod we were expecting a soulless clone of this band, but instead we found a very good Progressive Trash Metal American band that is set to make a name of their own. Hailing from Arizona, this quartet does a great job into mixing progressive elements with old-school Trash that will blow you away.

While there are some Voivod influences, “Black Future” is an album that clearly stands out from all the ‘new’ Trash Metal releases these days. The riffing is the main driving force behind this release, but it’s perfectly crafted around complex song structures that are unlikely in many Trash releases.

Hailing from Italy we have Jewish Juice. This Italian band plays a mean combination of Trash/Death and Black Metal. “Hidden Into Rotten” is the band’s second release and shows signs of a good band that needs to mature a little bit. The album mixes 3 very chaotic tracks with two tracks that are very solid, showing the band’s future potential.

The band’s musical style needs to be refined a bit more since the combination of genres is sometimes annoying since there are several Death metal oriented tracks mixed with Black Metal songs, and we would prefer that those things are either properly combined or just pick one genre. This is usually the problem we find with beginner bands, they want to do many things but they can’t merge them together properly.

After listening to Italy’s Jewish Juice second release “Hidden Into Rotten… With a Black Flame of Light” we were very interested to listen if the band’s talent was going to be consolidated into creating a better release than “Hidden Into Rotten”. For our general surprise the band has done a great job in maturing and crafting their own sound and not needing to throw a bunch of shit together in order to sound brutal or different. With “Soaring Above Death” we get 5 songs that really show what this band is capable off.

In “Soaring Above Death”, the band has come to terms and decided to go with a Black Metal foundation that has Death Metal influences, but it’s never chaotic and badly constructed like on some songs of their previous release. The vocals still vary between growls and BM screams, but they feel more uniform and never get to be obnoxious.

When Patrick Mameli decided it was time to bring back Pestilence, he enlisted the services of Tony Choy (Bass) and Peter Wildoer (Drums) in order to record “Resurrection Macabre”, the band’s return to their Death Metal days, and first album in 16 years. Many people where left off wondering what happened to Pestilence with their very good (and for some atrocious) release of “Spheres” an album that saw the band change their musical style considerably.

“Resurrection Macabre” in a few words is: A fucking brutal and technical release. This album is something we were expecting from Pestilence back in 1993, however this release still sounds good for this time thanks to a superb production. Patrick has brought back the full aggressive Pestilence sound that we all loved from their beginnings and the technical aspect of “Spheres” combined together into a brilliant release.

Today we have a short-but-sweet EP from this Swedish quartet that plays Black Metal. Withershin was formed since 2006, in just a few years has managed to release a demo, a full-length CD and this EP that feels more like a maxi-single since it only lasts 15 minutes.

The three tracks in this EP showcase a mature band that plays a very solid Black Metal that would rival any of the other mid-level bands in Sweden and the world. Since there are only three songs we will use the dreaded song-by-song review approach.

Hailing from Serbia today we have Triumfall, a Black Metal band signed on Infernus (Gorgoroth) Forces Of Satan label. After listening to this release for a few times, we still have mixed feelings about this release. The production on this album is somewhat crappy in our opinion since the drumming sounds very bad sometimes, but it might be what the band was shooting for.

The band plays a very interesting Black Metal that is very melodic in nature and has plenty of keyboard highlight here and there. This makes us remember the old days of demo tapes we received from bands from countries like Mexico, where they used keyboard highlights on plenty of Black Metal releases. While this sounds good, it also sounds very amateur because of they way they are written, maybe the keyboard player has limited skills, but they sound a bit simple.