Album Reviews

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    Alcest - Écailles De Lune (2010)

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    After the band’s amazing first full-length release “Souvenirs D'un Autre Monde” many of us had been left wanting for more. And while there are many other bands that play similar music like Agalloch, Wolves In The Throne Room, Fen, etc. Alcest has it’s own extremely melancholic sound that is unique of them.

    “Écailles De Lune” follows the band’s first release perfectly; there are plenty of instrumental passages that build expectation and melancholy. The clean vocals are heavenly and brilliantly set the mood for the furious sporadic Black Metal attacks. All the buildups leading to the band’s Black Metal elements are perfectly crafted creating a very melancholic feeling that bursts with shrieks of desperation.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    Stigma - Concerto For The Undead (2010)

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    If you usually judge a book by its cover, you will image that Stigma plays Punk or something in that vicinity. But once you start listening to this album you will be blown away with a Melodic Death Metal sound that will hook you since the first riff. The band does a great job at mixing Melodic DM with harsher elements, making their sound very dynamic and fresh.

    “Concerto For The Undead” features great artwork that reminded us of the Tales From The Crypt comic books, and as you can see in the band’s promo pictures, it’s one of their clear influences. We love when bands use horror movies as an influence since it’s one of our passions, and they could make for very interesting lyrics.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    Heidevolk - Uit Oude Grond (2010)

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    Out of the hundreds of bands that play Folk/Viking/Pagan Metal, Heidevolk has been one of our favorites since their debut album “De Strijdlust is Geboren”. The band has a very ‘simple’ but yet effective way of making Folk Metal songs, they only need the addition of a violin to get the extra ‘folkish’ sound that other bands have when using countless extra instruments.

    “Uit Oude Grond” is the band’s third full-length album and you can hear that they are running out of ideas. While Heidevolk’s music has always sounded formulaic (but effective) it’s finally getting a bit tired and old. Even halfway through this album you start to wonder if your CD player is skipping and re-playing the same tracks.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    Unleashed - As Yggdrasil Trembles (2010)

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    Swedish Death Metal legends Unleashed are back with another great album, “As Yggdrasil Trembles” marks another great release in the band’s career. If there is one thing you can count on with Unleashed is consistency. The band has managed to maintain their original style for almost 20 years, and yet they still sound fresh.

    Forming over 20 years ago, Unleashed has played a major role in the development of Viking Metal and bands that talked about Scandinavian mythology in general. Since the band was the first to use this topics in their lyrics, instead of the traditional ‘blood and guts’ approach, this has made them very unique since the beginning.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    Blood Cult – We are the Cult of the Plains (2010)

    The monthly award of the best ‘recorded in the toilet’ album goes to Blood Cult. Since track one we had to crank up the volume on our sound system considerably to be able to discern what’s going on with this release (or it might be a bad rip behind this promo).

    Anyways, after achieving the ‘recorded in the toilet’ award, no single album has been as interesting and actually good before. We are glad we decided not to chuck out this release and go and listen to something more audible.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    Avsky – Scorn (2010)

    Hailing from Sweden, we have Avsky, a two man band that is here to rescue use form formulaic and lame Black Metal. You wont find any keyboards or fancy element in this release, only straight in your face raw Black Metal.

    “Scorn” presents us with 6 tracks for over 45 minutes of hellish Black Metal. The band does a great job creating raw sounding music that would most likely be part of the ambiance music down in hell.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    Armour - Armour (2010)

    After listening to this release for a few times I started to wonder if I had accidentally downloaded the wrong promo album. I never expected for this band to have such a traditional Heavy Metal sound (the cover gave it away, but you still won’t expect it). Hailing from Finland, this band got a third place on a nation wide TV competition for demo bands.

    Featuring a healthy dose of traditional Heavy Metal in their influences, the band is great at playing this genre. You will never expect that they formed only in 2006 and that this self-title album is their first full-length. The enigmatic Vince "Werewolf" Venom is the band’s vocalist as well as the vocalist for countless other bands that play very different styles, like Black Metal with Satanic Warmaster

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    Disfigured Dead – Visions Of Death (2010)

    As with the current re-make and ‘bring back the old stuff’ trend that plagues Hollywood these days, we have a similar trend when it comes to music. We have Trash Metal coming back, old-school Death Metal returning, and etc, etc, etc. Disfigured Dead play, like you can guess from the album cover, ‘old-school’ Death Metal like in the early days of Cannibal Corpse, Incantation, etc.

    The band has no single piece of originality to it, BUT they mimic the ‘old-school’ sound to perfection. This makes Disfigured Dead attractive to some of us that sometimes are looking to hear something from back in the day, but are tired of spinning the same CD’s we have in the last 10-15 years.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    Perversor – Demon Metal (2010)

    Hailing from Chile, these old-school inspired metal heads propose a very traditional sounding mix of Black/Death and Trash Metal. Heavily influenced by Hellhammer, Possesed and old Mayhem, this band will blow you away with their latest EP “Demon Metal”.

    Featuring only 17 minutes of music this release flies by with all its brutality and will leave you wanting for more. With their old-school logo, album cover, and sound this band will take you on a backwards journey to the lat 80’s.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    Bestial Mockery - Christcrushing Hammerchainsaw (2010)

    With “Christcrushing Hammerchainsaw” Hell’s Hedbangers has re-released one of the best underground albums of Black/Trash Metal ever made. Bestial Mockery was a Swedish band that played Black/Trash Metal in the vein of Venom, Sodom, Bewitched and Bathory.

    The band never reached wide acclaim or recognition, but all their releases hold a special place in all the fans of old-school Black/Trash Metal. Featuring 26 minutes of music in 10 tracks, you know you are into a wide ride from start to finish. The album starts with pure aggression and never stops.

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