2010

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
    • Comments: 0

    Place of Skulls - As a Dog Returns (2010)

    cover

    Tennessee doomsters Place of Skulls return with another traditional Doom Metal combined with Rock release that will surely take you by surprise thanks to its groovy riffing and brilliant guitar solos. The band formed by Victor Griffin of Death Row/Pentagram fame gives us 9 very interesting tracks that will have you listening to them more than once in order to understand them completely.

    As we listened to “As a Dog Returns”, we quickly identified a single issue that caused some confusion when listening to this album. The ordering of the songs is a bit odd and it tends to cut the flow of the album, creating a very uncomfortable but yet intriguing listening experience. The differences between “The Maker” and “Breath of Life” (tracks 1 and 2) are pretty drastic, since the first song opens things up in a groovy powerful fashion and the second one is more of a slower-paced ‘doomier’ song that kind of kills the flow of this release. This issue also happens further in the album, but if you don’t mind about the flow of a release then this should not be a problem for you.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
    • Comments: 0

    Arsenic Addiction – An Undertaker’s Lament (2010)

    cover

    With their 2009 release of “Requiem of the Fallen”, the band made a powerful statement that they are a force to be reckoned by combining powerful vocals, crushing guitars, and precise drumming with an equally interesting and interactive Victorian-themed live show. “An Undertaker’s Lament” is the bands latest release where they try to push things one step closer to national (and why not international) recognition.

    Starting with the atmospheric piece “Invocation”, Arsenic Addiction immediately shows considerable improvement when it comes to writing songs and creating catchy melodies within the first two songs in the album (“Lady Death” is the second one). Led by Lady Arsenic’s contrasting clean and growling vocals, the band has grown musically into crafting better songs that showcase her vocal abilities.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
    • Comments: 0

    Amorphis - Magic & Mayhem - Tales from the Early Years (2010)

    cover

    If you’ve been following Infernal Masquerade for a while, you should know that we are one of the biggest Amorphis fans ever. When this release was announced we had big smiles in our heads since after seeing the band perform this classic songs with the ‘latest’ line-up and completely blowing us away, we wanted to have them on studio-quality recording and blast them all day long, since 7 out of the 13 songs in this album are some of our favorites of all time.

    “Magic & Mayhem - Tales from the Early Years” features 12 songs (plus one bonus track) that have been re-recorded and somewhat re-arranged to fit the band’s current dynamic sound. These songs are taken from “The Karelian Isthmus”, “Tales from the Thousand Lakes”, and “Elegy” albums.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
    • Comments: 0

    Nightfall - Astron Black and the Thirty Tyrants (2010)

    cover

    When we where thinking where the hell have we heard of this band before, it immediately hit us that the band had a song (“Black Leather Cult”) in the epic “The Holy Bible” compilation album of Holy Records back in 1996. Fast-forward almost 14 years and, several releases and a brief break up and we have Nighfall back with only one of the original members: Efthimis Karadimas, now only on vocals.

    “Astron Black and the Thirty Tyrants” marks a very impressive release of this Greek band on Metal Blade Records. Since you start listening to this album, you immediately know that it will surely be an interesting experience. With a very interesting Melodic Black/Death Metal sound, the band quickly brings back of some of their older releases on Holy Records, because of the odd combination of powerful riffs, different vocals (clean and growls), and the elevated us of keyboards.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
    • Comments: 0

    RattleheaD – Tales from the Gutter (2010)

    cover

    Back in the day when Speed/Thrash Metal was (originally) a thriving genre, we used to have some pretty good bands (that later became really big: Megadeth, Metallica, etc.). If RattleheaD would have been formed in those days, for sure they would have been epic and big, but they probably would have sucked since they wouldn’t have had anybody to steal their sound from.

    Don’t get us wrong, we love old-school music and when a younger band does a great job in emulating past glories of other bands, we are all for it. But this is not the case with RattleheaD, their latest release “Tales from the Gutter” clearly shows why they are not signed and it might be a time to consider a genre change or some drastic changes in their music in order to get really noticed.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
    • Comments: 0

    Pestifer – Age of Disgrace (2010)

    cover

    Sometimes we are greatly puzzled as why bands like Pestifer don’t have a recording deal, but other shitty ass bands are making crap music and releasing it every year. With the current Technical Death Metal boom, bands are appearing out of nowhere and crushing things up with great musical abilities and solid songwriting.

    “Age of Disgrace” is one of those releases that push the boundaries of Death Metal into the technical realm while maintaining the music fundamentals in place. Pestifer is one of those few bands that focus more in the song-structure department than in the high level of virtuosity a band can fit in one song.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
    • Comments: 0

    Heretic Soul – Born Into this Plague (2010)

    cover

    In this modern age finding good Death Metal can become quite a hard thing to do, you have all the ‘classic’ bands still releasing good shit like Cannibal Corpse, Immolation, Malevolent Creation, etc. But finding a new band that is worthy to be added to such an impressive Death Metal lineup is hard to so, especially because of all the shitty Deathcore influences that many bands have these days.

    Today we have from Rotting Corpse Records, the first full-length release of the Turkish band Heretic Soul. “Born Into this Plague” is a release that can surely be called extremely ‘traditional’ and nothing out of the ordinary, but who cares, if you are looking for catchy Death Metal, then look no further since Heretic Soul is the band for you.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
    • Comments: 0

    King of Asgard - Fi'mbulvintr (2010)

    cover

    As you probably guessed from the band’s name, today we have yet another band from Sweden that plays Viking Metal. Featuring members of Mithotyn, Falconer and a bunch of other bands, King of Asgard plays a very generic Viking Metal with countless influences from Amon Amarth, Týr, to pretty much every other Viking Metal band these days, paired with some hints of Dissection and Primordial.

    As many other bands, in paper King of Asgard does sound awesome, since we used to love Mithotyn back in the day where Viking Metal was not as exploited as now. Falconer also has had good stuff over the years. But none of these musicians can save King of Asgard from falling in the pitfalls of sounding too much like somebody else.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
    • Comments: 0

    October Tide – A Thin Shell (2010)

    cover

    Originally a side project of Jonas Renkse and Fred Norrman from Katatonia, October Tide took by surprise the Death/Doom Metal world back in 1997 with their legendary album “Rain without End”. The band disbanded from around 2000 and finally returned in 2009 with only Fred Norman (not anymore with Katatonia) and Tobias Netzell (of In Mourning) on vocals.

    “A Thin Shell” marks the band’s return to the Metal scene and it’s a great comeback album for all of us Death/Doom Metal fans. With seven songs and over 40 minutes of music, this release has all the ingredients to make it a classic of the genre and continue the legacy of October Tide.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
    • Comments: 0

    Locrian – The Crystal World (2010)

    cover

    Every once in a while we get a release that makes us listen to it more than normal since it’s so complex and different that we can’t really craft a solid opinion about it with only 3-4 spins. This month we have Locrian’s third full-length album “The Crystal World”, the band plays a very experimental mixture of ambient, drone, and some Black Metal and Post-Rock elements. This might sound like a handful, but it actually works very well for the flow of this release.

    “The Crystal World” is a very powerful emotional ride that spreads through 6 tracks. With the first track “Triumph of Elimination”, the band immediately sets the stage for this dark and minimalistic journey. In the traditional fashion of creating expectation, this track starts building up with samples and drones that seem to be gaining momentum but they also seem to never culminate. The ‘culmination’ section for us that need it, comes in the next track “At Night’s End”.

Pages

Recent Image Galleries