Obscura – Cosmogenesis

Obscura is a German technical death metal band with (former) members of Necrophagist and Pestilence. All members have an formal qualification in music, which clearly shows on the musical exploits of their dynamite second album, entitled Cosmogenesis. Let’s take a closer look.

Interview With Omnium Gatherum

My first introduction to Omnium Gatherum was their The Redshift album. It took some time before I started to appreciate its richness and adventurous spirit. Nowadays it’s one of my favourite records when it comes to melodic death metal. Their latest album, entitled New World Shadows, is arguably their finest album to date. Guitarist Markus Vanhala was kind enough to share his views on everything Omnium Gatherum, including the new album, his personal influences and his biggest Spinal Tap moment of his carreer…

Interview With Neuraxis

Over the years the extreme metal scene in Montréal (Canada) provided the world with some excellent bands, like Cryptopsy, Augury, Beneath The Massacre and Unexpect. Neuraxis are another high quality band from that area. Despite releasing two great albums in the form of Trilateral Progression and The Thin Line Between, they’re still relatively unknown. Hopefully this will change with Asylon, their latest album. I had the pleasure of doing an interview with guitarist Rob Milly. He was more then happy to share his thoughts on the creative and recording process of the new album, the recent line-up changes and the relative obscurity of Neuraxis…

Interview With Ulcerate

Ulcerate from New Zealand are known for their innovative take on death metal. They mix the complex and technical approach of Immolation with atmospheric postcore styled layers in the best Neurosis and Isis tradition. Their latest album, entitled The Destroyers Of All, is a devastating attack on the senses and arguably their best effort to date. On behalf of the band skinsman Jamie Saint Merat offered his thoughts on the creative and recording process of their latest album, the local scene down under and the possibilities of seeing Ulcerate some time soon in Europe..

Rotten Sound – Cursed

Finland is well known for its share of quality metal bands like Ghost Brigade, Insomnium, Barren Earth and one of the major bands in metal today, whose name I don’t want to mention. Rotten Sound is also from Finland, however they’re active in the grindcore scene. Cursed is the name of their latest album…

Rotting Christ – Aealo

Rotting Christ, Septic Flesh and Nightfall are the elder statesmen of the Greek extreme metal scene. They all experienced various amounts of praise and success, but they managed to cause quite a stir with their mixture of extreme metal and Mediterranean influences. Rotting Christ managed to captivate me with their Theogonia album. Last year Sakis Tolis and his henchmen released a new record, entitled Aealo. Let’s see what it’s made of.

Neuraxis – Asylon

Canada has its fair share of very talented and original extreme metal bands. Augury, Cryptopsy, Martyr and Beneath The Massacre are great examples of that. Neuraxis are another worthy candidate for that list, mainly based on their more than excellent Trilateral Progression (2005) and The Thin Line Between (2008) albums. As with many bands these Canadians have had their share of line-up changes, so let’s take a look at what the new line-up brings to the table with Asylon, the band’s latest album.

Moonspell – Night Eternal

When it comes to combining doom metal, death metal and gothic metal, few do it better than Portugal’s own Moonspell. Albums like Irreligious (1996) and Sin/Pecado (1998) are downright classics. After the experimental nature of The Butterfly Effect (1999) the band returned to a harsher style on Darkness And Hope (2001), The Antidote (2003) and Memorial (2006), but retained a certain yearn for change. Their latest effort, Night Eternal (2008) is no exception to the rule.

Septic Flesh – Communion

Communion marks the return of Greek symphonic death metal band Septic Flesh after a hiatus of several years. After the release of Sumerian Daemons in 2003 their former label went bankrupt and the band disbanded. Some members ended up in other bands like Firewind and Nightfall. Other members started their own projects, like Chaostar for instance. Without further ado, let’s take a closer at their comeback album.

Ulcerate – The Destroyers Of All

Ulcerate are a band from Auckland, New Zealand. Their combination of rather complex death metal with post-core influences has delivered great things, such as The Coming Of Genocide (2004), Of Fracture And Failure (2006) and Everything Is Fire (2008). The latest addition to their already impressive discography was written and recorded last year and will see the light of day in January 2011. It’s entitled The Destroyers Of All, so let’s take a closer look at its crushing potential.