The Asteroid Bullet Belt

Breaking free from the depths of Tartarus.  Whenever I cover Greek bands, I tend to discuss how I’m surprised to see artists who exist beyond the confines of what one might expect of the country’s usual scenes, be they black or thrash metal. As I’ve taken it upon myself to focus primarily on releases from my home country over the past year or so, I’ve had the pleasure of stumbling upon some outliers that I don’t think I’d have found had it not been for this self-imposed limitation. DSKRTN (if anyone knows how to pronounce this, hit me up) is one such find, and arguably one of the most surprising ones thus far, as war metal hasn’t ever been a sound Greece was known for, given the country’s predilection to melancholy and arcane splendour. As you can imagine, a record as barbarous as  Cyber-Cataclysm of Nuclear Typhoeus and Entropy Beyond the Flesh Codex  wasn’t something I thought I’d find in the process of writing these reviews, but here we are. I must confess that in my f...

Christianity ends but the party has just begun. (Originally submitted to the Metal Archives on April 30th 2022)    Archgoat has taken to spoiling us lately it seems. Just last year we had the pleasure of listening to Worship the Eternal Darkness , one of their best albums to date, and just 5 months later, we have the All Christianity Ends EP. The Finnish trio has been quite productive lately it seems, and thankfully it’s not a case of quantity over quality. Truth be told, I didn’t expect this EP to be anything mind-blowing, but to my surprise it ranks among their better short releases alongside Angelcunt and Angelslaying… , which is quite a tall order. Contrary to the “A career in review” approach of their latest album, All Christianity Ends takes things all the way back to Whore of Bethlehem sonically. This is the closest Archgoat has been to that raw war metal sound in quite some time, and as much as I like their work in general, I can’t say that I don’t miss th...

  Critter-free street food. (Originally submitted to the Metal Archives on April 21st 2022)  For how much I tend to criticise war metal, there’s always something that keeps pulling me back to it. It’s like street food, but not the kind that’s perfectly fine, more so the kind that you might find bits and pieces of a dead critter in, thus ruining your meal. Gross culinary metaphors aside, it’s a very hit-or-miss genre for me, and I’ve found that it doesn’t work for me outside of a select few artists. Savage Necromancy turned out to be quite the exception though, with their debut, Feathers Fall to Flames falling firmly into the “serviceable fast food” category. Now, as a war metal release, it ticks all the boxes, both aesthetically and musically. Black and white artwork that may or may not have been done, or influenced by Chris Moyen (on the 2022 re-release), silly stage names, and a red logo. While these things are basically a tell-tale sign of a generic album ...

Club, meet skull. (Originally submitted to the Metal Archives on December 8th 2021)  War metal, despite how small of a genre it is, can be divided into two categories: there’s bands that play some of the most primal and violent metal around (Blasphemy, Beherit), and then there’s riffless noise (Conqueror, Revenge). It is with great pleasure that I inform you, my dear reader, that Prehistoric War Cult’s Cold Wind Howls Over the Burial Site falls firmly in the former category, and is one of the better war metal releases of the year. The music presented here is what one would assume looking from the band logo: primitive and bludgeoning rhythms that give the listener little room to breathe. Whether it’s fast, chaotic riffs tearing through everything or pummelling riffs at a lower speed, the band remains consistently relentless through the EPs 15 minute runtime (the cover at the end notwithstanding). Despite said aggression though, the tracks here are surprisingly stick...

The other Blasphemy album. (Originally submitted to the Metal Archives on April 25th 2021)  (Disclaimer: I will not be reviewing the Blood Upon The Altar demo, seeing as that is an entirely separate release. It's a good demo, you should listen to it if you haven't already) Blasphemy is one of those bands that to seasoned underground fans needs no introduction. The godfathers of the "War Metal" sub-subgenre, they gave birth to it with classics such as Blood Upon The Altar and Fallen Angel of Doom.... , which have since been aped by countless bands, with few ever reaching that level of quality. There is also Gods of War , their sophomore album, which doesn’t get talked about as often, and not without reason. It’s not on the same level of quality as what preceded it, and suffers as a result. As an album, Gods of War mainly suffers from the fact that its underdeveloped. Very few of the songs even break the 3 minute mark, with quite a few being below 2 ...

The hellish choirs of the underworld. (Originally submitted to the Metal Archives on January 9th, 2021)  At last, the absolutely horrible year that was 2020 has ended, and what better way to ring in 2021 other than writing about an album that came out in 2019? Teitanblood’s a band that has been making waves over the past decade, coming out with works such as Death , which took the underground by storm. In my case though, my first contact with the band was this review’s topic, The Baneful Choir , which introduced me to their brand of suffocating blackened death metal. The album is essentially divided into two halves, split up by two interludes. Things kick off with “Rapture Below”, an ambient track (more on that later), before “Black Vertebrae” crashes through with a slow, almost doom-like riff. From that point forward the band slowly but surely builds up in terms of intensity, sprinkling in some dissonant leads, such as the one in 1:46. The track then transitions int...