Asylum Pyre released their debut album ‘Natural Instinct’ in 2009. I seem to have missed this album completely. Now they’re back with their second opus. Since their previous album there have been line-up changes, the drummer has been replaced, but also the female front vocalist has changed.
Crowbar are considered to be the real inventors of the 'doom-core' genre, combining the heaviness of doom metal and the breakdowns of hardcore. Their first release back in 1992, Obedience Thru Suffering, set the tone for a whole new range of bands to arise from the depths of metal and hardcore. The album was an inspiration for many people to pick up an instrument and start making heavy music without following any rules. The record has been out of print since 1994, but now, the band re-released their debut masterpiece.
Do you know Hatred For Mankind, Dragged Into Sunlight’s debut full length studio record? It was one of my favourite releases from 2008 (the stuff had been re-released in 2010/2011 through their current label, Prosthetic, and was reviewed very positively by colleague Tony, who shared my enthusiasm about this UK-based act; for the review: see the archives section, posted on the very end on October 2010).
The United Kingdom has brought forth lots of new hardcore and metal blood over the past few years. Just think of bands such as Your Demise, While She Sleeps, Brutality Will Prevail, Last Witness, Desolated, ... Although the guys in Continents look like the perfect sons-in-law, they play the hardest music possible.
Back in the days, when Ozzfest was still on the road in the USA, one Sharon Osbourne witnessed a great band play one of the stages. That band was Otep. They signed to Victory Records in 2009 and immediately became the 'strangest' band on the label, as it's just impossible to put them in a box. The band you can compare them to the best is Deftones in my opinion, but much heavier.
The French horde Destinity celebrated its fifteenth anniversary last year, entre outre with the preparation of album # 8, Resolve In Crimson. This record was recorded again with Jacob Hansen (!) and it features guest vocals by Stéphane Buriez, whom you might know from another great French Extreme Metal act, Loudblast.
Resolve In Crimson (42:40) goes on in the vein of the last album, XI Reasons To See, with nothing less, yet nothing more either (at all, unfortunately), to add.
Polish horde Saratan (Arab for ‘cancer’, if I’m not mistaken) return with their third full length after the recruitment of two new members (formerly and / or currently active in e.g. Mord’A’Stigmata and Witchking). In a couple of months, the quartet will celebrate its tenth anniversary, but in mean time we might welcome a new full length, lasting for thirty seven minutes.
Old school Kreator is back from the early eighties? Oh no, my mistake, it’s the Bay Area thrash band Hatriot. With Heroes Of Origin, the veteran metal singer Steve ‘Zetro’ Souza is back in action. We know this legend from his time with Exodus and off course from Legacy (now Testament).
Anyone hungry for some late '60s – early '70s styled acidic and raw energetic Psychedelia? Find your fill with the coming to light of Aqua Nebula Oscillator's third album, their Pee Wee Records debut!
For those of you that don't have a clue, BOTS is made up of Henry Vazquez from Saint Vitus, Dave Gryder from Storm at Sunrise, Tony Reed from Mos Generator, John O’ Daniel and Rusty Burns from southern legend Point Blank.
