You know, I've always been convinced that the place where people grow up can be a major defining element in how they look at life in general, and their relations in particular. Those growing up in barren conditions will usually develop feelings of jealousy and envy, and petty disagreements may grow into insurmountable breaking apart and even warfare. Of course, the more people live together per square mile, the swifter inequalities will arise, along with all those bad feelings!
I only knew this Czech band from their collaboration on last year’s split with Germany’s Vindorn and Sator Marte; the latter is a band that shares Triumph, Genus’s instrumentalist Svar, by the way. Triumph, Genus consists of this multi-instrumentalist, as well as vocalist / lyricist Jaroslav, and this first full length comes on both CD and vinyl (the latter, however, limited to 300 copies only).
In almost fifteen years of raison d’être, Portland, Oregon-based project Toxic Holocaust released a handful of studio releases that undersigned does appreciate enormously.
Tombstoned are a pretty young act (formed in 2010) from Finland that now debut with a self-called full length studio recording (forty seven minutes for six tracks). Last year the trio self-released a two-track EP, which drew the attention of Svart Records, with this full album as first result of their co-operation.
I was very pleased with what Italian band Stigma (the one from Piedemonte, of course) did in the past. Albums like When Midnight Strikes! and Concerto For The Undead (both of them released via Pivotal Recordings, in respectively 2008 and 2010; reviews updated on respectively 18/04/10 and 21/12/10 in this site’s Archives-section) were honoured by positive reviewing taken care of by undersigned ;-).
It was sad to learn that Australian top-commando Nocturnal Graves broke up in 2010, for this band was known for that typifying Aussie-styled Blast-Death violence. But dry your tears of blood, semen and mucus, and behold… …From The Bloodline Of Cain! Are Nocturnal Graves’ representatives descendants of Cain himself, with all forbidden pleasures once emerged? The past aural efforts do balance my opinion towards a positive answer, and this new album (thank the Horned One for this filthy resurrection!) won’t contradict.
King Fear are the brain child of guitar player Mål Dæth. After he wrote some stuff that differed from his main project, Bullbar, he recruited Eisenvater’s Johannes Bonnin and Negator / Dark Funeral frontman Nachtgarm to take part of the finalisation of the new material he created.
(intro based on my review of last year’s Bereue Nichts-album; for full review: see update within the Archives, posted on October 31st 2012)
Bordeaux… I do appreciate some of the wines coming from that era, even though not every sub-region out there can completely please me (I am a connoisseur-amateur, with a profound passion for wines and distillates, but that’s another story). However, there’s another Bordeaux-based existence I do appreciate enormously: Year Of No Light. This band was formed at the beginning of this century and they did record a handful of highly acceptable releases with a mostly breath-taking atmosphere.
You know, Hydra is the first album by this Dutch band I've had to review, and part of the reason for that, of course, is the fact that Within Temptation went through several changes in musical direction during its career, which started back in 1996 when the band was founded by singer Sharon den Adel and rhythm guitarist/ grunt singer Robert Westerhof.
