More often than not, listening to instrumental doom is like jerking off and not… Well, you know. There’s this epic build-up and all you want to hear is some vocals. Something human and intense. Instrumental doom by definition lacks this. Few bands can pull it off. In fact, the only ones that I regularly listen to is Earth and Chicago-based Bongripper. With their previous-releases, Heroin, Hippie Killer and Hate Ashbury, they just kinda killed the genre for anyone else.

Satan Worshipping Doom is as much of a satirical jab at the instrumental doom genre as anything. How could something be Satanic without vocals? Duh. Get some evil-ass album art! Opening the abyss is the first track “Hail” which picks up where Hate Ashbury left off. The distinct sound, the picking of the riffs, the colliding percussion and the shear fucking weight of it all. Bongripper is like a ton of bricks.

Check out the rest of this review at the Mishka Bloglin!

If you don't listen to Rinse.FM's podcasts, you're missin out and fucking up! The August 25th show embedded a new sense of hope for the dubstep massive. Skream and Benga drunkenly-destroyed shit. Like the drunk monks of dubstep, the two UK producers kept slaying the show, exclusive track by exclusive track. One of the dirtiest tracks that Skream dropped was his newest banger, "Heavy Hittah". Unfortunately, it's only a minute or so of the full cut, but it's worth it!

Grab the whole Rinse.FM podcast right here courtesy of Core News!

Brostep baby.

Photo by Matt Spencer

Metal! Satan! Full pipes! Wrawh. Here's a track for Torey in case he's never heard it. The originators of "black metal" and one of the most evil bands of all time. You can't fuck with Venom!

Venom "In League With Satan"

I remember the first time I heard this album when I was 15 at the skatepark. As I was skating the bowl this song came on and I got goose bumps. Soon I had a friend make me a cassette mixtape of Venom's album Welcome to Hell. Such an influencial album and since I slept on my Tuesday Teardown post, this'll do!

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have caught this earlier today. Yeah, I was considering putting the end to my Friday Afternoon Banger series. No one really engaged in the posts at all and they were rarely shared. After a few readers expressed an interest, I decided to put up a new Kromestar track I caught on a recent Rinse.FM show. Kromestar's the self-proclaimed "soul of Grime" and no, I'm not talking about the bikes.

His albums have traditionally been ground-breaking and jam heavy. This exclusive drop on Rinse mixes a lot of influences. Wobbly-bass and garage hooks bring this new track to a great spot in dubstep's current state. Really looking forward to this release! Like Digital Mystikz' Return II Space drop during the DMZ party, when this Kromestar single's released, I'll do a follow up review!

That's what dubstep's all about. Building the anticipation. Keep putting out the bangers!

"A Curse" off All the Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood

It is my opinion that it takes unique individuals to create engaging music, regardless of the genre. While genres will influence the individuals, there is something within them that drives and motivates them to create something new and fresh. Countless examples exist and yet only few truly succeed at producing quality and original sounds. Lee Buford and Chip King make up the Body and no, that’s not an homage to the Judea-Christian belief of the body of Christ, more of an allusion. In fact, Buford and King are about as far from religious as you could get, citing influences ranging from Manson to Body Count.

In their first full-length, All the Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood, they evoke some of that religious imagery in an epic and yet hard to classify doom metal album. It’s not as straight forward as Candlemass and not nearly as quintessential as Jucifer, although the two’s lifestyle does resemble some sort of hermithood. Bearing beards, toting rifles and being tough guys in general. If I had to put a nail on the head of All the Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood, I’d push it more towards something Edgy would have listened to while recording Burning Witch’s catalog. Depressing and emotional is an understatement.

Continue reading this review at the Mishka Bloglin!

Perhaps you remember the ℑ⊇≥◊≤⊆ℜ - Send me an Angel (Zombie Rave Mix) entry I made a while back. Since its release, ℑ⊇≥◊≤⊆ℜ (of Mater Suspiria Vision) have put out numerous other mixes and recently, the guys at Мишка reached out to them to do an exclusive mix. It's not my usual cup of tea, but it's strangely addicting. I'm really feeling this!

Head over to the Mishka Bloglin to pick it up for free!

If you wanna know what you're getting yourself into, check out the track listing below:

The Boston-bred, North Brooklyn four-piece Concussion has been tearing the local scene up unrelentlessly for the past year. Numerous venues, loft parties and bars will back that statement too. With thrash being on a bit of an upturn in recent years, it’s become kinda kitschy. Mottled with ironic outfits and cheesy lyrics, a lot of the modern acts swayed away from what started as a balls-to-the-wall movement. One thing’s for sure, in Concussions’ first EP Dried Blood, you’ll find no irony, just jaw-crushing brute-force thrash at its finest.

Check out the rest of the review and the FREE download link below.

"The Morgue" off Entrail's Tales from the Morgue

Brace yourself for this one! Sometimes it takes a while for a band to get their footing. That’s the case with the Swedish death metal band Entrails. After playing numerous shows and releasing two demos, they finally put out a full-length. Sure, that may not sound like a huge deal but when you take into account that Entrails have been around since 1991 it begins to solidify. Seriously? Almost 20 years of playing and never putting out a full-length? If that doesn’t add some background to the band’s story then I don’t know what will.

In the golden age of death metal, a few bands stuck through the trends and the horrid Göteborg sound I harp on so much here. Entrails is one of those bands and Tales From the Morgue marks this slightly nostalgic throwback in stone. Great songwriting, classicly-compressed riffs and tons of great sound clips will have your feet tapping at your desk. If you can make it through the first track “Intro – Tales From The Morgue”, you’re in for a long ride! Taking older tracks from previous demos and re-recording them in a legitimate sound studio gives the album some extra life. It’s over 20 years in the making for chrissake! “Blood Red” sold me on the album and it’s the first song. Amazing lyrics and composing that took the classic death metal sound and made it into a legitimate genre. No gimmicks just jams.

Continue reading this review at the Mishka Bloglin

Bristol's Giant is just wrecking the Hench record label with his newest EP entitled "Herbert / Collins Booster". Each track will throw you separate throwback-infused curveballs. Herbert, embedded above delivers with chunky half-step wobbles and chopped vocals. In each release, there's the club shaker and the banger and in this case, the banger's on the B-side and embedded below.

"Wibbler" from Outside the Box

As if it's any surprise, Skream has long been one of my favorite dubstep producers. From "Midnight Request Line" to his 2008 mixtape "Watch the Ride", the boy wonder of dubstep has always produced stellar beats. Never before has one man been responsible for the control over a genre. I know that's a lot to say about a sole DJ but it's really quite true and while he may not be the arbiter of music, he sure predicts where it's going.

Check out more of my review below.

"Black Hole"

Atlanta doom metal rockers Zoroaster’s newest album, Matador doesn’t do much to cloak their experimental nature. From the first highly-acclaimed self-titled LP to Dog Magic and to their 2009 release, Voice of Saturn, the band has grown from within and found their inner sanctum.

As if that album cover doesn’t allude to this fact enough: the band has gone a bit psychedelic in the past year. Much like their work before, Zoroaster’s sound is filled with slowly-droning intros and unlike their last album, which was clearly defined as southern doom, the riffs of guitarist Will Fiore takes the listener down the rabbit hole into a hazy place filled with psych rock riffs. Throughout most of the album, these trippy moments wonder aimlessly around, track by track, never really stumbling upon any significant moments.

Check out the full review at the Mishka Bloglin!

"Cut in Half"

When I first came across the masked madness Stenchman's twisted beats I was blown away. Like Bar 9 and others, the basslines he drops causes speakers to wobble and heads to bob. On the "2MuchKet! / Dubnet / Cut In Half" EP, Stenchman makes his story known.

Check out the two other tracks below.

"The Roots Of Doomsday Anxiety"

The Tuesday Teardown series is coming along strong. I'm hoping you metal heads are enjoying it! For this week's entry, I'm featuring the Dutch black metal band Terzij de Horde's new album, A Rage of Rapture Against the Dying of the Light.

Changing their name from Liar Liar Cross on Fire to Terzij de Horde was probably the best career move the band could ever make. With their debut EP, A Rage of Rapture Against the Dying of the Light brewing up quite the storm, the Dutch black metal band has shown the world that once again, geographic location doesn’t mean shit when it comes to black metal. In the spirit of Wolves in the Throne Room and other avante-guard metal acts, Terzij de Horde’s creation is a string of high-intensity, never ending melodic, tremolo-picking metal. Expect ethereal vocals focusing heavily on nature and literature. Isn’t that the new trend in black metal?

Check out the rest of this review over at the Mishka Bloglin!

For those of you who wept at the lack of a Friday Afternoon Banger this week, I have something special for you. In the time that I've been living in NYC, I've gotten really familiar with dubstep. It's been ingrained in my head for years now and with each new release, I miss the old sound more and more. The days of dark and forboding beats are long gone. Now dubstep's in a very strange phase. More dance than anything and even the original heavy-hitters are more influenced by house than dub. It's sad but true. Still, there are some dubstep soldiers out in the studios fighting the good fight and progressing their sound with one true intention. Mala, of Digital Mystikz is one of those soldiers and his newest release, Return II Space is a much-needed breathe of fresh air.

Check out the rest of the review below.

"Grime" off Aborted's Coronary Reconstruction LP

If you’ve been a fan of Belgian metal for any period of time, chances are you’ve heard of Aborted. They’ve been around for over a decade and in that time, have produced some of the best work in the genre. In fact, Engineering The Dead and Goremageddon still remain, to this day, some of the most influential work to come out of the Belgian metal scene. That’s not an easy task either and once again, Aborted delivers a taste of the flesh with Coronary Reconstruction. It’s got all the tinge of a wretchedly-twisted grindcore EP and even an Entombed cover!

Check out the rest of this album review at the Mishka Bloglin!

For those of you who have been following my blog since the old URL, you might recall an entry that featured "Dubstep Doc" from 2007. A lot of people still don't know what dubstep is and all these Friday Afternoon Bangers might be hard to wrap their heads around without some sort of background; all electronic music sounds the same. Right? That's what Dubstep Doc attempts to do: give a background on the genre, at it's adolescent phase. Mala, Skream and others walk you through how this new sound took shape in the UK, four years ago.

I was always into the Trouble & Bass parties here in NYC. Back when they were in the basement at Boogaloo on the South Side, the two-stepping, 4x4, dubstep crushing maniacs were lacing the underground music scene in NYC with bangers. Back before most people even knew what dubstep was, Luca, Viv and the crew were dropping fire. Now, Drop the Lime's newest video injects a bit of the sex sax that goes around NYC in the summertime.

If you watch closely, you'll catch a cameo by yours truly.

Thulcandra - The Somberlain

It’s really easy to compare a lot of blackened death metal to Dissection or Bathory. Or if you’re a huge fan of obscurity like, say Obscura then you’ll love Thulcandra’s new release, Fallen Angel’s Dominion. Lead vocalist and guitarist Stefan Kummerer decided while working with Obscura to move his music into a new territory, something that many musicians find themselves doing. Rather than taking Obscura and crafting a new sound, he just formed another band with some of the bandmates. That band is Thulcandra and their direction just so happens to be a bit of a Jon Nödtveidt homage. Fallen Angel’s Dominion delivers one great homage to the late Dissection!

Check out the rest of this review at the Mishka Bloglin!

Holy shit. Chasing Shadows are back at it with this amp-busting banger of a tune. Massive and dirty drops collide with dark and twisted vocals typical to the Bristol-UK based producers. Surely you've heard their other tracks right? Dr. Sin was on constant rotation a year ago for me!

Check that cut out below!

"Ridden with Belief" from Burial Ground

Spanning 8 albums and over 22 years, Grave’s been a long-time staple in the death metal scene. They’ve cultivated the Swedish death metal sound alongside bands like Entombed and Dismember. This sound includes gargled vocals, low and heavy riffs and constant blast beats, not to be confused the more melodic sound of Göteborg, Sweden. Grave and others were the founders of a genre that has been picking up speed ever since its inception. It’s safe to say that when they announced they were working on a new album, the death metal universe’s interest was peaked.

Check out the rest of this review of Grave's Burial Ground over at the Mishka Bloglin!