Officium Triste – Hortus Venenum (2024) – Review

Officium Triste - Hortus Venenum - Album Cover

Officium Triste‘s last record left a pretty hefty impression over at the Review Desk. In an abundance of weeping guitars, tear-drenched melodies, and relentless growls, the band delivered a mountainous relic of oldish doom. After all, the piece talked about The Death of Gaia, no less. Albeit that the record’s overbearing intensity and inherent repetitive nature finally got the better of us after a while.

So, here we’re entering the poisoned garden. Hortus Venenum the band called their newest creation. A new excursion into an ominous world of invisible dangers, potions, and deception? We would have liked a … [...] Click to raid more!

Panzerchrist – Maleficium Part I (2024) – Review

Panzerchrist - Maleficium Part I - Album Cover

Panzerchrist arrived @ RMR Central with a thunderclap amid the summer heat of 2023. After 10 years of metal Gehenna, the band reemerged with Last of a Kind, complete with witches on the rack and other atrocities. A true Holy Metal Cow moment that finally made it onto our 2023 Top 10 as well. Given the name of the band, I was initially taken aback by the ferocity of the assault. First-rate Extreme Metal roared out of our loudspeaker, at a level of intensity and proficiency seldom delivered to our hidden doorstep.

And the obsession with witches and past

[...] Click to raid more!

Veilburner – The Duality of Decapitation and Wisdom (2024) – Review

Veilburner - The Duality of Decapitation and Wisdom - Album Cover

The Duality of Decapitation and Wisdom. That’s one helluva title, isn’t it? This – thing should be banned solely for the dumbfoolery displayed both in the moniker and the album cover. In fact, the bossman himself wrote a memo to staff to stop concentrating on this particular piece of loud-mouthed muck full of pseudo-occultism and chickens left whole. But for some reason, rulez were disobeyed and red lines crossed to get over the finishing line with this here record. Veilburner fomenting dissent and revolution over at RMR HQ? Looks like it. But this – thing got one seething hot … [...] Click to raid more!

Blighted Eye – Agony’s Bespoke (2024) – Review

Blighted Eye - Agony's Bespoke - Album Cover

A good storyline will drive the quality of a record. A stereotype that is almost always true. A great storyline, however, will knock it out of the park. And that is where Blighted Eye strut onto the scene like the bright green Cookie Monster. I’m hearing, Agony’s Bespoke rides into battle on the tale of Clare, a deported convict violently abused by Australian settlers, as described in the 2018 movie ‘The Nightingale’. And to transform these brutal moving pictures into an Extreme Metal piece definitely turns this slightly nauseating tale into a damned great storyline. Thus as the lore goes, … [...] Click to raid more!