Mental Cruelty – Zwielicht (2023) – Review

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Mental Cruelty - Zwielicht - Album Cover

Already a glance at the album cover piqued our interest to explore this one further. A wispy white figure on a black horse painted in pseudo-impressionist undertones and a band logo emerging straight from the woods. Meaning, if I would not know what it says, I’d never guess. That metal joke never gets old, doesn’t it? And then they called their band Mental Cruelty, which – come to think of it – may well be indicative of their metal style.

Zwielicht (twilight in German)1 slams its razor-sharp metal down your throat with wanton abandon. To the point that … [...] Click to raid more!

Runemagick – Beyond the Cenotaph of Mankind (2023) – Review

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Runemagick - Beyond the Cenotaph of Mankind - Album Cover

Runemagick, yet another band that sailed past our mighty lighthouse unnoticed a few times. And that means their two offerings since their resurrection in 2017 – Evoked from Abysmal Sleep and Into Desolate Realms – got no attention. And no doubt about it, too. RMR was a different animal back then. We had too much material on our plates to immediately realize that an age-old DM band had just returned from the undead with a new album.

Runemagick proved to be pretty prolific over time, too. I counted some 13 full-length records since 1990,1 some of those signed … [...] Click to raid more!

Negative Vortex – Tomb Absolute (2022) – Review

Negative Vortex - Tomb Absolute - Album Cover

I always wondered what I liked better. Brutal, harsh Death Metal, or just vile and terrible Black Metal. And the answer is, it depends. After all, both genres hunt in the same or similar corners of metal’s smelly underbelly. Yet, quite often, Death Metal gives a songwriter much better traction for all sorts of debaucheries. And whilst the blackened folks are steeped in tradition and self-inflicted rules,1 the deathly ones can let loose any which way they choose. Yet again, some of them forgot that just brutalizing the audience like some abominable monstrosity may not necessarily lead to great … [...] Click to raid more!

Gort – Humanitas Dolor Mundi (2021) – Review

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Gort - Humanitas Dolor Mundi - Album Cover

Authenticity speaks. And that’s a true statement for extreme metal music, the same as it is for everything else. And that’s how the folks over at Gort seriously got on our good side back in 2017 with their EP A Morte Ad Mortem. Traditional fare right from the fiery pit, their style spoke to us. And mind you, there was nothing new to see there. Just, sturdy, vile blackened fare straight out of Scandinavia’s church-burning school.

But since then, the silence of the lambs befell the murky depths whence the band dwells. A devilish quiet with not a peep … [...] Click to raid more!