Cemican – U k ‘u’ uk’ankil Mayakaaj (2025) – Review

Cemican - U_k’u’uk’ankil_Mayakaaj - Album Cover

The Mexicans of Cemican1 are a weird bunch. They deliver a mix of harsh Death Metal and contemporary interpretations of long-gone South American (or Mayan) folk. Ritualistic meditations of the kind we usually hear from Northern Europe.

It appears that the Yucatan is the band’s preferred playground. An area, yours truly here knows pretty well. Extensive travels through dark jungles fondly remembered and a gazillion stoneheaps duly visited. But I digress, this would be fodder for a travel blog, not this zine. Back to Cemican, ’tis a band with a strange addiction to Mayan ideology, worldview, mysticism, and … [...] Click to raid more!

Thorondir – Wächter des Waldes (2025) – Review

Thorondir - Wächter des Waldes - Album Cover

Forest Metal is on the menu again. I don’t know what it is with the Bavarian and Austrian wooded areas. They seem to inspire a ton of Extreme Metal bands that bemoan their majestic landscapes and mystical origins. And I reckon that the album art again covers the essence of where this is going pretty well already. The pagan lore still seems to be firmly entrenched in the local populace over there. And that, even if the Holy Catholic Church tried to align the region to the cranky whims of the nailed god for too many centuries. Just look at … [...] Click to raid more!

Eluveitie – Ànv (2025) – Review

Eluveitie - Anv - Album Cover

Once upon a time, Chrigel Glanzmann had a great idea. And that was to merge Pagan Folk with Death Metal. Not many expected this to work, but after a fair amount of trial and error, he succeeded, and Eluveitie was the end product that stuck with the audience.

Since the zine’s inception, the RMR crew covered a whopping six full-length records of this band. Out of which Everything Remains (as it never was) and – strangely – Evocation II – Pantheon fared best. Let’s be clear, lavish coverage such as this for one band is pretty unusual @ RMR. And … [...] Click to raid more!

Ereb Altor – Hälsingemörker (2025) – Review

Ereb Altor - Hälsingemörker - Album Cover

At first, the RMR crew froze in place. Ereb Altor‘s newest and best Hälsingemörker sports a whopping 21 minutes of extra airtime over Vargtimman. In other words, the band went from a perfectly timed piece to bloatware jungle camp. And there are two lines of thought to this. Either they completely lost it in the self-edit department, or their song-smithing skills increased in spades to spare us from withering away from sheer boredom. So, what’s it gonna be?

The only way to find out is to give this piece here a few spins, painful as they may be. … [...] Click to raid more!