My Music Path

  Full of Hell released a great live album but so did Jarhead Fertilizer, the band of Dave Bland, the drummer of FoH. 'Product of My Environment' is a deathgrind journey into criminality and it’s perfect for these times.  Released in February on Closed Casket Activities, it’s an album that keeps getting better the more you listen to it. With its movie references and Mortician cover 'Drowned In Your Blood', David, Brandon, and Sam sound like they played their guts out. There is so much energy in every song that you really feel the need to go to a live show and bang your head on this. Just listen to 'Life Is A Prison', 'Silence The Narc', and 'Paranoia Seeping'. Don’t you wish you were in the moshpit already?   With 11 songs that cover 20 minutes, the journey is over far too quickly, but you know, I’ve got more things to do and because of that I must say thank you Jarhead for making me do other things that really need to be done……..instead of liste...

  It’s great when a band doesn’t take itself so seriously. Especially in the metal genre where the music sounds harsh, aggressive, and hellish, it's fresh when a death metal grunter starts to sing about puppies, and love, and other things that are…fun. Some definitions of fun could be unorthodox. How fun is it to get 'Dragged By A Truck', or to be force-fed your own dick? Well, it's definitely fun to listen to this record by Sangusilf……Sanshaoijd…….Sanguisugabogg.  So….want to be Tortured Whole? If you like your death metal filthy, crusty, and infectiously groovy baby, Saggyboobiesthemesong is the band for you. Just look at the album cover. That’s one hell of a lower back tattoo. Made by Nightmare Imagery who does artwork for almost every band on the Maggot Stomp label, this person has such a connection with what he’s hearing. Formed in 2019, Sangasonginaraggedthong are from Columbus, Ohio. They were signed on the famous Maggot Stomp label who released their demo Porn...

  Formed in 2018, the death metal band Crypts makes old school death metal in the likes of Bolt Thrower and Autopsy. With their experience in black-, power-, and doom metal, Coven of The Dead is an album filled with promising ideas.  Hailing from Münster, Germany, these guys have made a debut album to definitely be proud of. Their sound is gnarly, groovy and dirty at the same time. The artwork by Sebastian Jerke resembles the music perfectly.  Death metal needs to be definable and on this record, you hear everything, especially the drums, which actually sound like drums! 'Deathking Coronation' and 'Nuclear Vengeance' are perfect examples of that. It makes the band sound original and very interesting to listen to. And that's not the only thing that makes this album interesting, they do not just play death metal, but there are some trash/heavy metal influences on 'Final War' and some death-doom/horror soundtrack influences on the title track and 'Paura...

Thanks to Spotify Discover, I discovered the debut album  'Shrines Of Absurdity'  by New York-based technical death metal band Thaetas, r eleased on the 26th of June by Maggot Stomp Records.  And it is, without a doubt, death metal album of the year.   Tracklist: 1. All Consuming Dread 2. Blood Distillery 3. Dearth 4. Shrines To Absurdity 5. Thith 6. Disassociated 7. Envy The Stillborn 8. Isixhenxe 9. Greenhaven The problem with death metal is its audibility. If you can't hear what the musicians are actually doing, the record becomes merely a vague tremor in the air. Having said that, I understand that there are masterpieces/genres that thrive on shitty quality, Darkthrone's  'A Blaze In The Northern Sky'  for example, but with death metal, it's a different story. Death metal is based on technicality creating an atmosphere. Thaetas is doing that by letting us hear every riff, every bassline every drum part (with help from master engineer Colin Marston). The...

Social media always helps me to find great music. On the Facebook group, There’s No Good Metal Anymore they actually share some great metal albums. And I came across this one: French deathgrind/crust/hardcore band Pilori from France. Their debut album 'À Nos Morts'  (To Our Dead) came out on the 26th of June and it is definitely something to mosh to. Tracklist: 1. Que la Bête Meure (with Dylan Walker from Full Of Hell) 2. Apnée 3. La Grande Terreur 4. Poursuite du Vent (with Matthias Jungbluth from Fange) 5. Roi des Rats 6. À Nos Morts 7. Lorsque Viendra la Nuit 8. Divine Comédie 9. Sous Mes Mains 10. À la Recherche de Temps Perdu 11. Danse Macabre The force is strong with this one, and that force is only strengthened by the fact that Dylan Walker from Full Of Hell is doing vocals on the opening track. Why? Because Pilori and Full of Hell are brothers so to speak. Their music has some similarities, they but it is their aesthetic that binds them. They both take much time to cre...

The last couple of years the USA brought forth some of the best black metal I ever heard. Bands like False and Obsequiae are making nature-inspired black metal that's aggressive and melodic. Swarming falls in another category, their music has some emotional touches but they mainly manufacture a very harsh, unnerving feeling that makes you see shadows everywhere. Their debut album ‘Primeval Arteries Of the Sacred Dead’ comes out on the 30th of June by Nihilistic Propaganda Records. Tracklist: 1. Veins 2. Womb 3. Vessel With only three songs that each last ten minutes, the album pulls you into an enormous maelstrom filled with dissonant guitar work, unnerving noise effects and thunderous bass. What stands out is the full drum sound on this album, you can hear every detail. Especially on Womb , an instrumental song that builds up beautifully, starting with this weird feedback-laden noise palette with howling guitars that weave an awfully spine-tingling dark dream.  Swarming makes you...

Artwork: Mitchell Gillies Sectioned is a five-piece band from Edinburgh, Scotland and their debut album 'Annihilated' was Bandcamp's number 3 best seller in the metal genre. A big compliment that triggered my curiosity. The album could be downloaded for free and with a little feeling of guilt I did. But after the wind and piano announced the end of the album I knew: I MUST have this on CD/vinyl.   Tracklist 1. Annihilated 2. Beautiful Struggle 3. Starved Lives 4. Synchronicity 5. Betrayer 6. Toothgrinder 7. Eigengrau 8. Bête Noire 9. Victorious, Neverending 10. Release 11. Portrait 12. Life's True Beauty 13. Through The Trees 'That is not music' is a term that I often hear and that I always counter with the argument that everything you hear is music. The birds, the wind, a fart, as long as it touches you because then something changes. Guess what? Something changed when 'Annihilated' from Sectioned crossed my pa...