Contrastic – Contrastic

Recommendation: ☀☀☁ Released in 2000, Contrastic’s self-titled debut is notable for being the first deathgrind release from a Czech band to find significant critical and commercial reception. It’s also one of the first albums to combine deathgrind with electronic effects, taking cues from The Locust and The Berzerker (with the latter releasing their debut in the same year). Oh, and […]

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Behemoth – And the Forests Dream Eternally

Recommendation: ✂ (“Pure Evil and Hate”) Before becoming a household name in modern death metal, Polish group Behemoth was a straight-up black metal act with volkisch tendencies. And the Forests Dream Eternally is the band’s first EP – following four demos and full-length Seventevith (Storming Near the Baltic). More so than now, Behemoth was pretty much synonymous with frontman Nergal, […]

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Naked City – Leng Tch’e

Recommendation: 🐺🐺☁ Naked City is an experimental jazz outfit that included an all-star cast of alto saxophonist John Zorn, guitarist Bill Frisell, base guitarist Fred Firth, keyboardist Wayne Horvitz, drummer Joey Baron, and occasional vocalist Yamatsuka Eye of The Boredoms. Active from 1988 through 1993, Naked City (along with its sister group Painkiller) was influenced by grindcore, sludge metal, noise […]

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Horrendous – The Chills

Recommendation: 🐺🐺☁ Horrendous is an American death metal band from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania that’s part of the recent trend in new-school, old-school death metal. The Chills features a crunchy guitar tone with somewhat lo-fi and loud production, which moderately reproduces the Morrisound production that characterized a lot of big death metal releases in the early nineties. Released in 2012, The Chills […]

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Order from Chaos – Stillbirth Machine

Recommendation: 🐺🐺☁ Blasphemy, Conqueror, and Sarcófago get a lot of attention, but there’s one band in particular without whom the concept of war metal would be forever different: Order from Chaos. This Midwestern band started up in Kansas City, Missouri in 1987 and released three blistering full-lengths and a ten EPs/demos over an eight-year run. The band was fronted by […]

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Lurker of Chalice – Lurker of Chalice

Recommendation: 🐺🐺☁ Lurker of Chalice is a project by black metal artist Wrest, who is most known for making music through the depressive/suicidal death metal of Leviathan. The only extant album from Lurker of Chalice was released in 2005, although Wrest has stated that other material has been recorded. In contrast to the high-contrast, high-treble screeching tones of Leviathan albums […]

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Discordance Axis – The Inalienable Dreamless

Recommendation: 🐺🐺🐺 The Inalienable Dreamless rivals Jane Doe by Converge in its ugliness. In only twenty-three minutes, the grindcore trio that is Discordance Axis reveal one of the most technical and progressive albums in the genre – and without a bassist, too. The perceived stillness of The Inalienable Dreamless by the sea on the cover artwork obfuscates the horrifying yet […]

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