A cozy take on extreme music one brutally honest review at a time.
I may not look it, but I’m a metalhead with a soft spot for blast beats and bold opinions. Here you’ll find reviews of black metal and avant-garde albums that skip the hype and get straight to the gut. Spoiler alert – I like it weird. Whether you’re deep in the scene or just curious, you’re welcome here—no gatekeeping, just riffs.
Album Reviews and Ramblings
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A Disorienting Listen for Something So Familiar, as Eldjudnir’s Self Titled Remaster Abrades the Cleanliness in Favor of the Grime.
I came across Eldjudnir randomly a few years back. I don’t often find new albums that I put on repeat, but the 3rd album, the first I’d heard which is… Read more ⇢
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The invitation to Now I’ve Done It’s An Ill Guest was lovely, but I had to excuse myself early.
Do you like musical theater, Tim Burton movies, black metal and clean vocals? Then I have a new album for you. An Ill Guest by Now I’ve Done It will… Read more ⇢
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Put down the thesaurus because spouting adjectives does not make an album review.
I hate reading album reviews. They’re awful and at best, cringy. They don’t tell you much about the music but instead, drown in adjectives and strained metaphors, things like “a… Read more ⇢
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Ingurgitating Oblivion’s Ontology of Nought Promises Nothing but Delivers Everything
I’m pretty sure I saw and listened to a bit of this album when it dropped a few months back, but I skipped it. Likely I wasn’t in the right… Read more ⇢
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Papangu’s Holoceno Is Unstable, Focused, and Worth the Seven Years It Took to Make. Don’t Make Us Wait That Long Again.
Holoceno doesn’t fit cleanly into any particular genre, it’s several of them. It’s progressive and light at times, a bit noisy and pretty brutal in others. The sudden shifts in… Read more ⇢
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‘Almost Dead’ Pulled Me Into Esoctrilihum’s Madness and Unease—and I’m Not Climbing Out
Esoctrilihum’s Almost Dead popped up in my feed and immediately impressed me—it had no right being this good. The album is just two tracks: the first is a mellow, atmospheric… Read more ⇢
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I Came for the Dissonance and the Algorithm Gave Me Pop-Punk
Finding music I actually like feels harder than it should be. Spotify, Google Music, and even Bandcamp’s recommendation engines throw stuff at me that only vaguely resembles what I’m into—like… Read more ⇢
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Rye’s Знание Breaks My Usual Listening Habits with Bleak, Slow Soundscapes
It’s after albums like this that make we wonder what it is exactly that makes me like a certain album. There are some out there they I should like that… Read more ⇢
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Atrate’s Beyond Depth… Is a Beautiful, Chaotic Mess That Hits Deep and Hints at Serious Potential
I’ll be honest—at first, I wasn’t sure about this one. The intro had a vibe that reminded me of Bal-Sagoth, which isn’t usually my thing. But once the album kicked… Read more ⇢
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Im Herbst unserer Kindheit’s The Creative Destruction of a Timeless Vault, is a vault worth unsealing.
This record is definitely avant-garde — technical classical meets black and death metal vocals, shot through with flashes of ’80s emo energy. It’s upbeat in parts but drenched in an… Read more ⇢
