I remember Agathodaimon well from second half of the nineties when they released their great albums Blacken The Angel and Higher Art Of Rebellion, both being a masterpiece of gothic influenced vampiric black metal with long songs, perfect mixture of black screaming and clean vocals and great melodies bringing something progressive and fresh into the scene. They released six albums and disappeared and now they are back with new opus and new line-up, but the constant backbone is guitarist/vocalist Sathonys. New opus contains 10 songs of beautiful melodic atmospheric black metal with great songwriting, fantastic melodies but the one thing that really stands out for me is interplay between Ashtrael´s shrieking voice and Sathonys´ clean and gothic voice thus delivering the skinprickling atmosphere of almost touchable darkness. The songs are not so long as in the first albums, but they tell the story of persistence, emotions, darkness, a bit romantic gothic vampirism and longing, eros and thanatos. My personal favorites are Mother Of All Gods which features ex member Vlad Dracul, also Ain´t Death Grand and both In My Dreams conceptual songs. Welcome back Agathodaimon, with a strong return album.
Cannibal Corpse are death metal legends and an institution delivering their gore blood soaked death metal for more than thirty years. Their singer George Corpsegrinder Fisher released this solo opus full length and it is a blast. These ten songs of horror are not far from what he does with his main band, but this one, besides death metal blast beats and sharp riffs with fast solos, also offers some hardcore influences, almost horror punk riffs masked in the rear of death metal, also some thrash old school influences. Corpsegrinder´s voice is one of the most recognizable and mightiest in the death metal scene and he growls and screams with ease through horror lyrics and you can understand what he is singing about, with songs like Acid Vat, Devourer of Souls and Master Of The Longest Night flying the flag of Florida American death metal high and being sight for wanton ears of many death metal fiend out there. Good one.
I won´t lie to you, I first heard of Vio-lence when first Machine Head legendary album Burn My Eyes came out and there was an article in Metal Hammer and a picture of young Rob Flynn who used to play guitar in Vio-lence prior to MH days. Then I listened and immediately loved the three albums of these San Francisco thrash metal legends. Now, the band is reformed again and released new music after more than two decades first with cover of Dead Kennedys classic California Uber Alles, then with this whole new e.p. which contains five songs. Through these songs, Vio-lence managed to release strong statement with strong mixture of old and new blood in the line-up consisting of whole extreme music scene veterans unit, capable of doing great things in their all out thrash metal assault. Angry vocals, courtesy of Sean Killian, great and fast songs with groove parts, blistering solos, double bass drum sonic charge and lyrics that deal with anger, death, society and its diseases is more than contemporary today, yet bringing a breeze of old school metal winds to the new millennia. Welcome back we have been missing you.
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 