Ex-Venom drummer Anton Lant's Def-Con-One project consists of 12 groove metal songs that wouldn't sound out of place next to Lamb of God or Pantera. As the songs are such a far stretch from Venom, I was a bit surprised when opening song "Never Look Back" blasted through the speakers. The chugging riffs and clean to shouted vocals remind more of "As the Palaces Burn" or even more aptly "Far Beyond Driven" then anything Venom has ever done.

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Bible of the Devil's "For the Love of Thugs and Fools" is a refreshing old-school metal album. Unlike a lot of albums that are totally serious, these guys want you to turn the album up. Check the album out after this interview with Mark Hoffman and Nathan Perry of the band.

 

First of all, I just wanted to say I really enjoyed your latest album "For the Love of Thugs and Fools", it was refreshing to hear some old-fashioned metal in the vein of Priest and Maiden! Can you give a bit of an introduction to the band for those who don't know of you? I was surprised to find out long you guys have been around for. 

Mark Hoffman - We have been around since 1999 playing fist-pumping riff-rock anthems for the rad folk. Hearts have been broken, beers have been drunk, and countless eardrums battered along the way. I guess it started because we wanted to get even more laid. 

Nathan Perry - Quite simply I see what we do as arena rock not being performed in an arena. I realize that most bands hang it up after a few years once responsibilities creep in but what can we say, we're not most bands. We are gluttons for punishment clearly! But as long as people keep coming to see us act like fools night after night, I can't complain. Seriously though, this is what we love to do, so we're doing it, simple as that. We have been around for a long time because it feels good and we believe in it. Hopefully more people will figure it out. 

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As someone with only a passing familiarity with Xasthur I am probably the wrong person to be reviewing this album. "Nightmares At Dawn" is a compilation album with unreleased tracks, a Sabbath cover and a couple of redone Xasthur songs. As such this album is intended for fans of which I am not.

I can say however that while Xasthur seems to be a fairly good artist, this album of slow and depressive ambient Black Metal made me want to slit my wrists after a while as it is just way too fucking long.

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Atoma's debut album probably shouldnt actually be reviewed on a metal site such as this one. Sure it has some crunchy guitars, but honestly this album would probably appeal to the harder edged alternative music crowd as these are more electronic sounds than metal.

The band creates lush soundscapes with this electronic meets heavy fusion. Of particular note is Ehsan K's vocals which musically sound like Richard Patrick of Filter.

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Huntress has been getting a lot of hype lately, this has primarily been due to singer Jill Janus who's display of cleavage in the bands video for the song "Eight of Swords" had hundreds of headbangers frothing at the mouth.

While cleavage is good at all, the question is, is Huntress any good? In a word yes. the band play old-school heavy metal similar to Iron Maiden and Judas Priest except with a female singer. Don't go into this thinking Jill is going to sound all sweet and sugary like Delain or Lacuna Coil. Nope.

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Odium are a Canadian band that just released their smoking album "Burning the Bridges to Nowhere". The band sound like a mix of Killswitch Engage, In Flames and Tool. Unlike most generic metalcore that you hear nowadays, Odium actually have the chops and the hooky songs to make it big. Think metalcore is crap or "false" metal? Listen to "Burning the Bridges to Nowhere" and you will be converted to Odium's music. Check out what guitarist Bo Louther has to say below.

Your new album "Burning the Bridges to Nowhere" seems to be getting great reviews so far and I thought it was an excellent album. Can you briefly go over the history of the band as most people probably aren't familiar with you guys?

“We are a five-piece metal band from Hanover, Ontario. Odium was started by our drummer and singer (Joe Mullen and Tom Emmans) in 2007, at which point an EP entitled ‘Glass Barricade’ was released. In 2009 (after a couple member changes) we released our debut LP ‘At the Bottom’ through Year of the Sun Records, and shot two music videos for it. Since then we have been playing shows in Southern Ontario and even did a two week tour of Eastern Canada to promote the album in 2010. We started writing the new album in 2010 and it was released April 20, 2012.”

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Begrime Exemious are a Canadian band whose latest album "Visions of the Scourge" was just released on April 4th. The band are one of those blackened death metal bands with an underground aesthetic that I absolutely love. The production is perfect for this style of music: Not so muddy that you can't hear what the hell is going on, but nice and dirty sounding. The vocalist sounds like a zombie freshly risen from the grave, the guitars buzz and shriek and the drums blast away.

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Wizards of Kaos have been extensively described as "stoner rock" in the various publications and sites that I've seen review this album. I can sort of understand why:The guitars are fuzzed out much of the time and the album art looks like someone on an acid bender drew it.

However the stoner rock tag is not exactly accurate. I hear a lot more than just stoner rock here with shades of traditional heavy metal and even Motley Crue, I swear the opening 15 seconds of "Down From the Skies" is lifted straight from "Girls, Girls, Girls".

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My Dynamite are an Australian band who are quite similar in style to the Black Crowes. In fact, they are so similar in style that I several times had to shut off my the album to make sure I hadn't actually put on a Black Crowes album. As anybody who's read any of my reviews will know, I personally have no problem with bands who emulate another band in style, as long as they have quality songs and do it convincingly (See my review of Katana). The question becomes then, do My Dynamite have quality songs and do they do their homage convincingly? The answer is, a resounding YES!

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For starters, I just want to say that I absolutely 100% love traditional metal: Iron Maiden is my all-time favorite band and I love Judas Priest. As a result I'm a sucker for stuff like "Storms of War". I've never heard Katana prior to this album, but after hearing this album I will be seeking out their debut album as soon as possible.

How can I describe Katana? Singer Johan Bernspang is this generation's Bruce Dickinson and the rest of the band pull off the gallop of Maiden convincingly.

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Before getting very far into this review, let me state one thing: I absolutely love horror in all forms of entertainment. I love horror books, I love horror films, I love horror games and I love death and black metal. I also don’t mind the horror that has some gore in it: I enjoyed the movie Saw, I like Richard Laymon's novels and I've listened to Cannibal Corpse a few times. Now, gore for gore's sake however I'm not into. I see no point to it and have no idea how people get into it.

Why am I bringing up gore and horror? Because Kraanium is one of those "cutting edge" bands whose whole focus is on gore and gross outs. Now, like I said gore in context and moderation is fine but when your album is titled "Post Mortal Coital Fixation" and your songs are called such family friendly names as "Orgy of Cannibalistic Fornication", I'm sorry but I just can't take you seriously. I also feel kind of embarrassed that I may have to explain to my wife why a song called "Bursting Rectal Sores" landed on my Last.Fm profile.

Now, I could take the embarrassment and even put up with names such as the above and other songs like "Crack Whore Pounding" if the music was good (c'mon guys! Fucking "Crack Whore Pounding"???), but unfortunately it's not. This is generic death metal with fucking pig squealing as vocals half the time!

Avoid this please. I personally have no interest in listening to an album with the song "Slurping Vaginal Pus" on it. I kept thinking this album must be some kind of joke, but sadly I’m afraid it's not. (2) 

Curt 

Band info: www.facebook.com/kraaniumslam 

Label info: www.comatosemusic.com

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I liked "Holy Wrath" way more than I should have. When I saw that the band was described as "old school sludge/death metal from Latvia" I thought that the album was going to be a painful experience to get through. Then when opening track "Black" came on and had some weird laughing snarling thing going on, I was sure the album was going to be horrible.

A funny thing happened though: The album got good. I don't mean like album of the year good, but good as in I want to listen to this album again and not delete it off my hard drive after reviewing it good.

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Septekh are a death metal band from Sweden with a heavy Motorhead/Judas Priest influenced sound. I didn't have much hope for the "Seth Avalanche” after looking at some of the titles on the album such as "Fuckslut From Hell" and "Eating The Maneater". So, warily I put the album on, hoping against hope I wouldn't want to shoot myself in the head after listening to it.

As soon as "Fuckslut From Hell" came on, I was like "Meh", the song was really generic but had a couple of catchy parts to it.

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I am extremely impressed by Eternal Helcaraxe's latest album "Against All Odds". So impressed in fact that I have already gone on record in another publication as saying that I felt it is one of the best album's to be released so far in 2012.

For those of you who don't know yet, Eternal Helcaraxe are an Irish band that sounds like a cross between black metal and Amon Amarth. Unlike most black metal bands that do their best to sound as evil as possible, Eternal Helcaraxe pile on the viking/pagan metal sound and the result is so profoundly awesome that words can hardly describe it.

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Odium is a band from my home country of Canada who are most similar to Killswitch Engage and In Flames. That statement right there should tell you everything you need to know about whether or not you will like "Burning the Bridges to Nowhere." The thing with Odium however, is that unlike the legions of bands inspired by Killswitch and In Flames, Odium actually have the chops and the tunes to put them at the top of the pack.

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Apparently Angelus Apatrida is a fairly well known band, which surprises me as I had personally not heard of them until I was assigned to review this, their latest album. From what I can find about the band on the internet, they are a Spanish band that has been around since 2000 and tearing up the thrash scene in Spain ever since.

At first I was a bit leery of listening to this as I've recently reviewed several thrash albums for both this and other publication-Too much of one genre can lead to burnout and taint one's ear's after all. Luckily for me however, "The Call" starts off with the absolutely ripping "You Are Next" which blew me away with it's neck snapping riffs. The band then continued the pace for the rest of the album with song after song of high quality thrash.

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Subrosa got a lot of attention in 2011 for their excellent album "No Help for the Mighty Ones", and for good reason. The band's brand of unique heavy music fuses elements of doom and sludge with violins and female vocals. It is one of those albums that once you put on, hooks you in and won't let go. I caught up with band leader Rebecca Vernon to talk about "No Help for the Mighty Ones" and Subrosa in general. 

"No Help for the Mighty Ones" was extremely well received by critics, and even managed to show up on Decibel Magazines Top 40 of 2011 list. I personally also thought it was one of the best albums of last year. You didn't get much press prior to that album, so could you fill in the blanks and give some background on the band?

“Subrosa started in 2005. We self-released our first album, ‘The Worm has Turned’. It's really lo-fi and was only meant to be an internal band demo. But then it turned out well enough that we released it. After ‘The Worm has Turned’, I became friends with the owner of I Hate Records in Sweden, Ola Blomkvist. He liked Subrosa but said there was no way he could sign us; we were too different from what I Hate usually signs. But after I sent him "Strega," our next album, he liked it better than ‘The Worm has Turned’, and somehow convinced his partner to sign us. :) We had a couple features in Terrorizer and Metal Maniacs and some European music magazines, but you're right, we didn't receive as much press as with ‘No Help…’ Definitely no year-end lists."

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According to the press release accompanying this album, Russia's Pseudogod play "Satanic Black Death" which I suppose is supposed to mean that they play some heavy shit. I guess that's true as "Deathwomb Catechesis" is definitely an extremely heavy album that relentlessly pummels the listener's senses for the duration of the entire album. The band certainly has the chops to become a major player in the underground metal world with songs like opener "Vehement Decimation" and "Saturnalia (The Night of the Return) the highlights of the album.

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I'm not the world's biggest hardcore fan, but I can get into it at the same time when it's well-played. One of the things I do like about hardcore is that it is generally short and to the point and when done well it's a lot of fun. Fortunately The Love Below's "Every Tongue Shall Caress" was able to keep my interest throughout the album's 24 minutes. Some of the songs are really good like "Family Entertainment" and "Buyers Remorse" while others are kind of "mehish".

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Witchtrap's "Vengeance is My Name" will probably get overlooked by all but the most hardcore of metal fans. This is too bad as the band have a great 80s era thrash sound. To my earrs, Witchtrap sounds better than most of the other "retro thrash" bands out there, with the band sounding musically like a cross between "Reign in Blood" era Slayer and the "Peace Sells" version of Megadeth.

Musically there is nothing revolutionary here, but the thing about retro metal that makes it so great is the fact that musically and lyrically it's pure escapism.

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