(Straight outta Malmö, Sweden, Throne of Roaches released their debut album Chrysalis last month, and today our writer DGR gives it an extensive review… after some extensive thoughts about what’s going on with death metal in the modern era.)

For those who’ve been paying attention to the recent spate of reviews the site has run – and those by yours truly – ever-observant as you are, you’ve probably noticed that we’ve had a recent string of album arts in which the predominant color has been blue. Well enough of that bullshit, it’s time for a change. Now, we’re going with the color green for an album or two.

Every year tends to bring with it some sort of theme – other than usual overarching abject misery – that picks at the brain until it finally unclasps like a louse killed and rots away into dust. This year in particular has been poking the cortex with ideas of how metal has grown and evolved each year, and its myriad changes and how newer groups must navigate a landscape that isn’t just shifting so much as it is turbulent enough that even the FAA these days might detect that there’s something happening with a particular plane before it hits the ground. They don’t have enough coffee in the world to keep that one guy fueled.

Metal has blended many times over its generations and death metal especially has time and time again found itself bisected, dissected, vivisected, septrisected, and intersected to the point of unrecognizability. Pantheons and towers erected and destroyed in one fell swoop and just as many merged together to resemble the security guard cenobite from Hellraiser: Bloodline. What is and isn’t has proven fertile ground for those who wish to engage in perpetual argument. The concept of death of the author becomes hilarious in this regard when dealing with a genre obsessed with the actual physical undertaking and not the philosophical aspect. Continue reading »