Apr 032015
 

 

(This is Part 2 of a collection of five new reviews by DGR. The first three reviews are collected here. For those who missed Part 1, DGR’s introduction is repeated below.)

I’ve written a few articles where I’ve had to sort of slide back from the desk my laptop sits on, sigh, and go, “Well, that got completely out of control”. There’s something to be said about being punctual with your writing, but what initially began as a sort of archive of two real quick discoveries of stuff from 2014 that I had just found via Bandcamp became this massive and stupid roundup of five bands, with 2014 bookending a huge block of shit from 2015; so, uh, I guess fans of symmetry should really dig into this collection of sounds.

A huge chunk of this is still as originally penned, dedicated to stuff I found recently that hit last year, as I sifted from various sites I visited while trying to find stuff that might perk your ears. But I just kept finding music that seemed to be hitting right as I would type up the last little paragraph for an earlier release. Some were sent to us by bands themselves, and others I came across after a piece of album art or a random show poster caught my eye. Much of this article is death-metal-focused and much of it very cleanly produced and melodeath-leaning. However, there are a few curveballs this time around, and those are the ones that really caught my attention this time.

Hellucination

This band right here is one of the reasons this article got out of control. Yet, Hellucination are one that I felt I had to include because I was listening to their new album a lot for a fairly recent discovery. This one is a late addition that kind of forced its way into the group after I spotted its album art popping up on the social media pages of a couple of musicians I was checking in with. Continue reading »

Nov 122011
 

(TheMadIsraeli provides these quick notes about a Turkish band’s debut release.)

Thrown To The Sun is a band without much readily available public information, at least as far as I can tell.  They are a progressive death metal band from Istanbul and… that’s about it.  You can check them out on Facebook here, and I’m advising you to do so.

This little discovery was the product of one of my random downloading sprees.  I was intrigued by the album art, as well as the band’s geographic location, since as we know, not much Turkish metal makes its way into the ears of Western listeners.

I pressed play and so began the album’s intro, “Adrift”.  By the album’s end, I had learned that what we have here, from start to finish, is an awesome mix of the progressive tendencies of Death mixed with the Middle Eastern stylings of Melechesh.  Suffice it to say, this shit is quite good, with melodic riffs interlaced with tasteful moments of chaos, jarring tempo changes, and some nice growl-to-clean vocal interplay.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »