Okay, so a 7-song covers EP isn’t the most exciting event in the world, but at least it’s a solid set-list from the veteran Death/Grind masters. They know their way around a cover, too, as it becomes immediately evident that they mean business with this son-of-a-bitch and it’s not just something to stock the shelves with until their next album is released. Plus, these types of recordings set themselves up perfectly for track-by-track dissection. They lead off with by far the most obscure cover. “Fade Into Obscurity” by the sadly short-lived East Coast Death warriors Dehumanized, who did just that. The band only released one full length, 1998’s Prophecies Foretold, but that motherfucker hit harder than some entire discographies. Dying Fetus really execute the cut flawlessly and completely turn the song into their own, which I found to be a reoccurring theme with this EP. Next up they try their hand at Napalm Death (another band that knows a thing or two about covers). The obvious choice for them is “Unchallenged Hate,” -which they nail- and why would you need to go elsewhere than the classic Mentally Murdered EP for the selection process? Broken Hope’s “Gorehog” is next, and while it’s efficiently well done, why not do “Bag of Parts”? Please, just for me? Up next is “Rohypnol,” all 44 blurry seconds of it. The only Dying Fetus original track on display here. Thanks? The next two are my personal favorites. “Unleashed Upon Mankind” by Bolt Thrower, and “Twisted Truth” by Pestilence. If you did not raise the horns upon reading that, please commit seppuku with an olive fork. Pure Death Metal anthems from a time when life was worth living. They close with Cannibal Corpse’s “Born in a Casket,” proving something that I already knew, that these Maryland maniacs can chop toe-to-toe with anyone anytime. A very rare description for one of my reviews, and an even more rare happening in everyday life, but this EP is just plain fun.

With only one song each, and clocking in at just over 12 minutes total, there isn’t a lot of material on this 7-inch EP, but when we’re talking about bands like Hooded Menace and the legendary Asphyx, I’ll take anything I can get. Quality over quantity! And it doesn’t get much more quality than this picture disk (also available on black vinyl, but why bother?) with its amazing pair of brand-new dirges. I would have thought it unfair to put almost any band on a split with Asphyx, but Hooded Menace hold their ground at the very least, and the band’s brand of Doom-infused Death Metal is at times as melancholy and sorrowful as it is pulverizingly heavy. The Asphyx track, “We Doom You to Death,” would have fit right in on the band’s most recent album, 2009’s Death… the Brutal Way, and I can’t think of many compliments better than that. If you can still find a copy of this split, it’s worth its weight in gold, and is heavier than radioactive osmium.

I don’t know why I’ve never heard The Dwarves before in all my many years and decades on this wretched planet, but I somehow managed to avoid them. That’s yet another in a long list of mistakes. This infamous Punk band has been at it since the early ’80s, and until now all I knew about them was that they typically have interesting album art (I’m thinking specifically of 1990’s Blood, Guts & Pussy, which naturally features two naked women covered in blood), and Entombed’s 1997 cover of “Satan.” So, really only knowing that The Dwarves are supposed to be pretty weird, and incorporate every musical style under the sun, I was very happy to discover that The Dwarves Are Born Again is a fairly focused LP, simply covering the range from Pop Punk, with tracks like “Looking Out for Number One,” “Happy Birthday Suicide,” and “Working Class Hole,” to the more intense Hardcore of “Stop Me” and “It’s a Wonderful Life of Sin.” Main-man/singer Blag gets a little secret guest vocal help occasionally, which is great, but I frustratingly can’t find any verification of who’s involved… Admittedly, there are some slight lulls here and there (the perhaps too-silly “Zip Zero”), but the first thing I thought upon hearing album-opener “The Dwarves Are Still the Best Band Ever,” was that I needed to track down their entire back-catalog immediately. And I haven’t even mentioned the bonus DVD yet, which features all kinds of archival live footage, video clips and other insanity. Even the menus are cool! “I am the Jesus Christ of sin and vice!”

So here we have the Metal Blade debut from Raleigh’s veteran heavyweights, a 3-song EP of brand spanking new material. But this is Between the Buried and Me we’re talking about, so this 3-song “EP” is longer than Reign in Blood and any Metalcore/Deathcore full-length album in the last 8 years. It’s essentially three 10-minute slabs of genre bending mind rape. In the first five minutes of “Specular Reflection” alone, we are treated to a bevy of different styles. BtBaM come at the listener softer than a wet baby’s ass one minute, then the next riff is capable of creating a circle pit that could invade North Korea. Their virtuoso mix of Prog and Metalcore is unparalleled at this level, and Hypersleep Dialogues shows them expanding their pallet to even more refined moments of pure Death Metal fury, Indie Rock sincerity, and… what the fuck? Did I just hear a fucking Polka arrangement? Seriously? They just did a Polka thing that was fucking weird. “Augment of Rebirth,” towards the end. This is, like, the sixth time I’ve listened to this all the way through. Never noticed the Polka thing with the accordion. Wow. This is clearly the type of recording that you can take something new from, that you didn’t notice before, with each listen. And of course the Polka part is followed by crushing heaviness. What makes all of these wacky transitions seamless is vocalist Tommy Rogers. He has great harsh vocals, he has a great singing voice. He makes everything work (and he can pull it off live). I guess if anything is lacking here it’s the signifying anthem I was hoping for to usher in this new chapter of their career. Sure, there are anthemic qualities to some of the segments of these epic tracks, but there is also some noisy filler and masturbatory Prog noodling you have to sift through to get there. If anything, these guys always leave you wondering what they’ll do next. (I have to subtract a quarter of a point for the Polka shit, though. I mean, c’mon.)

Oh my. Please, Satan, not Decapitated, too. Please don’t take them all from me this year. Get behind me, Jesus! The first new album from these Polish Death legends in five years, and first since the tragic accident that claimed the life of drummer extraordinaire Vitek much too early. I rushed to get this as soon as possible. I even paid a little extra to get it on the Friday before the Tuesday it came out. I’m not going to say it’s a letdown in league with the new Morbid Angel after only a few spins, but after only a few spins I don’t like it at all. Guitarist Vogg is the only remaining original member, and holy shit can you tell. This new singer SUCKS! He sounds like some kind of castaway from a tenth rate Machine Head cover band. His almost complete lack of anything resembling a coherent vocal pattern doesn’t help his cause either. That parrot from Hatebeak sounds more brutal. The pit bull from Caninus would’ve been a more suitable replacement. And these are just my vocal complaints. The music is a lightweight, hollow shell of its former self as well. Don’t look for a fucking “Spheres of Madness” on this one, folks. First and foremost, the songs are way too long (even the four minute ones). I raised a family during the title track. Don’t expect any masterfully technical Death Metal either. These songs are Thrash-infused Death Lite, which at their most heaviest moments might resemble mid-career Lamb of God (except nowhere near that memorable). With a vocalist that had fully formed testicles this music would be tolerable, perhaps even enjoyable, but upon initial inspection, Phil Anselmo’s Polish nephew single-handedly wipes his ass with all of this album’s potential. I’m not giving up on this release totally just yet. I’m going to spin it for another week or so and pray to Baphomet that the songs reveal some worth. But as for this exact place and time, this album deep throats rhino dicks all the way to the balls.

I’ve been anxiously waiting to hear Disma’s debut full-length since it was announced several months ago. While the official release date is July 19th, I jumped at the opportunity to listen to Towards the Megalith in its entirety on NPR’s website (National Public Radio is exclusively streaming it for the week prior its release). Death Metal sure has come a long way with acceptance outside the underground since its inception, but that’s a separate discussion to be had with a night of heavy drinking. My anticipation wasn’t met with disappointment and this is a “must buy” for any old school Death Metal fan. It really doesn’t get any more old school than Craig Pillard’s monstrous vocals since he growled into infamy on Incantation’s genre-defining classic Onward to Golgotha back in 1992. If that isn’t enough of a selling point then consider guitarist Daryl Kahan and drummer Shawn Eldridge, both from the mighty Funebrarum, are also in the lineup. The logical result is darkened Death/Doom Metal that breaks into ultra heavy mid-tempo riffs (if only there were more of them) accentuated with the perfect hollow sound at the end of each snare drum strike. Aptly titled, Towards the Megalith is the album you’d want to listen to before, during, and the morning after that nocturnal debate coupled with copious rounds of libations.

Cianide, suicide, no prayers or foolish whims.
I am fucking sick of reading bullshit reviews of this album written by clueless dickholes who all seem to think that this is the first time Cianide has ever played at a pace any faster than Godzilla’s slow march to Toyko to rape the Diet building. Satan’s speed is Cianide’s speed, you hydrocephalic living abortions! Go listen to “Human Cesspool” or anything from 1996’s Rage War (I don’t think anything here is faster than “Deadly Spawn”) onward for examples of Chicago’s Most Brutal kicking 666 spectrums of ass at whatever tempos they see fit. Almost all of the band’s previous album, 2005’s Hell’s Rebirth, is this fast or beyond. I do still miss the oppressive, ultra-viscous guitar tone of the first two albums, though, but if Gods of Death were your Cianide cherry-pop, you might think that this guitar sound is as apocalyptic as it gets. And speaking of the monstrous Doom of the first two albums, check out “The One True Death” for a taste of the slow-motion, old-school glory still in this band’s veins. The lethal “Dead and Rotting,” with Mike’s Cronos-worshipping bass slides, is another key in the air nocturnal, and in fact there’s nothing here that is anything less. Gods of Death is Death Metal as it should be, at its ferocious, bestial zenith, and that should be no surprise to anyone, because Cianide’s evil always reigns.

After a somewhat underwhelming return with last year’s The Tomb Within EP, Autopsy is back with the band’s first new full-length album since 1995’s Shitfun, and I honestly didn’t know what to expect. Macabre Eternal is incrementally better than, but essentially cast from the same mold as, the aforementioned The Tomb Within EP, which I think I may have judged slightly too harshly in my review. The Autopsy guys are… holy shit, man, it’s fucking Autopsy for fuck’s sake, so I would really prefer if I liked this album a lot more than I do. And if all the songs were as memorable as the deranged, Impetigo-ish “Dirty Gore Whore,” I could give this a rating much closer to a ten. I wish that I could have done that, but unfortunately I’m stuck with reality, and that means that I have to admit that something isn’t quite right. Autopsy needs a grimy, raw, diseased sound, and that’s missing here. This is just too clear and clean for its own good. Who would have ever thought that these sick bastards would need more filth?

After some surprising disappointments so far this year (Morbid Angel, My Dying Bride, and to a lesser degree Pestilence, plus a couple more I don’t even want to mention), it’s encouraging to know that the old school defenders of the Metal faith collectively known as Deceased will never let us down. Main-man King Fowley had to take several years off of drumming to recover from some health problems, and so the band’s previous album, 2005’s As the Weird Travel On, featured October 31’s excellent skin basher, Dave Castillo, with King relegated to just singing. And as great as that album was and is, and certainly no disrespect intended to Castillo, it just wasn’t quite 100% up to snuff (very close, though!). But now, with my #1 pal King back behind the kit, all is right in the Metal world once more, and Surreal Overdose is absolutely unstoppable. Deceased has long mixed bits of Thrash and earlier Heavy Metal elements into a very unique, intricate, and instantly memorable Death Metal style, complemented as always by King’s singular vocals, which are perhaps more gruff than raw. This is one of those rare bands that seems utterly incapable of writing a bad riff, or even a merely okay one, and so the first listen to each new album is a celebration of how things should be done, with each subsequent spin revealing more and more depth, as only the true classics can. And that is what Deceased delivers -every time: a masterpiece.