Reviews by Michael O'Brien
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Altar
And God Created Satan to Blame for His Mistakes
By Michael O'Brien | 27 February, 2017
Now here’s a band that I haven’t thought about for a long time. There was a period during the mid to late '90s where I was quite partial to the first few albums from Dutch death metal act, Altar, but like so many bands over the years, ...
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Sunless
Urraca
By Michael O'Brien | 23 February, 2017
I’ve been in a pretty unhappy relationship with technical death metal for quite a while now. From my perspective, it seems as though the overriding trend these days is for a lot of the bands in this sphere to occupy one of two extremes: the ...
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Hadal Maw
Olm
By Michael O'Brien | 08 February, 2017
Prior to receiving the promo for Olm, Hadal Maw’s second full length, I had a very conflicted and confused relationship with the Melbourne-based band. Based on previous experiences seeing them play live, I’d had positive feeli...
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Emptiness
Not for Music
By Michael O'Brien | 18 January, 2017
Belgium’s Emptiness are a hard band to satisfactorily categorise, being that they’ve evolved their sound rather drastically over the course of their now five full-length albums. From the black/death metal of their first two releases, t...
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Worm Ouroboros
What Graceless Dawn
By Michael O'Brien | 29 November, 2016
Of all of the diverse bands on Canadian label Profound Lore’s roster, San Francisco’s Worm Ouroboros are perhaps the band that embodies the extremity of that diversity the most.
Lead by Jessica Way (guitar, vocals) and Lorraine...
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Devilment
II: The Mephisto Waltzes
By Michael O'Brien | 18 November, 2016
To say that I was not a fan of Devilment’s 2014 debut album, The Great and Secret Show, would be something of an understatement. It wasn’t for a lack of interest in it either, being that it featured Cradle of Filth’s Dan...
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Sirenia
Dim Days of Dolor
By Michael O'Brien | 14 November, 2016
I came into Sirenia’s eighth full length album, Dim Days of Dolor, consciously aware that I’m not really its target audience. This is a band that once straddled a line between symphonic metal and melodic death metal but has st...
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Suma
The Order of Things
By Michael O'Brien | 23 October, 2016
The Order of Things is an album I've been waiting for for a hell of a long time. Six years now, in fact.
Back in 2010 Sweden’s Suma released Ashes, which was and continues to be one of my all time favourite sludge/d...
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Syndrome
Forever and a Day
By Michael O'Brien | 04 October, 2016
I’ve long been a fan of Belgium’s Amenra, but it wasn’t until earlier this year that I became aware of just how powerfully captivating they can be in their acoustic form. In addition to their excellent live album, Alive,...
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Warfather
The Grey Eminence
By Michael O'Brien | 16 September, 2016
To say that Warfather’s 2014 debut, Orchestrating the Apocalypse, was a disappointment would be quite the understatement. With the exception of his vocal duties with Nader Sadek, it had been quite some time since (then) ex-Morbid An...
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Imperium Dekadenz
Dis Manibvs
By Michael O'Brien | 02 September, 2016
Over the couple of months I’ve spent with Imperium Dekadenz’s fifth full-length album, Dis Manibvs, - which also happens to be my first exposure to the band - I’ve had this nagging feeling of familiarity in the back of m...
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Vader
Iron Times
By Michael O'Brien | 22 August, 2016
I’d be amazed if anyone went into a new Vader recording expecting to be surprised by what they hear by this point. Aside from the fact that the band has been active for over 25 years, their output has also been incredibly consistent over tha...
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Crypt
Disgusting Zombie Metal
By Michael O'Brien | 17 August, 2016
Crypt, who hail from Brisbane and who have recently reformed after 15-odd years away, released one of my favourite Australian demos in 1994 with Excruciating Agony which, at the time, was one of the heaviest things I’d ever heard an...
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Sanford Parker
Lash Back
By Michael O'Brien | 29 July, 2016
Well, this isn’t what I was expecting to hear at all.
I’ve been a fan of Parker’s work as a musician and a producer for a while now, and especially for his contributions in Minsk and Buried at Sea. His more recent program...
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Lord of War
Suffer
By Michael O'Brien | 11 July, 2016
Just as there are labels out there like Flenser Records and Blood Music that I tend to be drawn to because of the kind of material they specialise in, there are also labels out there that I shy away from for the very same reason, and Unique Leader...
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H.P. Lovecraft
The Lurking Fear
By Michael O'Brien | 11 July, 2016
While I’m a lover of books, I’ve never really gotten on board with the audiobook format. There’s something about the experience of digesting a story through the written word that isn’t quite the same for me when it’s ...
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C.B. Murdoc
Here be Dragons
By Michael O'Brien | 24 June, 2016
There were two things that drew me to this promo from the outset. The first is that the band’s unusual moniker reminded me of the kind of name a character from a Raymond Chandler novel might have, and the second was that the band was formed ...
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Dark Funeral
Where Shadows Forever Reign
By Michael O'Brien | 07 June, 2016
With seven years having passed since their last album, Sweden’s self-proclaimed “ineffable kings of darkness”, Dark Funeral, have returned with Where Shadows Forever Reign, marking their sixth full-length relea...
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Mirrors for Psychic Warfare
Mirrors for Psychic Warfare
By Michael O'Brien | 25 May, 2016
When it comes to collaborations between artists I like and respect, I tend to try to temper my expectations as best as I can before hearing the fruits of their work, because the only thing worse than a disappointing release from one such artist is...
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Gorguts
Pleiades' Dust
By Michael O'Brien | 11 May, 2016
Like what I assume to be the case with the vast bulk of the death metal community, I’m a pretty big fan of Canada’s Gorguts. They’re a band that has not only spent their lengthy career pushing themselves creatively, but have also...
