Towards the end of 2016, Death Metal Pope invited you to their ‘Harvest’. That EP presented some superb doom grooves and showed the future to be wide open for the Long Island metal band. As part of the promotion for the EP, they’ve made a new video for ‘From The Dust Returned’, which you can watch in full below. The clip shows why the EP was one of the best from last year and should open the door for those who missed the release first time around.
Tag Archives: metal
SNAKE TONGUE – Raptor’s Breath
Taking the core elements of classic late 80s thrash metal, the downtuned storminess of Swedish melodic death metal and elements of technical progressive death and hardcore, Sweden’s Snake Tongue make an unholy racket on their debut LP ‘Raptor’s Breath’. The results are probably the most impressive since Vision of Disorder tore off listeners for the first time back in the mid nineties.
RÜCKWATER – Bonehead
Credited as “a three headed monster”, Finnish rockers Rückwater might seem like just another stoner band on the surface, but ‘Bonehead’ – their third release – shows them to be more than that. In fact, their willingness to take stoner rock roots and shake them up explains why they’ve shared stages with the expected (Karma To Burn, Truckfighters) and the less obvious (Anthrax‘s Joey Belladonna). ‘Bonehead’ not only rocks hard but also teases with chorus hooks, elements of dark psychedelia and even takes a foray into the kind of full throttle, four chord gutsiness that would make Zeke raise a collective eyebrow. In short, it’s more than worth an ear.
DARK PHANTOM – Nation Of Dogs
Dark Phantom’s beginnings stretch back to 2007, though due to very unsettled political climate in Iraq, the band wouldn’t make any headway until two years later. Their early musical endeavours were met with some hostility in their home country – or they would have been, had they been heard. In the band’s own words, with regard to playing such music: “under an Al Queda controlled situation, death was a consequence.” Still, Dark Phantom toiled, playing cover tunes at first, but eventually crafting their own sounds. Their first gig in their home city of Kirkuk in 2011 attracted a crowd, but also resulted in terror groups attacking the band’s online community. In 2012, they underwent a major line up change as their vocalist and drummer left the band and sought work in other areas “for safety reasons”. To say the journey from band formation to album release was a hard and dangerous undertaking would be an understatement. Against the odds and after years of determination, Dark Phantom finally released ‘Nation of Dogs’ – an album of hard-hitting, self-penned material at the end of 2016.
THE MURDER OF MY SWEET – Echoes Of The Aftermath
Despite claiming to draw influences from early Queen, ELO and Genesis, on their 2015 LP ‘Beth Out of Hell‘, The Murder of My Sweet came across as a really overbearing, second rate Nightwish. The album introduced listeners to a concept about a love affair between good and evil; a theatrical narrative made the material harder to digest than it already would have been…and in terms of both good taste and sanity, a children’s choir was the final straw. In short, ‘Beth Out of Hell’ was an egotistical, bloated effort that once heard (and once was enough) had the potential to cause long term mental trauma.