Existential Animals – Surrealith

by Dæv Tremblay


Existential Animals‘ djenty instrumental technical death metal EP Surrealith, which revolves around geological themes akin to The Ocean Collective’s Precambrian album, is a strong debut release, it will make you ask for more!

First of all, the strong impressions that album gave me are the technical capabilities of the musicians and the despairing atmosphere coming out of their music. Crafted around geological themes, it is supposed to represent millennia of rock moving, of flowing magma and unmoving bedrock, as well as the passage of time from an inorganic perspective. The instruments uncannily succeed in … Read more

Ancestors Revenge – The Archaic Return

by Dæv Tremblay


Do you need some more tech-death with fretless bass in your life? Because that’s just what Ancestors Revenge are about, with, I guess, the added blackened adjective to it, given the black metal elements in their music. Blackened tech-death, now we’re talking!

The Archaic Return, the band’s debut album, is long enough to satisfy your hunger and varied enough to keep you interested from start to finish. The drums are absolutely relentless, greatly supporting the riffs and song structure. That drummer is definitely one of the best I’ve got to see recently, he … Read more

Mammoth – Polymorphism

by Dæv Tremblay


Mammoth takes the best of classic progressive rock and fusion elements to deliver us a truly hairy beast, Polymorphism.

With such a band name, I couldn’t help but draw comparisons to The Explorers Club’s Raising The Mammoth album, which is a gem of modern progressive rock. Mammoth are definitely more on the technical side of things, with more instrumental songs, more intricate instrumental parts and less directed towards creating an atmosphere, what The Explorers Club mainly did on their latest album, most notably on their 21-minute, 16-part suite Gigantipithicus (Prog-O-Matic), which is every bit as … Read more

Blood & Banjos: The Best Thing You’ll Hear All Day

by Dæv Tremblay


It’s really what it says it is: Blood & Banjos is all about Metal & Bluegrass, and in the best way possible! Didn’t you ever secretly wish to listen to a brutal riff with banjo, violin, and harmonica over it? Well here you go, in the first song that’s available for streaming, that’s what you get! And it’s freaking awesome!

The album comes out pretty soon, and will be pay-what-you-want upon release, but you can pre-order it now for 1 dollar and support the guys who make that underexploited genre mix awesome!… Read more

Itzamna – Metnal

by Dæv Tremblay


D’you like jazz? Of course you do! D’you like metal? Of course you do! Itzamna is all about that! France sure has some awesome music to send us, and we gladly accept another newcomer in our music gallery!

Instead of taking djent and adding a few jazz touches to it, I think Itzamna went the other way around: taking jazz compositions and peppering them with a little bit of djent and other metal spices. Saint André must be the harshest song on display on their EP, Metnal, but it still isn’t what you’d call “djent” in … Read more