As you may estimate, this is a huge undertaking, so we'll be adding more and more material every update. Hopefully, there will be some gem here that had slipped by you, and through these pages, you discover musical treasure as we have.
Label: Kraze/Maze America
Date: 1991
Track listing: (favorites marked with an '*')
[1] Sweetness*
[Ripping Corpse. A seldomly heard name in the world of death metal, yet one of its greatest. Musically this band is top-notch. Brutal, technical and melodic. The singer would get my vote as having one of the coolest sounding voices in death metal. He also looks like a madman is his picture below, which is always a plus in the death metal world!]
[inlay]
Label: Nuclear Blast
Date: 1993
Track listing: (favorites marked with an '*')
[1] Disembodied
[One thing memorable about this release is that almost every track starts with a very bizarre talking bit, whether these relate to the songs lyrics, I'm not sure. One thing is certain though, they were a great death metal band. My favorite track, 'Rage Within', was also released on a the Nuclear Blast compilation 'Death is Just the Beginning, except in a raw, demo form, which I liked better than the finished track here. Surprisingly the remake of the Kiss song 'War Machine' is quite good as well.]
[inlay]
Label: Osmose Productions
Date: 1990 (recorded)/1994 (released)
Track listing: (favorites marked with an '*')
[1] Intro
[It doesn't get much better than the black metal legends Master's Hammer. Incredibly unique, nothing compares to this Czech band.]
[inlay - walking canes, a guy wearing a tophat and another calling himself 'necrocock'!
Label: Osmose Productions/JL America
Date: 1993
Track listing: (favorites marked with an '*')
[1] Overture
[My first taste of Master's Hammer (and probably like most people in North America) was on a JL America Compilation cassette. The cassette contained the insane sounding and ultra unique track 'Among the Hills a Winding Way'. The song titles are as strange as anything you'll ever find in any genre. The track titles, some with typos, like the album name, which should have said 'Jilemnice' instead of 'Filemnice', some with bad English, and some just downright eccentric and strange. While not as good as the superb 'Ritual', it's still a great piece of black metal.]
[inlay]
Label: Metal Blade Records
Date: 1989
Track listing: (favorites marked with an '*')
[1]Freaks*
[Ah, Rigor Mortis' 'Freaks'. How very insensitive. Shame, shame. That aside, a great band and a cool EP.]
[inlay - 'Doyle Bright', on the far right, might have the strangest hair cut of anyone in metal.]
Label: Resistance Records
Date: 1995
Track listing: (favorites marked with an '*')
[1]Preludium in G
[Sometimes it's best to just listen to the music of a band you like and never learn anything about the band themselves. Such is the case with RAHOWA, whose vocalist (George Burdi) was imprisoned for going against the system, and then got out and joined the very system he'd been fighting. I could never listen to this the same way, or appreciate it for that matter, after learning about this detestable fact. What a shame too, as this was a great album. Now... like a glass of wine with a fly in it. Not to mention the fly is covered in cyanide and ebola viruses!]
[inlay]
Label: Arctic Serenades Records
Date: 1995
Track listing: (favorites marked with an '*')
[1]Taarene*
[Here is one of my all-time favorite female vocalists. Funeral is a mixture of death metal vocals, which are also done superbly, and fantastic female vocals, full of somber emotion and atmosphere. The CD will always take me back to the fall of 1995. We used to listen to this a lot in the early days of Mourning the Ancient, while doing, or trying to do, our photography. This was like a soundtrack to those times. A rare and true masterpiece. Sentimentality aside, there's nothing better than this in the genre. Nothing!]
[CD back]
Label: Misanthropy Records
Date: 1995
Track listing: (favorites marked with an '*')
[1] Yearning the Seeds of a New Dimension*
[Here is a great release from this diverse band. The first track, 'Yearning the Seeds of a New Dimension' is classic!]
[CD back]
Label: Deaf Records
Date: 1992
Track listing: (favorites marked with an '*')
[1] The Dead Know Dreams
[Here is one of those bands where I only really like one song on the whole album, but that one song is awesome. Impaler was from England, and that's about the extent of my knowledge of this rather obscure death metal band.]
[CD back]
Label: Atlantic Records
Date: 1989
Track listing: (favorites marked with an '*')
[1] Time to Kill
[What metalhead didn't listen to Overkill growing up in the 80s/90s? Overkill used to always stop in Omaha for their tours, which seemed to be every summer. One concert was cancelled after something blew up and they couldn't continue the show, so they promised that they would return after their tour for a special show for everyone there, and they did. Overkill has created a handful of great tunes, but nothing compares to the legendary song 'Skullkrusher'. This is truly one of the coolest metal tracks ever made. Even further praise, it may even be on my list of the top ten songs of all time.]
[CD inlay]
Label: V7 Records
Date: 2006
Track listing: (favorites marked with an '*')
[1] Black Sun Rising*
[One of the more recent entries into this list, Cryptic Might is a new great for me. The song 'Black Sun Rising' is amongst my top faves of this list.]
[CD inlay]
-|-Back to Review List -|-
Page I
[2] Dreaming with the Dead
[3] Anti God*
[4] Glorious Depravity
[5] Beyond Humanity*
[6] Feeling Pleasure Through Pain
[7] Through the Skin to the Soul
[8] Rift of Hate*
[9] Deeper Demons
[10] Sickness of Will
[11] Chugging Pus*
[12] Seduction of the Innocent
[2] Rage Within*
[3] Embalmed Existence
[4] Smell of Blood
[5] Torture Chamber
[6] Eyes of Blind
[7] Test of Fate
[8] Pure Be Damned
[9] War Machine*
[2] Pad modly*
[3] Razdy z nas*
[4] Ritual
[5] Geniove*
[6] Cerna svatozar
[7] Vecny navrat
[8] Jama pekel*
[9] Zapalili jsme Onen svet
[10] Vykoupeni
[11] Utok*
You would never guess that this is one of black metal's greatest bands.]
[2] Among the Hills a Winding Way*
[3] I Don't Want, Sirs to Pester*
[4] A Dark Forest Spreads All Around
[5] That Magnificent Deer Has Vanished
[6] My Captain
[7] By the Misery of Fate I'm Haunted
[8] Oh, My Precious Sir
[9] Everything That Just on My Whim
[10] Glory Herr Hauptman
[11] Sucharda's Home
[2] Cattle Mutilation
[3] The Haunted
[4] Six Feet Under/Worms of the Earth
[5] Chained in the Attic
[2] Man Against Time*
[3] When America Goes Down*
[4] March of the Dead
[5] Hall of the Heroes*
[6] In the Fires of 1945*
[7] The Last Battalion
[8] Anvil of Crom
[9] Might is Right
[10] RAHOWA
[11] God is Dead*
[12] The Snow Fell*
[13] Ode to a Dying People
[2] Under Ebony Shades*
[3] Demise
[4] When Nightfall Clasps
[5] Moment in Black
[2] Heart of the Ages
[3] ...In the Woods
[4] Prologue
[5] Moments of...
[6] Epilogue
[7] Mourning the Death of Aase
[8] Wotan's Return
[9] Pigeon
[10] The Divinity of Wisdom
[2] Avowal to Hell
[3] Imminence of the Final Punishment
[4] Malignant Dreams
[5] Accursed Domain
[6] Internally Rotting
[7] Impaler of Souls
[8] Astral Corpse*
[9] Engulfed
[10] Total Carnage
[11] Repel your Faith
[2] Elimination*
[3] I Hate
[4] Nothing to Die For
[5] Playing with Spiders/Skullkrusher*
[6] Birth of Tension
[7] Who Tends the Fire
[8] The Years of Decay
[9] E.vil N.ever D.ies
[2] In Times of War
[3] Outlaw's Life
[4] Over the River (and Into the Trees)
[5] Circle of Blood
[6] Salute to the Princess
[7] The Watcher
[8] Curse of the Banshee
[9] Cleaning Flame
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