Austria’s Mastic Scum recently celebrated their twentieth anniversary, but the energy the members inject in their songs are far away from ‘guys being old’. The band has always been one of my favourite Alpine Grind / Death combos, with a hand full of great releases on their discography, appearing every three or four years.
I was enormously surprised by last year’s full length Uljas Uusi Maailma, Kuolemanlaakso’s debut for Svart Records. This new material was written and recorded under the same constellation and under the same moon, with producer / engineer Victor Santura taking care of the studio duties once more. And it was a correct decision to have all this stuff released as two different releases, the full album and this EP (on CD and vinyl, in both cases strictly limited).
Next year, Sweden’s Exhale (with former and current members of e.g. Anata, Inevitable End, Miseration, Cipher System or Age Of Woe) will celebrate their tenth anniversary. But first they wanted to release their third full length, after Prototype (2006, Emetic Records) and Blind (2010, Dark Balance Records).
Drugs Of Faith are a trio from North Virginia that did surprise me with their 2011 full length Corroded. On Poland’s Selfmadegod Records, Drugs Of Faith delivered different other brutal sonic attacks, which were well received within the Grindcore-undergrounds all over our detesting globe. The band was formed ten years ago by Richard Johnson, whom you might know as well from bands like Enemy Soil or Agoraphobic Nosebleed.
Finland’s Demilich were an important name during the earliest nineties. Their demo tapes got distributed all over Europe and abroad, and in 1993, Necropolis released the band’s debut full studio recording, Nespithe. This album has been re-issued a couple of times in the past, both officially and bootlegged, by the way. The band broke up a little later, and reformed in 2005 for a couple of months.
Kaotoxin recently started a kind of interactive promotional outlet, called Kaotoxin SideBlasts Series. It can be considered some kind of free crowd funding, meant to unleash side-projects of Kaotoxin recording artists (cf. bio). There is a specific goal, a number of visitors that can buy a digital download of a recording, and when this goal has been reached, the actual physical release of that very same stuff will be made available. In meantime, the label is listing all supporters … on a dedicated Facebook page (cf.
I have no idea why this stuff was part of another big pile of new releases that came my way.
Agony Face are an Italian band that were formed in 2006 by Riccardo Ricotti (g), Alessandro Uberti (g) and Davide Guarinoni (v).
Without any doubt, the duo Ævangelist (multi-instrumentalist, composer, lyricist, producer, engineer and mixer Matron Thorn and vocalist / lyricist / music co-writer / co-engineer Ascaris) created (one of) my absolute 2012-Number One-album (s) De Masticatione Mortuorum In Tumulis (via I, Voidhanger Records).
I never hided my appreciation for the French Black / Death Metal scene, and one of the (many) reasons is called Temple Of Baal. For more than a decade, they do please my aural organs with hateful and unholy blasphemy. And still via the excellent Agonia-label, the band (Amduscias, Arkdaemon and Skvm; in mean time joined by Cruxifiction’s Saroth) returns with the fourth full length, which lasts for about an hour.
