Ivan Tibos.

In almost fifteen years of raison d’être, Portland, Oregon-based project Toxic Holocaust released a handful of studio releases that undersigned does appreciate enormously.

Tombstoned are a pretty young act (formed in 2010) from Finland that now debut with a self-called full length studio recording (forty seven minutes for six tracks). Last year the trio self-released a two-track EP, which drew the attention of Svart Records, with this full album as first result of their co-operation.

I was very pleased with what Italian band Stigma (the one from Piedemonte, of course) did in the past. Albums like When Midnight Strikes! and Concerto For The Undead (both of them released via Pivotal Recordings, in respectively 2008 and 2010; reviews updated on respectively 18/04/10 and 21/12/10 in this site’s Archives-section) were honoured by positive reviewing taken care of by undersigned ;-).

It was sad to learn that Australian top-commando Nocturnal Graves broke up in 2010, for this band was known for that typifying Aussie-styled Blast-Death violence. But dry your tears of blood, semen and mucus, and behold… …From The Bloodline Of Cain! Are Nocturnal Graves’ representatives descendants of Cain himself, with all forbidden pleasures once emerged? The past aural efforts do balance my opinion towards a positive answer, and this new album (thank the Horned One for this filthy resurrection!) won’t contradict.

King Fear are the brain child of guitar player Mål Dæth. After he wrote some stuff that differed from his main project, Bullbar, he recruited Eisenvater’s Johannes Bonnin and Negator / Dark Funeral frontman Nachtgarm to take part of the finalisation of the new material he created.

(intro based on my review of last year’s Bereue Nichts-album; for full review: see update within the Archives, posted on October 31^st 2012)

Bordeaux… I do appreciate some of the wines coming from that era, even though not every sub-region out there can completely please me (I am a connoisseur-amateur, with a profound passion for wines and distillates, but that’s another story). However, there’s another Bordeaux-based existence I do appreciate enormously: Year Of No Light. This band was formed at the beginning of this century and they did record a handful of highly acceptable releases with a mostly breath-taking atmosphere.

Markradonn are an Orlando, Florida based project by Haniel Adhar (g, v, b, production, engineering, mix, music and lyrics). He wrote a couple of songs that are based on the Floridian-styled Death Metal scene, but created with a completely different, unique angle. Done with the assistance of several session and guest musicians, his first studio result under the Markradonn-moniker, called Final Dying Breath, turns out to be a Death Metal-oriented form of Extreme Music incorporated with (cf.

The New York City-based act Imperial Triumphant was formed in 2005 by two guys who were active within the Death Metal scene especially (Malignancy and Pyrrhon, for those who care).

Down Among The Dead Men (question: named after the so-called The Lord Weird Slough Feg 2000-record, or the eighteenth-century John Dyer song; there are a couple of scriptures (i.e. books, novels, stories) too with this moniker, by the way) is a new project, which shamelessly can be labelled as ‘super-group’. Why? Because of the members. Down Among The Dead Men were formed by two extremely skilled and well-known Extreme Metal musicians (both of them wrote the music for this first album).