REVIEW SOULSTORM "DARKNESS VISIBLE"

This time I'm presenting an album that I discovered by chance while on vacation in Tenerife at the local record store called Rock Shop in Santa Cruz, a remarkable little store by the way. It's about the Canadian Soulstorm, more precisely from Toronto, who celebrate an absolutely outstanding mixture of industrial and death metal on their debut album from 1992 called “Darkness visible”, so a band member wore Grave shirts in band photos. Of course, Pitch Shifter and Godflesh and the early Fear Factory were the main inspiration here, but the band around mastermind, guitarist, bassist and singer Nick Sagias really didn't have to hide behind their quality and compositional skills in any way. However, because of the vocals, the pendulum often swings more in the direction of death metal, although there are also one or two clean vocal parts that bring back memories of Fear Factory.

INTERVIEW MANDATORY

"When I personally think back to the last really great death metal records from Germany, whose songs I can always remember, I can only think of Morgoth's "Odium" and the debut album by Crack Up, which was released twelve years ago."

Here is an interview with German old school death metal outfit Mandatory, which I conducted in 2007. Bandleader and guitarist Sascha Beselt talks about the German death metal scene in an interesting way- from a music-historical point of view alone this interview is interesting. The new wave of German death metal bands - names such as Chapel of Disease, Lifeless, Slaughterday, Arroganz, Sulphur Aeon, Wound or Revel in Flesh, many of which were or are still based at the busy label F.D.A. Records - only started a few years later. The album "Adrift Beyond" announced here was finally released in 2010 via the renowned Spanish label Xtreem Music, and in 2012 the band released their previously unreleased debut album "Ripped from the tomb" from 2003. Nothing has happened on Mandatory's Facebook profile since 2015, so the band is probably no longer active, even if there was never an official break-up. Looking back, you might think that Mandatory should perhaps have stayed active with their old-school sound for a few more years in order to gain more attention in the course of the aforementioned revival of more traditional sounds. But be that as it may, enjoy this little trip back in time to an era when most bands were still on Myspace instead of Facebook.

REVIEW DEFECTED DECAY "TROOPS OF ABOMINATION"

Defected Decay from Hattingen in the southern Ruhr area were founded in the summer of 2019. After their debut album "Kingdom of Sin", "Troops of Abomination" is the second work of this duo, which is also active with Suffersystem. Before that, they were musically active with Resurrected, a permanent institution in the underground, and Dark Before Dawn. 

REVIEW CELESTIAL SANCTUARY "MASS EXTINCTION"

So, here we go with another release from Brutal Cave Productions, this time a 2-track demo by Celestial Sanctuary (named after a Bolt Thrower-song from "The IVth Crusade) from Cambridge, England.