REVIEW SPECTRAL VOICE "SPARAGMOS"

Spectral Voice, the doom death band from Denver, Colorado, has now released their second album "Spragmos" via Dark Descent Records. Three quarters of the band's line-up also play in the much better-known Blood Incantation, who musically serve the opposite spectrum of death metal to Spectral Voice.The underground attitude is also clear from the fact that Spectral Voice doesn't yet have an official facebook presence, and other websites are also mercilessly out of date. So the music should speak for itself here, and the album booklet only shows vague outlines of the musicians, if at all. Very beneficial in the age of internet narcissism!

INTERVIEW UGRA KARMA

"Nepalese regard their mountains as sacred and have a high regard for everything the mountains provide: annual monsoons, fertile rivers and breathtaking beauty."

We in Europe, or more specifically here in Germany, are mostly confronted with bands from Northern or Central Europe, the USA or Australia, even Southern European bands are less on the radar, and South America is also less present. Now I am pleased to present Ugra Karma, a band from Nepal, based at the capital Kathmandu. Read for yourself what vocalist and bassist Sunil, who founded the band in 1999, has to say about death metal, the difficult early days of the band, mountaineering in the Himalayas, the caste system in Nepal and the serial killer Charles Sobhraj.

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INTERVIEW MASTER

The release of the strong new Master album "Saints Dispelled" provided a good opportunity to talk to Paul Speckmann about the new release as well as other topics.

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Hello Paul, how are you doing with the new record, is it a kind of relief when a work sees the light of day, people can buy it and you see the reactions? Or are you already totally experienced after all these years, so that it’s just routine? 

Sure it’s a relief when it’s finally released, considering the album was recorded nearly a year ago! Nothing is routine in the world of recording, it’s by far one of the best things in the world! We always have a blast recording! It’s killer to get your thoughts and ideas out on the market! It gives people a chance to read your thoughts on what’s happening in the crazy world around us at this moment. I use this platform to share my thoughts and ideas with the world, obviously not everyone is going to agree with all of them, but at least with a recording contract, it gives you a chance to put things out there!  

REVIEW MASTER "SAINTS DISPELLED"

Master have also honored us with a new album via Hmmerheart Records.The strong predecessor "Vincictive Miscreant" is already six years old, so it's high time for new Master material. Mr. Speckmann and his bandmates once again offer an insanely good mix of death and thrash metal, as only Master can. Even though Master's music is of course not innovative these days, which is not the band's aim at all, you can still recognize the band among legions of death metal bands, and that's pretty much the highest compliment you can pay an extreme metal band, which on a spontaneous consideration on my part only applies to a maximum of two dozen bands. 

REVIEW DROWNED "PROCUL HIS"

Berlin-based Drowned, who have been up to mischief in the underground since 1992 but didn´t release their debut album "Idola Specus" until 2014 after a few great demos and a 7" single, have now released their second album "Procul His".  Like its predecessor, this happens via Sepulchral Voice Records. This label, known for sinister, extreme, authentic and primal underground metal, seems to fit perfect for the band. Drowned don't do anything special per se, but this they do in a perfect manner: they play ancient death metal that sometimes playfully changes tempo or repeats melodies longer than the average metal song.

REVIEW MESSIAH "CHOIR OF HORRORS"

Messiah's third album "Choir of Horrors" from 1991, released on the legendary Noise Records label, represented a quantum leap for the band after the two predecessors "Hymn to Abramelin" and "Extremely cold weather" and also can be considered as a milestone in extreme music in general. The album, which features a cover artwork that is as atmospheric as it is terrifying, starts with monk chants before the death/thrash sounds kick in. Singer Andy Kaina, who sadly passed away last year, impresses with aggressive yet accentuated and intelligible vocals, while the band varies well between different tempos, especially the dragged out parts work well.

REVIEW DEINONYCHUS "THE SILENCE OF DECEMBER"

This is a truly impressive monster of an album, the likes of which are not unleashed on mankind every day. It's about the debut album "The silence of december" by Deinonychus from the Netherlands, released in the distant year 1995. I still remember a review of the album in some magazine in which the reviewer expressed his enthusiasm for these ominous sounds. By the way, if my memory does not deceive me, Behemoth's debut album "Sventevith-Storming near the baltic" was also reviewed in the same issue.

But this is supposed to be about Deinonychus, who were already playing a special role in the second wave of black metal, which was just exploding, as the majority of the acts at that time were increasingly oriented towards Norwegian black metal and were traveling in much faster realms or, under the impression of the success of Cradle of Filth's debut album "The principle of evil made flesh", began to move into more moderate soundscapes, whereby the peak of the sometimes unspeakably Gothic bombast "black metal" would not be reached until a few years later.