Demon Lung: A Dracula (2015)

When I read the title A Dracula I couldn't help but chuckle. Any time someone refers to vampires as draculas, yeah, that's an old joke by now, but sometimes the best jokes are properly aged. I don't suspect they meant it as a joke here, but it is a joke.

Yes, it's time again for my quarterly female-fronted doom metal review. I don't plan it that way, but that's pretty much the rate that I'm

Aelter: IV: Love Eternal (2015)

Aelter IV: Love Eternal LP by Aelter

Aelter is a side project of Wolvserpent guitarist/vocalist Blake Green, and on paper it seems like something I should really like. It's gothic, atmospheric rock made by someone who knows how to write really long songs that are enjoyable. And it's on Pesanta Urfolk, a label that's always fascinating even if not everything they release is great.

It's

Pale Chalice: Negate the Infinite and Miraculous (2015)

It has been observed many times—including by me—that the term “black metal” has become increasingly vague over the years. Are we talking about atmospheric music? Something epic and woodsy? Artistic and weird? Blistering, cold, boneheaded?

Pale Chalice, though: They embody black metal as it is today. The combine the weird, epic artistry of bands like Agalloch with a blistering, concise approach

Jason W. Walton: Mara (2015)

After seeing Agalloch live last year, they instantly catapulted from being merely a band I like and respect to being one of my five favorite active bands. So of course I wanted to check out the bassist's solo project.

Jason W. Walton's Mara is purportedly about his experience with sleep paralysis, which by all accounts is a horrifying thing. Two short tracks go from one of a muted dread to an

Årabrot: You Bunch of Idiots (2015 EP)

I first heard Årabrot after they generated buzz for their 2011 album Solar Anus. I was flabbergasted—I’m sure that’s the only word for it. I kind of like to be flabbergasted. But unfortunately, I wasn’t impressed. Luckily, I gave them another go with their self-titled record two years later, and it snaked its way under my skin.

The You Bunch of Idiots EP is just what I hoped the Norwegian noise

My Silent Wake: Damnatio Memoriae (2015)

I make a big deal about not caring what a band believes, professes, or puts into their lyrics. Nonetheless, I’m still pulling for Christian bands to make solid music, because sometimes I feel pretty lonely as a Christian in the metal world. To that end, I started watching My Silent Wake several years ago, but they fell off my radar for the past few releases.

Their latest effort, Damnatio

Coal Chamber: Rivals (2015)

Regression and Defense, Or: Nostalgia Is Big Business These DaysI've recently begun lifting weights with my neighbor on a regular basis. The stereotype these days is that dudes listen to Godsmack when they're lifting weights, and that's not far from the truth. You see, he likes a lot of the stuff I was listening to 12 or more years ago. We take turns in control of the music, but I'm conscious of

Psycroptic: Psycroptic (2015)

The last time I checked in with Kids These Days—and by that I mean, budding, young metalheads on the more well-traveled parts of the metal blogosphere—they were really into technical metal. That was a while ago, but it seemed like every other band MetalSucks was going on about was a technical death metal band. I went through a brief phase of this obsession myself in my late 20’s,* but then

Black Witchery / Revenge: Holocaustic Death March to Humanity's Doom (2015)

Black Witchery is one of the finest bands in metal right now. What they play is furious, uncompromising black/death that can singe your ass hair all the way from their Floridian den, no matter how far away you manage to get. This is what some call bestial black metal, or war metal. As they say, war is not going to win any beauty pageants. and bestiality is something reserved for only a few

Coffins: Perpetual Penance (Compilation 2015)

Regurgitated Guts, Japanese StyleReview by joanismylover, the third metal attorney.

My father is retired U.S. Air Force. From 1982 to 1985 our family served along side him in Tampa, Florida, at MacDill AFB. I spent the beginning of my "formative years" in the bloody sewage where death metal was just being [re]born. My buddy at Booker T. Washington 7th Grade school was - he claimed - good

False: untitled (2015)

False is serious black metal. This Minneapolis band isn't playing riffs to make you bang your head and lose your shit. You couldn't possibly keep up, anyway. No, they're playing epic hymns to something untoward, something that experiences time and space more fully than we do.

On their 2015 untitled full-length, the pace is almost entirely fast. It's played and produced in such a way that it's