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Dan Davis's Posts

Reviews

Album Review: CHELSEA WOLFE Hiss Spun

Posted by | September 19, 2017

Pure metal fans may not enjoy Hiss Spun’s icy cocktail of deeply distorted alternative rock, folk, and electronics, but anyone willing to step just a few inches outside their comfort zone will find a whole new creepy world to explore.

Reviews

Album Review: LOTUS THIEF Gramarye

Posted by | September 23, 2016

It's fair to debate Lotus Thief's classification as metal, but metal's arcane soul and depth of spirit are undeniably present, and anyone with a true appreciation of those elements should find nothing but joy and ecstasy in Gramarye.

Reviews

Album Review: ABBATH Abbath

Posted by | February 2, 2016

Seeing as how done Abbath sounded in 2009, I wasn’t sure what to expect from his eponymous debut. Given that he was the primary creative force behind both of his last two projects, how much difference could a name change really make?

Reviews

Album Review: SKEPTICISM Ordeal

Posted by | September 17, 2015

Despite outlasting their Finnish brethren, who split up shortly after Stream, Skepticism haven’t exactly been the most prolific dudes on the planet. Ordeal is just their fifth full-length album, and the first since 2008, but considering how dense each of their albums are, it’s understandable. It takes time to accumulate as much mass as Skepticism drops on your head with every release.

Reviews

Album Review: PENTAGRAM Curious Volume

Posted by | August 26, 2015

You could easily look at Pentagram and see a band whose true value lies not in their music but in their rich, well-documented mythology and the too-fucked-up-to-be-real persona of bug-eyed front man and immortal elf Bobby Liebling. You might think that in a case like that, a band’s actual music just sort of has to exist. Not so bad that you notice but not so good or interesting that it creates actual expectations for them as artists.

Reviews

Album Review: CHELSEA WOLFE Abyss

Posted by | August 19, 2015

Chelsea Wolfe has been on a lot of metal fans’ radars for this very same reason. While her droning, ghost-eyed and occasionally blackened (in the loosest sense) neo-folk could rarely be called “metal” it’s heavy as hell in spirit

Reviews

Album Review: OBSEQUIAE Aria of Vernal Tombs

Posted by | May 19, 2015

Minnesota metal troupe Obsequiae’s 2011 debut, Suspended in the Brume of Eos, was a gift from the Metal Gods that deftly managed to satisfy two of the greatest needs of its time. First off, it was a very, very good melodic death metal record at a time when that genre had been written more or less written off. More impressively, it was a quality folk metal album that managed to be catchy and accessible without leaning on eye-roll-inducing genre tropes like fiddles and beer hall chants

Black Metal History Lists Ranked

Ranked: IMMORTAL's Albums From Least To Most Grim & Kvlt

Posted by | February 23, 2015

It's easy to see why Immortal were one of the first black metal bands to achieve tangible mainstream success. They didn't really sing about Satan for one thing (something that no doubt made them more marketable), and Abbath's unparalleled skill with grim but wickedly catchy riffs made them easier to digest for people with a budding interest in black metal.