Best of 2018
Nicholas Franco's Top 40 Albums of 2018
Read what our reviewer Nicholas picked for his 40 (FORTY) favorite albums of 2018!
Nicholas Franco's Posts
Reviews
Album Review: SATAN Cruel Magic
If you are a fan of heavy metal music, it’s certainly a great time to be alive. We are in…
Reviews
Album Review: LYCHGATE - The Contagion In Nine Steps
Lurking behind the wall of trends and polished tides of sound are bands whose output dwells within stranger realms—unattached to…
Best of 2017
Nicholas' Top 40 Albums of 2017
Another year is just about in the books. As the world teeters further and further toward the chasm of total…
Reviews
Album Review: RAM Rod
One thing RAM has had a knack for and continues to sharpen is their ability to craft really hooky vocal lines and memorable melodies, placed perfectly within their rollicking tapestry of both shredding and classic metal sound. On Rod, these elements are once more synthesized into an enjoyable whole.
Reviews
Album Review: MOONSPELL 1755
If a heavy metal album could carry a listener into the very crucible of calamity, it is 1755
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Album Review: TAU CROSS Pillar of Fire
When the beloved Amebix called it quits after a brief reformation, Rob 'The Baron' Miller resurrected the feeling of his…
Reviews
Album Review: SKYCLAD Forward Into The Past
orward Into The Past may not be quite as immediately edgy or catchy as efforts past, but after it has had time to ruminate within the skull of the listener, it grows some solid roots.
Reviews
Album Review: NIDINGR The High Heat Licks Against Heaven
The High Heat Licks Against Heaven blends its disparate elements into an absorbing listen, and as such makes it one of the stronger releases of the (still) new year.
Reviews
Album Review: ABORYM Shifting.Negative
Aborym has always been a band swathed in black metal wrapping paper that, once torn open with the zeal of a child on their birthday, often reveals many more facets going on underneath.
Best of 2016
Nicholas Franco's Top 25 of 2016
Music is a drug, some say. I would go a bit farther and suggest that music is the drug. Its…
Reviews
Album Review: INSOMNIUM Winter's Gate
Winter's Gate is very carefully wrought; it envelops the listener like the blazing hearth-fire in some long-ago Nordic hall.
Reviews
Album Review: INQUISITION Bloodshed Across The Empyrean Altar Beyond The Celestial Zenith
Album number seven sees Inquisition both pushing for new horizons while also showing signs of growing a bit too comfortable with their own formula
Reviews
Album Review: THE VISION BLEAK The Unknown
The Vision Bleak continue their successful ways with another solid, memorable, if not completely spectacular album to add to their growing discography.
Black Metal History Month
In The Left Field of Satan – A Look At The Weirder Black Metal Bands
Black metal may have been birthed within the frozen winter landscapes of Scandinavia, but it was only an eye blink…
Best of 2015
Nicholas' Top 30 Albums of 2015
Well its that time of year again, loyal readers. As you race to find gifts for relatives who mostly annoy…
Reviews
Album Review: SECRETS OF THE MOON Sun
With a history stretching back to 1995, Ösnabruck, Germany's occult masters Secrets of the Moon have managed, over the course of five full-lengths and a host of splits and EP's, to cast a long shadow over the murky world of black metal.
Reviews
Album Review: KHORS The Flame of Eternity's Decline
Their debut full-length, The Flame of Eternity's Decline, first saw life in 2005 via Oriana Music, and helped to solidify Khors as a force to be reckoned with. Now, ten years later, the band is re-releasing that first cold breath on Svarga Music, remixed and remastered and ready to turn some heads.
Reviews
Album Review: HOODED MENACE Darkness Drips Forth
Hooded Menace incorporates some rocking parts before a wash of distortion heralds a trippy instrumental departure, showcasing the diversity of sound that elevates them above many of their contemporaries plying this style.
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Album Review: GRAVE Out of Respect For The Dead
Along with Dismember, Unleashed, and Entombed, Grave stands for a sound that was birthed and perfected in Sweden. Unfailingly loyal to the genre, Lindgren seems to have gotten whatever experimental urges he may have felt out of his system back in the middle of the 1990's, as did so many extreme musicians. Since those days, each Grave album has sounded quite similar to the one before it.
Reviews
Album Review: KILLING JOKE Pylon
London, England's venerable and vicious Killing Joke is a band that, arguably, has been coming so close to its classic era of late that it is at the very least equaling, if not slightly surpassing, its own long-ago rise to stardom.
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Album Review: LYCHGATE An Antidote For The Glass Pill
As much Liszt as Limbonic Art, Lychgate combine the avant-garde leanings of unconventional time signatures, classical music, but build each level onto a harsh black metal foundation.
Reviews
Album Review: MYRKUR M
o dismiss this record because of the specious, irrelevant claims of the do-nothings who have detracted it is utter foolery. M is a triumph of sound both savage and graceful, created with the utmost care and dedication.