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Showing posts from March, 2022

Sinister - Hate (1995) Death Metal Review

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 The follow-up to 93's Diabolical Summoning, Hate delivers more top-notch 90's brutal death metal. The cover art is badass. It shows a horned-demon with multiple arms like a Hindu god (e.g. Kali) holding skull with nothing but the spine is attached as if he just performed a Mortal Kombat fatality. The demon stands a top a giant skeleton with a human in its mouth, reminiscent of Lucifer devouring Judas in Dante's Inferno. The album artwork perfectly encapsulates what the music on this album sounds like. Sick and brutal, heavy and violent. Sinister truly put the "death" in death metal! "Art of the Damned" is one of the best, it has killer thrashy guitar riffs and sick drumming by Aad Kloosterwaard. I think Mike van Mastrigt's vocals sound better on this album.  "18th Century Hellfire" has some of my favorite riffage on the album. This is the ideal death metal song! "To Mega Therion" is an excellent cover of extreme metal-pioneers Ce

Monster Voodoo Machine - Suffersystem (1994) Industrial Metal Review

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 I didn't find out about this 90's industrial band from Canada until relatively recently. Someone mentioned them in the comment section of a Fear Factory video and being a huge FF I had to check 'em out! Suffersystem was released in 1994. Source: discogs.com "Threat By Example" is an awesome track, it definitely reminds me of FF but it has a lot of hardcore punk influence too which I love. It also features a sound sample of the monster Anguirus from the Biotech is Godzilla series! "Motionless" is pretty heavy, sort of doomy like Black Sabbath. I don't care as much for the vocal style on this song.  "Inside These Walls" has some really awesome native-sounding drums which reminds me of Sepultura on their Roots album. It has some nice gang-shouts that remind me of 80's thrash though I suppose thrash was heavily influenced by hardcore punk and not the other way around. "Adding Insult to Injury" is a faster-paced thrashy sounding

Hath - All That Was Promised (2022) Metal Album Review Part 1

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Just released this year (2022), New Jeresy band Hath's All That Was Promised, delivers the promise of extreme metal, but how good is the metal? Read on to find out.  The cover art really reminds me of Slayer's 1988 album South of Heaven. Not just the skull, but the whole style.  Track one, "The Million Violations", begins with a soft intro that sounds like bagpipes before giving way to some nice clean electric guitar picking. By 40 secs the distorted guitar comes crashing in with "Battery" type vibes. But this isn't thrash metal, it is death metal with black metal influences, blackened death metal. Yet it is often doomy as well. A nice mixture, though maybe "nice" is an inappropriate word to describe music such as this. Next up is "Kenosis". I had never heard of this term before so I looked it up. In Christian theology it means the self-emptying of Jesus' own will, becoming entirely receptive to God's divine will. The song is

A Short History of Fear Factory in Video Game Soundtracks

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A Short History of Fear Factory in Video Games  Fear Factory's particular brand of techno-industrial nu-metal makes them absolutely perfect for video game soundtracks, so it comes as no surprise that they were featured in a verifiable shit-ton (scientific term) of video game soundtracks in the late 90's early 2000's. This is a short history of the video game soundtracks Fear Factory was featured in. 1997 - The first game to feature them was the computer game Carmageddon. It featured instrumental versions of three tracks off the masterpiece 1995 album Demanufacture, "Demanufacture" "Zero Signal" and "Body Hammer." I absolutely love these instrumentals, it really shows what great musicians Dino Cazeres, Christian Olde Wolbers, and drummer Raymond Herrera are!  1998 - In 1998, NFL Xtreme for Sony Playstation featured "Body Hammer." Test Drive Off-Road 2 (Test Drive 4X4), also for the Playstation, featured "Shock" from the newly

Sinister - Diabolical Summoning (1993) Death Metal Review

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 In 1993, Dutch death metal band Sinister, released their album "Diabolical Summoning" with the Nuclear Blast label and it is easily their best. The album has very eye-catching artwork which drew me to it. It reminds me of something out of the Mortal Kombat game series. I often played albums such as this one and Slayer's "Hell Awaits" while playing the game. Just great artwork and the music matches it. The opening track, "Sadistic Intent" (later to become a band name), is my favorite. It opens with a sick bassline before pummeling you with ultra-heavy guitars and guttural vocals. I'm not super big on "cookie monster" vocals but it works for the music here which is intense and played at breakneck speed. Actually, Mike van Mastrigt is above average for this type of vocal. I guess one could complain that all the songs sound the same, but to quote the Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonator from Austrian Death Machine's masterpiece album "

Slow Roosevelt - Weightless (2001) Rock/Metal Review

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  Slow Roosevelt are a criminally underrated band! They are just as good if not better than popular bands like Disturbed and Drowning Pool (who came from the same area apparently.) Yet despite being around during the same time period, they are virtually unknown. In fact, the only reason I know of this rare and obscure band is the anime Dragon Ball Z movie Broly: The Legendary Super Saiyan (2004), which also introduced me to Haji's Kitchen and Pantera. https://www.discogs.com/master/763454-Slow-Roosevelt-Weightless?image=15598708.SW1hZ2U6NzMyMjExMTU%3D Peter Thomas has some of the sickest vocals of any singer from the era. He can croon like a more mainstream artist but do metalesque screams similar to Mark Hunter of Chimaira, another band with a fantastic vocalist. Heavy, dark, emotional, catchy. Weightless is the perfect early 2000's hard rock album. This should have been blasting out of radios nationwide, it should have been featured in more movie and video game soundtracks

Chimaira - The Impossibility of Reason (2003) Metal Album Review

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 Everything comes together for Chimaira on this album. The juicy guitar tones, great riffs, pummeling drums and most especially Mark Hunter's excellent voice! He has one of the best growls in modern metal and I can't get enough of his vocals, so perfect for the music and much better than stereotypical "cookie monster" growls. By May be found at the following website: http://www.preisvergleich.org/pimages/Chimaira-The-Impossibility-Of-Reason_280__80010016861839727_20.jpg, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7661337 "Cleansation" is a perfect example of everything modern thrash should be. Although considering this album is nineteen years old I'm not sure if it can be considered "modern" anymore.  Andols Herrick shows off his killer drumming skills in the title track, opening with some sick double bass. Herrick is an underrated drummer, he's very talented. His drums are even more fantastic on their self-titled follow up album

Welcome to my blog

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  Welcome to my blog, Infernal Panzer-Typhoon Strider. The name doesn't mean anything in particular, it just sounds cool. Here I will mainly be reviewing music albums, mostly from the various sub-genres of metal. Many people get fixated on just one or two sub-genres (we all know that guy that only listens to black metal for example), but I enjoy of wide variety of rock and metal along with various other genres from classical to jazz. Metal robot via pixabay Computerizer. But metal is my passion and by far my favorite style of music. It's not for everyone and I respect that, but for me personally it is the best. Some of my favorite sub-genres are thrash, doom, and melodic death metal but I plan on covering almost every genre.  Here are a few of my favorite albums: Tales From The Thousand Lakes Adagio Born Too Late Demanufacture Heaven & Hell Ride the Lightning Painkiller