Infernal Panzer Typhoon Strider

 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...

 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 ...

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...

 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 ...