It´s been a while since I heard any of Nothgards previous albums, but I remember them as good but nothing special. Now they are back with their fourth studio album entitled ´Malady X´, after having signed a multi album deal with Metal Blade Records earlier this year. The style is pretty much the same as before, which means melodic death metal with a technical edge, but it feels like...

Three years have passed since Trond Holter released his excellent rock opera Dracula - Swing Of Death, featuring Jørn Lande on vocals. The original plan was to leave Swing Of Death as a one-off project, but the success following it's release convinced Holter to start working on a follow up. The result is finally here in the shape of Vlad The Impaler. Vlad, also known as Vlad Dracula was...

It´s been a while since I last listened to Sirenia, or any other female fronted sympho/goth bands to be honest. I was a fan of the genre years ago, but it came to a point were too many bands sounded more or less the same and then I lost intrest in the genre. Sirenia has existed since the beginning of the new millenium and their name has always been...

Obscura´s 2009 album ´Cosmogenisis´is in my opinion a milestone within the technical death metal genre, and it´s still frequently played at my home. The next two albums following ´Cosmogenesis´were both solid albums, but didn´t offer quite the same quality when it came to the song material. Obsura has seen lots of line-up changes over the years with Stefan Kummerer as the only one left from the original line-up, but...

I stumbled over The Artifice Precept more or less by accident, and there's not much information to be found about this band around the internet either. But as far as I understand they are heading form US and 'Premonition' is their debut album, or it's probably more correct to say EP since it's seven tracks in total clocks in on around 25 minutes. Don't let that scare you from...

For more than a decade French technical death metal act Gorod has been a force to count on within the genre, and now they are back with their sixth full lenght album entitled Æthra. Even though their mucical skills and abilities are undisputable, some critics have questioned their song writing abilities over the years and I tend to agree that it might have been the bands achilles heel on...

'The Burning Cold' is the eighth full lenght album from Finish melodic death metal veterans Omnium Gatherum, yet their first for Century Media Records and also the first with new drummer Tuomo Latvala. Omnium Gatherum is probably one of the most underestimated bands within this genre, but hopfully 'The Burning Cold' and their new partnership with Century Media will see a change to that. I was never 100 %...

'Purgatorio' is the title of the third full lenght album from Sweden's, Gothenburg based heavy metal/power metal band Manimal and it's definitely one to look out for if you're a fan of the genre. I enjoyed some of the material on their first two albums, but this new one is, at least to my ears, their best and most consistent work to date. While the first two albums tended...

To be honest I can´t remember having heard Dragonlord before, but to my defence it has to be added that black metal haven´t exactly been my main focus in the later years. Howerver, Dragonlord is the black metal side project of Testament guitarist Eric Peterson with Alex Bent (Trivium) and Lyle Livingston (Psypheria, ex-Enthroned) on keys and orchestration alongside him. From what I have read the first two albums...

Pennsylvania based death metal act Outer Heaven makes their first mark upon the earth with´Realms Of Eternal Decay´, and I like what I hear from this very solid debut. There´s nothing revolutionary about Outer Heaven to be honest, but what they do offer is a little more than thirty minutes of honest, pure quality death metal. It´s old school inspired, it´s nasty and uptempo but yet catchy and groovy...