Author Archives: Old Disgruntled Bastard

Teitanblood – Death (2014)

Posted on November 7, 2019

Teitanblood came to notoriety with Seven Chalices ten years ago, an album though harsh compared to its contemporaries still containing enough nods to conventional death metal tropes. All that went out of the window with 2014’s Death; on this album, … Continue reading →

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Ossuarium – Living Tomb (2019)

Posted on November 1, 2019

Ossuarium demonstrate the existential crisis that has beset many new death metal bands. Like bargain-bin patchwork quilt, their influences cover the gamut of popular stylings in contemporary metal: from cavern-core dissonance to ambient tinkerings to somewhat bathetic transformations into Candlemass-lite … Continue reading →

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Garroted – Of Damnation And Abyssal Terrors EP (2018)

Posted on August 30, 2019

Roiling, churning, riff-intense progressive death metal is what Garroted play on this their second recording. The band should be praised for overcoming the distractedly frenzied nature of debut demo In The Court Of Nyarlathotep; the new songs have an equally … Continue reading →

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Ares Kingdom – By The Light Of Their Destruction (2019)

Posted on August 20, 2019

By The Light Of Their Destruction On their new album, Ares Kingdom have traded the anthemic qualities of their first three albums for a deliberately spacier and obscure sound. Appropriately, the band has mined its own past for inspiration; as … Continue reading →

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Norman Mailer’s The Naked And The Dead

Posted on August 18, 2019

Published in 1948, Norman Mailer’s debut novel The Naked And The Dead remains an incisive depiction of the soldier’s state of mind. The book is set on an island in the Pacific theater, as the United States tried to roll … Continue reading →

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Deathspell Omega – The Furnaces Of Palingenesia (2019)

Posted on August 14, 2019

Deathspell Omega‘s new album is an Orwellian critique of today’s ideological Left presented as an address from would-be demagogues to their cadres. Some may say that the band’s commentary can be applied to either side of the political spectrum, that … Continue reading →

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Randy Rhoads and the Diary of a Madman

Posted on August 11, 2019

Ozzy Osbourne’s first four albums, and especially the two with Randy Rhoads, present a strange dilemma for metalheads. While they resuscitated Osbourne’s flagging career after being dumped from Black Sabbath, and though they are fondly remembered for Rhoads’ contributions to … Continue reading →

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The obscurity sweepstakes

Posted on August 9, 2019

All metalheads want their favorite bands to be suitably obscure, hidden away from the mainstream. Deathspell Omega remain steadfastly aloof, giving a grand total of two interviews in fifteen years, both couched in arcane references; their music, as it is, … Continue reading →

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Prosanctus Inferi – Pulpit Sycophants (Demo, 2019)

Posted on August 8, 2019

Prosanctus Inferi return after five years with a collection of demos in anticipation of a proper full length later in the year. No other contemporary band in death metal has quite managed to capture the idea of music as blasphemy … Continue reading →

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Argus – From Fields of Fire (2017)

Posted on May 26, 2019

They say swans are some of the only creatures to choose a lifelong partner and that when one among them dies, the other doesn’t live long after. How does either member of a couple that has grown old together cope … Continue reading →

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