Reviews Posts

The cover of Despised Icon’s new record Shadow Work features a protagonist wearing his lower jaw as a crown, which is the best possible illustration of what listening to Shadow Work feels like. The meaning of the painting…

No rest for the wicked that are the members of the Montreal based extreme metal outfit Cryptopsy. Just twenty-one months after dropping the Juno Award winning As Gomorrah Burns, Cryptopsy re-emerges from the darkness to unleash their ninth full-leng…

You don’t choose to listen to goregrind as much as it chooses you as a listener. It’s a subgenre of metal so cutthroat and uncompromising that it’s primarily enjoyed by people who are cutthroat and uncompromising about art. Melodic…

Death, taxes and one to three new Full of Hell recordings every year. These are the three things human beings can count on. The fact that the Maryland-based quintet will not go twelve months without releasing new music is the only real cer…

‘‘A beautiful rock opera that presents Devin’s vison about life and the human beings! An impressive and emotional piece of music with brilliant musicians’’-Phil 2Vitesses from Whispers From The Void Podcast

Collaborative records have become a more prevalent practice over the last decade or so, thanks to bands like Full of Hell and The Body who have kind of made it a thing that they do. Such creative hybrids are captivating for open minded met…

Sound the alarms, we have another one-man band wreaking havoc in the underground! Marrowomb is a new project via multi-instrumentalist Frank Lato. Lato hails from Chicago and has been a part of the metal scene for over ten years. Lato’s experi…

Few things in life are for certain: death, taxes and Denmark churning out some of the most soul crushing extreme metal are ones you can hang your hat on. For such a small country, it is ripe with amazing bands: Undergang, Konvent, Chaotian and Foeto…

Harakiri for the Sky has never fit any pre-established label. They’re too diverse and expansive (and accessible?) to be straight post-black metal, but their sound is also too harsh to be called straight post-rock or shoegaze, they blend…

Massachusetts-based heirs to the sludge metal throne Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean released their first full length in six years in 2023 and it was fucking awesome. Obsession Destruction was heavier, lengthier, more relentles…

At this moment, there is no other band in black metal that is hotter or hungrier than Portugal’s Gaerea. Gaerea burst onto the scene in 2018 with their debut album Unsettling Whispers. It was heavy not only musically but also emotionally. This…

When Blood Incantation released their blippity-boop space ambient EP Timewave Zero in 2022, I felt like the only person in the universe that went like: “Hell yeah, this is great!” Metalheads around the world were confu…

Todd Jones is an angry man and he has impossibly high standards for anything wrathful. Even though he obliterated our psyches with some of the most skull crushing riffs of all-time in legendary beatdown hardcore outfit Terror early in his career, it…

Over the past few years, melodic death metal has seen a resurgence. While the veterans like Dark Tranquillity, In Flames, Insomnium, and Amon Amarth are still churning out new music and touring the globe, there seems to have been a resurgence, espec…

"The French satanists are back with grandiose black metal! Melody and brutality with a touch revolution describe greatly this album!"- Whispers From The Void Podcast

I have weird beliefs about inconsequential and thoroughly apolitical stuff. For example, I sincerely think that extreme music should have an element of danger to it. I’m not talking about life-or-death stuff like old school Mayhem, but extreme…

"An awesome doom gothic album by the OG of Swedish doom metal ! Big doom energy punching you relentlessly!"- Whispers From The Void Podcast

Grindcore is having a moment. Once regarded as a purgatory for the stinkiest, most disorganized and belligerent punks, it has become a hub for metal creativity over the last seven years or so through the emergence of bands like Full of Hell,&nb…

Greetings my fellow denizens of darkness! As the winter approaches here in the Southern Hemisphere, thought it would be a good opportunity to give you a snapshot of some of my favourite releases of 2024 so far in a new Vox and Hops segment I&rsq…

Maurice de Jong is the most interesting man in extreme music. Primarily known for his experimental black metal project Gnaw Their Tongues, he’s been involved with about 42 different projects that range from the most savage and tormented s…

If you have been following Vox&Hops for the past few years, you know how much Matt and I loved Dvne’s 2021 release Etemen Ænka. We both had it slotted in at number 2 of our top 10 and if it had not been for Worm and the magnificent F…

Full of Hell are never where you expect them. The Maryland-based grindcore outfit released no less than three records last year, none of them entirely their own: collaborations with doom metal titans Primitive Man and the darkest shoe…

Early in 2023, I found a release that had me really intrigued. A Yiddish black metal project by the name of Akloleh. I had seen so many types of black metal but never Yiddish. I immediately hit play and was totally blown away by it. Was it a bit rou…

When a popular band reaches the legacy era of their career, they don’t even have to release any new records. They can tour with the songs they already have until they shuffle off their mortal coils and no one’s gonna care. Would you be p…