HOODED MENACE - Eyeless Horde 7" EP

Doom/Death from Finland. With a heavy Cathedral/Paradise Lost/Depravity touch, great grunting vokills and an obvious passion for flicks by Amando De Ossorio. I'm not really a fan of doom/death but this I like a lot. Probably one of the best 7" EPs I stumbled upon last year. Both releases, this 7" EP and the full lengt LP are out on Doomentia rec. For the digital version of the long play LP stop by at Billy Nocera's label. I forgot the name of it... Highly recommended shit.

HERESI - Psalm I MCD / MLP

Unique sounding material coming from Skamfer. Three great tunes with no real riffs. Only strings...pretty odd for metal yet really good. The vocals are just fantastic. Fuckin' pissed off growls straight from hell. This MLP I prefer much more than the full lenght album. You can't really go for fillers on a three-track recording. Essential orthodox metal. ( They call it orthodox, don't they?)

INFERNAL (Swe) - Summon Forth The Beast MCD

As a big fan of Dark Funeral's debut MCD I instantly got into this. There are actually 2 Infernal songs here that slay most of D.F.'s stuff after that debut. Guitars here were still like D.F. but the speed was up. The drums sound like triggered but still this is one hell of release. Damn good songs. The three additional tunes are covers which are done really good btw, but these not all too importaint in my oppinion. The first two songs simply kill!

MIDNIGHT - Complete and Total Fucking Midnight dbl LP / CD

This is a fun compilation from a band that really draws every bit of their sound from the heavy/punk genre of the 80's. Bought it for the fuck's sake from NWN! and what I got was pure Venom worship with tons of punk riffs and a singer who I thought sounded like Fearless Iranians From Hell -guy a lot. There's whole lot of those 80's type of lyrics. Call it rude, primitive, innocent, tounge-in-cheek whatever but with titles like "All Hail Hell" , "Long Live Death" and "Take You To Hell" I really hope you know what I mean.

Mostly 3-minute long old-school heavymetal songs and a few cover songs are present here. Covers being of few less-expected bands. I must admid I haven't heard too many, if any, covers of Girlschool nor Scarab in past decades yet the one I'm pointing out being the most unexpected is probably "Eyes of Satan" by  The Pagans.  A great raw 70's punk tune by one of Ohio's oldest & meanest punk bands. Midnight is not the first in a row to carry the torch of Ohio's underground music mark but, even so, more than 30 years after the Pagans wrote that tune, Midnight does a cool gesture reminding us where they are coming from. I was really positively suprised.

Anyway if you're into real nasty Venom-esque heavymetal/punk smeared with raw analogue production you might want to give this a spin. I say, Hail Midnight!

FLUISTERWOUD - Langs Galg En Rad LP / CD

Good Dutch Black Metal sort of like newer Funeral Winds. Straight ahead and even groovy at times. There is some but not too much of melody here, which suits me fine since I'm kind of fed up with wannabe BM melos that's been poisioning the genre. This band i found about accidenly while looking after a Inkisitor 7". I ended up buying this and listening to it at least once a day for like two weeks in a row. Good stuff. There is also one Darkthrone cover on side B that fits rather well to the enitre album. Didn't listen to their shit after this LP thou. Last news I heard was that they recorded another album yet never released it and meanwhile the band split-up. There is some information that VAN prods. from Germany (a.o. Truppensturm LP) will release it this year.

PSEUDOGOD - Illusion of Salvation Demo

The Russian answer to older Teitanblood? Hell, YES! Great demo they got. Could've been more tracks here but it slays anyway. Watch out for their upcoming split CD ( hopefully vinyl too) w/ Polish Blaze Of Perdition - another nice European BM commando. Recommended!