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Horror Pain Gore Death Productions is a record label that "caters toward fans of sick and vile underground metal". Run by Mike Juliano who also plays in the band Mental Funeral, HPGD focuses on death and thrash metal, with the occasional foray into other genres like grindcore, death/doom, and black metal - nothing with the name "post" in it! The free sampler HPGD 2013 Full Year In Review gives you an excellent 25 track overview of Horror Pain Gore Death Productions' current releases. As usual with these types of samplers the quality varies, but you'll find quite a few solid thrash efforts, and especially the tracks from the death metal split albums with Septory / Sadistik Forest, and Apocryphon / Fabrikant are standouts. Some tracks piqued my interest enough to check out the bands full albums, you can hear a couple of them below.
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On The Great Architect of Nothing Oshiego comes storming out the door with a confidence that only experienced bands (they formed in 2004) with serious chops have. They play thrashy and godddamn ripping death metal, that blends old school elements with modern Polish high-velocity death metal. Odd time signatures, clever breakdowns, sudden outbreaks of thrashy assaults, and lots of exciting riffs. As this review from The Metal Archives says "If one so chooses, The Great Architect of Nothing could very well serve as a fantastic riff museum where the guitar lines are the whole reason you paid the entrance fee in the first place." The guitar tone is great, the vocals are more varied than ususal for death metal, Oshiego simply does death metal right.
[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]
Dara Santhai's fluid eastern-tinged soloing on Serpent Crown's track "Prelude To The Netherworld" immediately caught my attention. The band plays raw heavy metal interspersed with thrashier parts. The excellent drumming is sometimes almost too busy for this kind of music, but gives a charming off-kilter quality. The production values are demo-like, primitive but adequate. The constant echo on Dara's voice does become grating though; a less muffled mix of her vocals would have been nice. Still her Blackmore'ish soloing is a joy, and I look forward too hear what she and Serpent Crown comes up with next.
[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]
