Cauldron Black Ram - Slaver

By Bryan Camphire.. If you don't already know, Cauldron Black Ram are living death metal legends from Oz. This band has been making uncompromising original death metal since 1996. Slaver, their new release for the venerable label, 20 Buck Spin, takes their sound to new heights.

By Bryan Camphire.

Artwork by Misanthropic-Art.

If you don't already know, Cauldron Black Ram are living death metal legends from Oz. This band has been making uncompromising original death metal since 1996. Slaver, their new release for the venerable label, 20 Buck Spin, takes their sound to new heights. This band cooks more flavor into a single riff than most bands eke into entire albums. Theirs is the sound of a power trio taken to its fullest extreme.

Never a band to blast beat their way from start to finish, each composition on Slaver is packed with ever-changing rhythms and feels. This is what sets Cauldron Black Ram apart from other acts in extreme metal. In a single track, they're liable to thrash it up at a gallop, only to slow things to a lurch, then lock into an OSDM style mid-paced stomp. Slaver continuously leaves the listener wanting more of each tasty riff only to outdo itself in intensity with what comes next.

The band's know-how comes from experience. The members' other active projects - Mournful Congregation and StarGazer to name just two of many - are legends in their own rights. Both of those bands have also been making high-test death metal since the mid-90s. What is so interesting about Cauldron Black Ram is that theirs is a sound that is always re-inventing itself. Unlike nearly any other death metal act comprised of elder statesman who've been making music for the past quarter century, Cauldron Black Ram's material keeps getting more and more fresh with each new release. To date, Slaver is their masterpiece. The fat is trimmed. The menace is visceral. 

Favorite moments on this record include but are not limited to the following examples. The second riff in the second song, titled, "Smoke Pours From The Orifices From The Crematory Idol" (If ever there was a song title that conjures the ambiance of the music within, this is it): the disjointed drumming tramples forth like a violent stampede. Another blood curdling detail occurs and recurs in track four, "Graves Awaiting Corpses" (Another fittingly evocative title): The corroded arpeggiated guitar chord that creeps out of the rests during the verse and claws at you with its rusted hook. Memorable moments such as these abound across the entire wretched run-time of Slaver. The seasick rhythms, the gurgling tar-pit low end and the craggy guitars all punctuate the rough edges of this jagged, fearsome music.

This music originates in a scorched section of the Earth. Australia is home to some of the most extreme metal being made in this day and age. The unholy trinity of Portal, Impetuous Ritual and Grave Upheaval, in addition to StarGazer, Mournful Congregation, Temple Nightside, Consummation have all together significantly raised the quality standard of what extreme metal can be. Up to now, Cauldron Black Ram was perhaps the least well known of this pack, lurking in the shadows & toiling away with evil patience. Slaver stands to mark their name on the map indelibly, for all those who dare to venture to death metal's darkest depths. The fact that the vinyl of the first pressing of Slaver already sold out on release day shows that people are taking due notice of this massive record.

We Miss Live Music So Much (Beastwars)

By Calen Henry. "Damn the Sky" was the first song where I got Beastwars. From that single track I was hooked and tore through their discography just in time, unfortunately, for them to go on hiatus then announce that singer Matt Hyde was (ultimately successfully) battling cancer.

By Calen Henry.


"Damn the Sky" was the first song where I got Beastwars. From that single track I was hooked and tore through their discography just in time, unfortunately, for them to go on hiatus then announce that singer Matt Hyde was (ultimately successfully) battling cancer.

After all that their announcement of a surprise comeback album, last year's IV, was the most exciting musical moment of 2019 for me. The anticipation was well founded; it ended up being my favourite album last year. It turns out that wasn't the only surprise the band had up their sleeve.

On May 1, Bandcamp's second "all proceeds to artist" day since global COVID-19 quarantine efforts began and bands faced a cascade of gig cancellations, the boys in Beastwars decided to drop a live album. Not just any set either, their entire comeback concert from July 2018 at Wellington NZ's San Fran. As a Canadian fan who is unlikely to be able to catch the band live, it's an incredible gift. Not just a comeback album, but their comeback show, professionally recorded and mixed. It's even got some nice dynamic headroom with a master clocking in at DR8.


Being a year before the release of IV the setlist is made up entirely of songs from their trilogy. They start the set with the Beastwars song "Damn the Sky". From there they rip through some of the best tracks from the three albums in largely chronological order though they save two tracks from the first album, the savage stomp of "Red God" and mantra-like "Daggers" as the one-two punch to end the set. "Daggers" is such a perfect note on which to end the set, with its repeated refrain

Play that song
Play that one we know
Play it loud
Play that one we love

They sound like a different band from the snapshot of despair, grief, and hope captured on IV. By time they got back to the stage Matt was back to full demon-bellowing capacity and the set is a band with fire in their bellies ripping through their back catalog for their hometown crowd. It's magical and kind of perfect for a band with so much mysticism in their lyrics to hear the moment they hit the stage after so much turmoil and a rebirth. To top it off the band have been kind enough to ask for absolutely nothing in return. It's Name Your Price on the band's Bandcamp page.

We Miss Live Music So Much (Hamferð)

Hamferð was the last band I saw before the Covid-19 pandemic shut everything down. With nothing in between, their set has stuck with me to this day. It was a welcome release at the end a somewhat underwhelming festival. It was one of the best sets I have seen and a different experience from most other metal shows.

Hamferð was the last band I saw before the Covid-19 pandemic shut everything down. With nothing in between, their set has stuck with me to this day. It was a welcome release at the end a somewhat underwhelming festival. It was one of the best sets I have seen and a different experience from most other metal shows.


Hamferð turns the metal band experience on its head. All members dress in jacket and ties. Even the drummer wears a white shirt, a vest, and a tie. When a song stops, the stage lights are immediately turned off. There's no contact with the audience between songs. After our applause we can spend a few seconds contemplating what we just heard before the next one begins. The mood is somehow both solemn and very joyous.

Jón Aldará has both a deep full-throated growl and a majestic clean voice. He sings in Faroese and sounds alternatively like an emissary from Hell or a chanter of otherworldly sacred songs. He's far from the typical extroverted frontman. During the beautiful encore, the person in front of him gets a brief pat on the shoulder, and the rest of us get a quiet "tak." And that's the extent of his interaction with the audience.

The drummer, Remi Johannesen, is more active than most drummers playing music this heavy and sad. There are passages where we're almost in drum solo territory, at least briefly, and it sounds so good. Now and then the lighting is used to great dramatic effect, like the time when Aldará switches from crooning to growling and is instantly bathed in firelight. The sound is just perfect. At times I get so carried away it feels like I'm not touching the ground.


Hamferð is signed to Metal Blade Records. Their second full-length, Támsins likam, and the live EP, Ódn, are on Bandcamp. For their debut EP, Vilst er síðsta fet, and their first full-length, Evst, you can go to the Faroese Tutl Records, and they will ship them to you, literally, aboard a boat from the Faroe Islands. Recently, Aldará was announced as the new vocalist of Metal Bandcamp favorites Iotunn, and I cannot wait to hear how that turns out.

We Miss Live Music So Much (A Roundup)

The mass cancellations of metal shows, tours, and festivals due to the Covid-19 pandemic has made me think about what live music means to me. Obviously the bands are hit much harder by this than those of us in the audience - it affects their livelihood directly - but I know I'm not alone in missing that live magic. And THE PIT.

The mass cancellations of metal shows, tours, and festivals due to the Covid-19 pandemic has made me think about what live music means to me. Obviously the bands are hit much harder by this than those of us in the audience - it affects their livelihood directly - but I know I'm not alone in missing that live magic. And THE PIT. This week on Metal Bandcamp will be my small tribute to live music, beginning with this roundup of three recent live releases.

Artwork by Cameron Hinojosa.

This Khemmis EP, Doomed Heavy Metal, is only half-live. There's a newly recorded song, two studio rarities, and three live tracks, one from each of their albums. It takes a confident band to cover a Dio song, but here Khemmis takes their shot with "Rainbow in the Dark." They make it work as a "Khemmis song" without tweaking the original overmuch.

But we're really here for the live tracks. Of particular note is "The Bereaved," the best song from Khemmis's debut album Absolution and always a live favorite. Here's a Shitty Video™ from their set at Maryland Deathfest 2018. It's short and the sound quality is terrible, but the jubilant audience wohooo's when the song kicks in probably tell you better than all my words what it is we're missing.

The Inter Arma live EP takes me to a venue in Copenhagen last year. On record, Inter Arma have passages that sound great, beautiful even. Live, they're an entirely gnarly beast. Even the epic instrumental "The Long Road Home" (which was a bold choice for opener of the set) becomes a part of churning maelstrom of nonstop metal, anchored by the incredible propulsive drumming of T.J. Childers. After the last song of the Copenhagen set, there were a few seconds of stunned silence before somebody said, only slightly slurred, "Could you please play one more, if you don't mind... please?" And they did.

Note that all proceeds from the EP will go to Direct Relief, an organization that provides PPE to healthcare workers in regions affected by the COVID-19 outbreak.

I never saw Porcupine Tree live - they went into hiatus before I started going to shows again in earnest. In March, the band launched a Bandcamp page with a cache of live recordings, making up for what I missed out on. Some of them are pretty rare, like the surprisingly good recording of their first ever live performance in 1993. My favorite is the immaculate Köln 4th Dec 2007 (TV broadcast). It's a nice collection of songs, including a particularly good performance of the 17-minute "Anesthetize" and a beautiful version of "Dark Matter." I guess I am a sucker for songs with that kind of epic build up.

Like Inter Arma, the drumming on these songs is a joy to hear. Take for example the way Gavin Harrison's cymbals start playing double time during the solo in "Dark Matter." He can change the rhythmic feel of a song like no other, and he knows when to add something interesting to the song and when to step back and let it breathe. It's a high quality live recording, you can hear every little fill he does.

Should Porcupine Tree ever tour again I will definitely try to catch them. But for now I am happy that these recordings has found a home on Bandcamp.

10 Nazi-Punching Metal Albums to Celebrate May Day

By Kim Kelly. Happy May Day! Around the world, May 1 is traditionally celebrated as International Workers Day (except in the U.S. where our craven authoritarian government pushes “Loyalty Day” on us instead). It’s a time for love, and solidarity, and joy, but is also a day for rage and protest.

By Kim Kelly.

Happy May Day! Around the world, May 1 is traditionally celebrated as International Workers Day (except in the U.S. where our craven authoritarian government pushes “Loyalty Day” on us instead). It’s a time for love, and solidarity, and joy, but is also a day for rage and protest. Normally, many of us would be in the streets today, but given the current reality of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the best thing we can do for our fellow humans right now is stay inside. One small silver lining there is that, right now, we have an opportunity to extend some support to our fellow members of the music community who are struggling to make ends meet right now—the bands and artists who are stuck at home alongside the rest of us, unable to tour or play live during what would usually be a busy springtime touring season.

Bandcamp will be waiving their fees today, which means that every penny of every purchase will go directly to artists. They did this last year, too, and the response was so enormous that their website could barely handle all the traffic (I have a feeling there will be a repeat this year, but at least now we know we’ll need to be patient in getting our precious new tunes). As a small token of my appreciation for their labor, I wanted to put together a little list of bands that I am especially excited to support today, and share a few of them with you (a much longer list of recommendations will be public on my Patreon as of 2PM EST). Some may be familiar to you already, and some may not, but all of them have two very important things in common: they’re actively trying to make the world a better place, and they fuckin’ hate Nazis (which you could roll up into one, really). Happy listening!


Voarm doesn’t just dabble in darkness; this Richmond black metal collective (gathered from the ashes of Argentinum Astrum) invites it in, offers it a cup of tea, and settles into its lightless, suffocating embrace. Their doom-laden spin on the genre summons up punishing, magisterial riffs, weighed down with swaths of smothering distortion, and beckons you closer into the abyss.

It’s been over a decade since we last heard from these black/death anti-civilization stalwarts, but recent stirrings of life on their end (and the enduring timeliness of their anti-racist, anti-oppressive, pro-environment message) made me want to include them on this list. As the world burns around us and an invisible plague lays bare the gaping structural flaws upon which our modern society has been hastily constructed, bands like Peregrine remind us that things don’t have to be this way.

These Texas troublemakers skirt the line between punk and metal, but their fierce leftist politics and battering-ram intensity make them the perfect candidates for mention on a day celebrating radical working class resistance. Their live presence is unsurpassed, and their music—a gritty melange of hardcore punk, crust, sludge, doom and even skramz— is the perfect soundtrack for an uprising.

This Boston outfit bends sharp fragments of noise to suit its paranoid vision, drafting in elements of grindcore, industrial, and depressive black metal as they go. Their debut LP is discomfiting, ambitious, and impossible to tear oneself away from once its horrors begin to unfurl.

Denver's premier sludgy black/death miscreants are back with some new blood; this time, there's some nice, rotten Domination vibes involved, and their death metal proclivities are on full display. This is just one teaser track for what hopefully will be a new album, but even that is enough to whet the appetites of the unholy (and I still haven’t gotten over their “Fuck Nazi Sympathy” cover).

One of the prime architects of post-black metal has uploaded some of his most cherished releases on Bandcamp, and not a moment too soon. I’m especially partial to the Manchester, UK artist’s 2009 self-titled EP, but there are lots of gems to sift through for those who enjoy their black metal with a twist of the experimental, the spacey, the emotional, and the strange.

Artwork by Guang Yang.

Straight outta the Bay Area’s hyper-capitalist hellscape, these California nightmares dole out bloody HM2 worship with sacrilegious glee. Sworn to the old school, rooted in the classics, and armed with the chops to pull off aggressive modern death without lapsing into proggy fretboard Olympics territory, Ripped to Shreds is a disgusting delight.

Artwork by Florian-Ayala Fauna.

Adzes’ raison d'etre has long been to churn out socially conscious, noisy, atmospheric sludge with teeth, and this latest entry into their anti-capitalist canon seems finds them even more woebegone over the fate of our dying planet. Taken off the band’s upcoming full-length debut, the pair of tracks currently live on Bandcamp tell a dreary tale of dashed hopes and burning radical potential.

The buzz around Cascadian black metal as a micro-genre has lain dormant for the past few years, but Awenden is a shining example of how lovely the form can be when executed well. Golden Hour offers shimmering melodic black metal that's bursting with light, and aligned against the evils of empire, fascism, and civilization.

Talk about an antifascist metal (and hardcore) dream team. This four-way split between reactivated metalcore greats Racetraitor, antifascist war machine Neckbeard Deathcamp, high-intensity grind force Closet Witch, and raw black metal storm Haggathorn makes for an essential combination of brutality, integrity, and blastbeats.

Riff Spreader Best of April

[Today it's Bandcamp Friday again. From midnight to midnight Pacific Daylight Time Bandcamp are waiving their revenue share for all sales. And they'll be doing the same thing June 5 and July 3. Helping with your shopping list here's Riff Spreader with some of his favorite righteous riffs from April.

[Today it's Bandcamp Friday again. From midnight to midnight Pacific Daylight Time Bandcamp are waiving their revenue share for all sales. And they'll be doing the same thing June 5 and July 3.

Helping with your shopping list here's Riff Spreader with some of his favorite righteous riffs from April. For more recommendations hop over to Twitter where he'll be posting throughout the day.]

Artwork by Sludgework

Artwork by Ian Miller.

There's a new Ulthar album coming out in June on 20 Buck Spin and the new song fucking SLAP [Also look at that incredible album artwork (large version). Enter the forest of penises and balls?]

Artwork by Adam Burke.

Antifascist post-black/doom metal that reminds me a lot of Dead to a Dying World (though I like this more, tbh). It's a shame this wasn't on everyone's radar sooner. It's gorgeous.

Arwork by Rodrigo Pereira Salvatierra.

This Rejoice! For the Light Has Come EP is killer skronky blackened death metal (pay no attention to the weird blackgaze genre tag). Produced by Colin Marston so it sounds great, too.

Artwork by Jason Barnett.

Kombat put out a damn good death metal album this week. But is the kombat mortal? RIFFALITY!

The new Calligram album The Eye is the First Circle is out today via Prosthetic Records. Highly recommended. Listen for yourself here:

Speaking of fucking good, this Wretched Empires EP is everything right now. Allfather's Tom B. doing the yelling. Job well done.

New album from Brazilian black metal band Kaatayra was released today. Killer shit as always.

Artwork by Raymond Wedhorn.

This is completely insane death metal from Encenathrakh. At a reasonable price... [This review from Metal archives sums it up: "I'm happy this exists and everyone must hear it even if they absolutely know they're going to despise it."].

Artwork by Unexpected Specter.

Speaking of putting dope shit on your wishlist for Friday, Hypnotic Dirge just put up the new Feral Light album for pre-order. If you're not familiar with Feral Light, you should fix that. There are 2 tracks streaming here, so now's your chance.