Alpthraum - Eyes of a Monument

Alpthraum's Eyes of a Monument is symphonic metal. Think Dimmu Borgir symphonic not Nightwish symphonic, despite it having nothing to do with black metal. The metal itself takes backseat to the well crafted orchestration. The riffs are almost too simple to stand on their own, but work very effectively when combined with the symphonies.

The word "Alptraum" (without the H) means nightmare in German, and Eyes of a Monument does work as a epic score to your dark dreams. Like a metalized version of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds, not about conflict from outer space, but from the inner dreamworld. Here's the review from Don't Count on it Reviews.

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Trenchgrinder - Demo 2011

Trenchgrinder - Demo 2011 was featured in Kim Kelly's Top 10 Demos Of 2011 article for American Aftermath. The band features former members of Atakke and plays ripping metalpunk. On Demo 2011 you hear a lot of crust and thrash influences, but their main sound is grinding death metal. As Kim wrote:

"Bolt Thrower-worshipping riffs, breakneck d-beat machinegun blasts, punk as fuck speed, devilishly murky tones – it doesn't get much better than this."

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Bädr Vogu - Exitium

Album art by Eric Radey

Bädr Vogu. First let's get band name sorted, it's pronounced Bah-Dur Voh-Goo, and it's derived from Bass (BA) Drums (DR) Vocals (VO) Guitar (GU). Second, the album. Exitium is downtuned and very crusty sludge complete with rumbling bass, and vile growls. Fuzzy filth if you will. Despite tagging themselves as 'blues crust', I don't hear much of that, instead you get extended doom passsages and better than average use of sound clips. And awesome cover art too. Check out this review from The Metal Archives, and listen to Exitium below.

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