Midnight - "Rebirth by Blasphemy" (2020)

I really wanted to like this album, at least to begin with. 

Ohio's Midnight is a blackened thrash band with huge, filthy punk influences. It is also the product of a single man, Athenar, whom I somehow suspect is not actually called that.

But still. Stop ruining the magic for everyone. Bad Sheep, bad.

Duende en la Penumbra - "That Same Evergreen I Love So Well, Despite the Way Its Shadows Make Me Sad" (2020)

It would be too easy to say that the Covid 19 lockdown is taking its toll. I may well be at the 'dressing up like Marie Antoinette' stage, but that's more recreational, and frankly that's how most Saturdays go for me, as a rule.

No, what has really taken a toll is this album. This shining disc of glistening ordure. This huge pimple on the collective arse of metal. 

How bad is it? It's the last thing cute baby seals hear as some gore splatted Canadian sets about them with a length of wood. It makes cystitis in Slough sound like a viable career option.

Cadaveric Undead Mutilation - "Machete Massacre" (2020)

The problem with transgression is that it has a short shelf life. Either you end up passé, or it destroys you. 

There is no chance of the latter befalling Finnish goregrind peddlers Cadaveric Undead Mutilation, I’m glad to say. Instead, they just start out crap and stay crap, as their new album "Machete Massacre" (sigh...) makes only too clear.

Yes, all the old grindcore chestnuts are present and correct. If it sounds like every other grind band trying to out-gross all the other grind bands, that's because it does.

Cardinals Folly - "Defying The Righteous Way" (2020)

Sometimes, in the midst of all the dross, a doom metal album comes along which makes you want to skip and hop. In the bleakest way possible, you understand.

Such is the case with “Defying The Righteous Way”, the new album by Finnish trio, Cardinals Folly. In a previous life, I reviewed an earlier release of theirs, 2017’s enjoyable “Deranged Pagan Sons.” 

Even then, despite their rather blatant Fin-doom influences, the band was heading in its own direction, one that was fierce and even brutal.

Dopethrone – “Transcanadian Anger” (2018)

Dopethrone’s new album is like that crackhead that breaks into your house, ravishes the vacuum cleaner, vomits over the kitchen, and then collapses half-dead on your carpet – in a clown costume.

"Transcanadian Anger", with its luridly apocalyptic cover, is the product of a band that’s comfortable with its sound, but more than able to make it do new things on every track.

That’s to say, you know every song is a Dopethrone song, with that trademark shriek trademarking away with the equally trademark guitar sound that drones, thunders, croons and writhes up and down the blues scale like it wants to give it VD. (Presumably, also trademarked.)

Oxygen Destroyer - "Bestial Manifestations of Malevolence and Death" (2018)

What is good in life? Big rubber monsters tw*tting each other and everything else that gets in the way (usually Tokyo), of course.

We are living in a kind of big screen kaiju renaissance right now, as Godzilla (2014), Shin Godzilla (2016), King Kong: Skull Island (2017) and the forthcoming Rampage (2018) all show.

So, big monsters make for big box office, but do they make for great death metal? Seattle Gojira-fanciers Oxygen Destroyer say they do, and their new album "Bestial Manifestations of Malevolence and Death" makes the case very, very forcefully.

Something Bunny: Dubstar – “Disgraceful” (1995)

How best to sum up "Disgraceful", the 1995 debut album by dream pop crew Dubstar? As we’re about to see, there is a lot to say, and it’s very good. But let’s focus on the most obvious thing – the crypto fanny.

Because, on the cover, is, well – let’s just say you don’t need much of a dirty mind to spot what’s being implied here. It practically leaps from behind a (particularly hairy) bush, going RAAAAAAAAR. I dread to think what the rabbit ears represent.

It wasn’t even the original cover, which had a fluffy pencil case filled with a folded over balloon in it. The resulting ninja fanny was so blatant, it gave you a diploma in gyno just by gazing at it. It also looked a lot like the Eye of Sauron, which adds a whole new Freudian subtext to Lord of the Rings.