Thank the metal gods for Brood of Hatred, who's debut EP, New Order of Intelligence, lives up to its progressive death metal label. Hailing from Tunisia, this young band evidently has big ideas and despite the album being less than 20 minutes long, it is an enthralling and captivating experience (whether you like it or not)
Heavy metal supergroups are a strange creature. There are the fabled collaborations that never come to fruition, the painfully mediocre and the downright embarrassing, and yet they are still a force that exists in the global metal mindset. How fortunate then, that South Africa has spawned Bloodbeast who escape the trappings of the monicker and put out some damn good death metal
For those of you who are currently unenlightened, this gig was not hosted by one of those strange ‘end of days’ cult groups or anything else untoward, as the title might suggest. “But what is this ‘doom’ business all about?” I hear people asking. Well, the main objective of the show was to present doom
Metal as a musical genre is one of the few that is often described (and derived) by location. Swedish Death Metal, Bay Area Thrash and Norwegian Black Metal are all immediately identifiable by their location, even when coming from surrounding regions, and this geographical distinction often shapes the bands surrounding the progenitors. This phenomenon affects
I remember the first time I saw Haggis and Bong live, it was on a Saturday afternoon at RAMfest 2011. It was magical, although I probably would have run away were I still hung over! They came onto the stage and blasted the crowd with the mighty wail of the great highland bagpipes. They embodied
Upon hearing about a new venue opening its doors to the metal hordes in the Cape Town area, M4A’s Darkfiend did the rounds to suss it out, and to see some new bands as yet unknown to M4A’s collective ears. After seeing that our writer for this event would not make it, I wolfed down
“Comus, the Greek God of Revelry and Festive Mirth, son of Bacchus, lord of Chaos and Anarchy, join us on this carousel of carnivalesque debauchery. An occasion of over indulgence and excess awaits…” These are the words by which Emalyth’s first big event of 2012 was presented to us metal heads, necks itching for a
Read Part 1 of our Summerfest review here. A strange thing happened at around 20:40. Stellitius did a quick soundcheck and then… they disappeared! They didn’t actually play and were replaced last minute by the now infamous Anonymous! I can’t complain too much about the change, as they knew all of Stellitius’ material. They were
Metal, beer and good times. All this and more is what was expected as the 28th of January 2012 dawned. Metal4africa.com had promised to impale our lust for live metal on the bloodied pike of patience and so they did, Summerfest was back and I was heading there fast. Destination: Stellenbosch. (I make it around
Entrance was free, the line-up was impeccable and the gang was game, therefore our mission was clear, a mid-week metal adventure to Pretoria to escape from the mundane “back at work” regime the new year has brought with it. Armed with anticipation and metal thirsty ears, we piled into my little Chevy and embarked on
