Crusty Death/Doom outfit Vallenfyre have returned to GodCity studio in Salem, MA to record the follow up to their second album ‘Splinters’ (2014). The new album, entitled ‘Fear Those Who Fear Him’, will be released by Century Media this summer and sees the band recording as a three-piece for the first time.

Joining Gregor Mackintosh (vocals and guitar – Paradise Lost) and Hamish Glencross (guitar/bass – ex-My Dying Bride) on the new record is Waltteri Väyrynen (drums – Paradise Lost) with production duties once again being helmed by Kurt Ballou (Converge).

Gregor Mackintosh says: “Twelve songs. No samples. No triggers. No bullshit. Instead you get crucifyingly loud amps, ferocious drumming, and vicious vocals spitting out hate and venom. Raw honest brutality. No conformity. No compromise. A murderous nightmare vomiting poisonous bile onto a twisted world. Yeah, that’s the bits I like…”

You can find more information at www.facebook.com/Vallenfyre or www.vallenfyreuk.bigcartel.com

Biker-obsessed, heavy-rockin’ duo The Picturebooks have announced the release of their new album ‘Home Is A Heartache’ on March 10 via Another Century Records. The German duo – featuring Fynn Claus Grabke [vocals, guitar] and Philipp Mirtschink [drums] – perform blues-saturated heavy rock, with Fynn playing on obscure vintage guitars he bought from thrift shops around the world. Oddly, Phil has no cymbals whatsoever and instead includes a few self-made percussion instruments with huge chains and bells.

The Picturebooks explain: “We toured our first album ‘Imaginary Horse’ for more than two years straight with multiple runs in Europe and America – we traveled endless miles in small beat up tour vans on never-ending highways, and lived out of hotels, couches, and sometimes, just the back of our van. When we finally returned home, music started pouring out of us and we finished writing, recording and mixing ‘Home Is A Heartache’ in our garage in just a few months. To us it symbolises this journey we’re on and the music we want to spread, giving it our everything every day and every night.”

The band will soon head out on the road again, hitting these towns in the UK and Ireland (with Monster … Read More

Thrash metal revivalists Havok are thrilled to announce the details of their upcoming new studio album, ‘Conformicide’. The Denver-based group will unleash their fourth full-length record on March 10 via Century Media.

‘Conformicide’ is the follow up to the band’s 2013 effort, ‘Unnatural Selection’. Discussing what fans can expect from the new record, David Sanchez (lead vocals, rhythm guitar) comments: “‘Conformicide’ is our most dynamic, heavy, thoughtful, musical, and sonically-crushing album so far. All four members feel that this is the best Havok album to date. There are a lot of truth bombs being dropped on this record and the music absolutely rips!”

Building on Sanchez’s comments, Reece Scruggs (lead guitar) adds: “This album swings for the fences in every way. Sonically stunning, technically proficient and lyrically pissed, we’ve never been represented at our best until this moment in time. We cannot wait for the world to react to ‘Conformicide’.”

Havok will also return to the road in 2017 with extensive touring schedules in both North America and Europe. Expressing the band’s level of enthusiasm to bring their fans an even heavier and more energized live show than ever before, Sanchez states: “We can’t wait to perform some new music live and present … Read More

SINDROME… the lost thrash band of Illinois… who despite featuring members of Terminal Death, Death Strike, Master and Devastation hit brick wall after brick wall in their quest for thrash metal mania. Now unlocked from the crypt these underdogs of the first wave thrash movement have a second chance…

It seems hard to believe in this day and age of bands and labels apparently releasing every last recording known to mankind, where even the most rudimentary efforts get pressed up onto limited, multiple-versioned formats, that there was a time when putting out a proper record often (but not always) meant paying your dues in the form of demo recordings, gigging and building up a fan base. The metal world has thrown up a long list of groups whose demo and live recordings have gone on to be held up in high esteem, but also served as the only documents of that band’s existence.

One such band, revered from the release of their debut demo in 1987 to this very day, to the point that Century Media has pulled together a compilation of the band’s two demo recordings is Sindrome. Hailing from Chicago, Illinois, the band members already had a pedigree prior to … Read More

…MORBID SAINT are back and Century Media have dusted off their arsenal of thrash classics for all you vinyl fiends. With debut album ‘SPECTRUM OF DEATH’ on wax again and a deluxe CD reissue that includes unreleased demos and the remastered version of lost album ‘DESTRUCTION SYSTEM’, GUY STRACHAN tracked down guitarist JAY VISSER to find out how it feels to be Morbid again…

“It truly is incredible that after all these years this band is where it is. We never played or wrote these songs with the intent that 25 plus years later we’d still be playing them, talking about them, or performing them live all over the world. We were just a bunch of kids hanging out that sucked at playing our instruments, without any direction or too much thought about what we were doing other than we were having a lot of fun doing it.”

Despite their stated lack of knowledge about what they were doing, Morbid Saint would go on to become one of the thrash underground’s best-kept secrets for many years after their initial tenure. Formed in the small town of Sheboyhan, Wisconsin in November 1984, the quartet of guitarists Jay Visser and Jim Fergades, drummer Lee … Read More

The demise of the local record shop is saddening on many levels, but the pinboards consigned to the skip out back is maybe the most heart-breaking. For where else can you find notices about crates of NWOBHM 7”s for sale, weed-smoking/doom-loving room-mates needed and most importantly little tabs of scrawled phone numbers asking if anyone wants to start a band. For that is exactly how the ’80s obsessed metal nerds of Alpha Tiger met. “I saw a notice on a board in our local music store. Someone was searching for another guitar player so I called him and we met,” explains guitarist Peter Langforth. “It was Alex [Backasch, guitars] and fortunately we had a similar taste in music.” That similar taste is music encompasses everything from “Metallica, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Queensryche, Crimson Glory, Fates Warning and Riot,” which is alright in our book! The band formed as Satin Black in 2007 and were quickly snapped up by Karl Walterbach, he of Noise Records fame, for his new imprint Sonic Attack, but a line-up change and name change later and the band found themselves on the stages of Keep It True and Hellfest festivals and on Century Media Records for their new … Read More