All the way from the Appalachian Mountains today we get the deeply enigmatic U.S. Christmas and their super trippy Psychedelic Rock/Blues/something else. Our first encounter with this awesome band was on the Hawkwind tribute split album, where the band completely owned Hawkwind’s songs and provided an amazing rendition of them.

Signed to Neurot Recordings, the band delivers their fifth full-length release “Run Thick In the Night” (RTITN for short) which clocks at almost 80 minutes. With such a long album you would expect to have a bunch of wasted time, but with RTITN this is not the case. Every single sample, riff, etc, is creatively masterminded to be part of the whole experience created for this album, and before you know it the CD ends and you will want to keep listening to it for hours.

In the eve of the band’s 25th anniversary and after a 3 year waiting period, we finally get a ‘new’ release from Neurosis, in the form of the live CD “Live at Roadburn 2007”. With amazing clarity and masterful production behind this release, you closer than ever to having Neurosis play in your living room in CD form at least (We are still waiting for a proper live DVD/Blu-ray featuring 5.1 or even 7.1 audio).

For all of us ‘old-school’ Neurosis fans “Live at Roadburn” comes with a bit of disappointment since this release features songs from “Times of Grace” till the bands 2007 album “Given to the Rising” but nothing else from before. However, with the band’s previous live CD’s and the bootlegs we can get that fix.

Featuring J. Kohn of Black Funeral (USA) fame, Prosanctus Inferi is one of those bands that you will either love or hate to death. Their style merges Black and Death Metal elements into a blender and creates very brutal and mostly aimless 2-3 minute musical ‘compositions’ that will either make you headbang like crazy or scratch your head wondering WTF is going on.

“Pandemonic Ululations of Vesperic Palpitation” the band’s first full-length album features 13 songs and around 25 minutes of sheer brutality. If you like your music to be extremely brutal and somewhat pointless then this is the album for you. The band’s drummer Antichristus committed suicide before the release of this album.

When it comes to sounding evil and grim, the Aussie’s behind Denouncement Pyre got it down to a science. With their first full-length album in 7 years they are finally arriving to American shores via Hell’s Headbangers. The band consists of two members and they alone can create enough havoc to unleash war and hell upon planet earth.

After several demo’s, EP’s, Split’s, we finally get a true full-length release form this band and while it’s a bit short of complete epicness, it does create a very solid atmosphere and has a powerful Black/Death Metal ring to it. As you can expect, the band is short from being original or revolutionary, but they do a great job in sticking to the basics and creating raw melodies without the need of sounding like they recorded this album in the toilet.

Sometimes in our review queue some albums get lost in the mix and we don’t get to them until ‘late’. Unluckily for us we didn’t heard this majestic release from Fen (from Canada not the UK one) and now we can’t stop listening to it in order to pay attention to newer releases that need to be heard.

Before the confusion set’s in, this Canadian outfit plays Progressive Rock/Metal and it should not be mixed up with UK’s Fen (that play’s Atmospheric Black Metal/Post-rock). The first impressions we had of this CD where outstanding since the band has managed to craft 9 Progressive Rock/Metal anthems unlike many bands are able to do these days. After further listening, we can’t stop agreeing that this is surely the Progressive Rock/Metal album of the year for us as of August.

It’s been a while since we have heard a band be as effective in 20 minutes as the Drünken Bastards manage to be with “Horns of the Wasted”. With a brutal mixture of Thrash Metal with Punk elements and a few Black Metal hints here and there, the band does a great job in crafting small, concise, and effective songs that will rock you sideways.

Release in the USA on Hell’s Headbandgers, “Horns of the Wasted” is a great blast in the past, when bands where still having fun and freely rocking out tunes that mashed up several genres and they did not give a shit if people liked them or not. The overall Punk influences are very high in this release, and in songs like “Alcoholic Big Tits” the band goes all-out Punk on us. But they quickly regain their Metal-form with their cover of Barbatos “Prophecy of the Evening Star”, a song that sounds extremely Heavy Metal for this album.

Doom Metal is a an art that has been slowly dying in the last few years with more bands switching to the more ‘lucrative’ Gothic Metal scene or just starting off as a Metalcore band. Luckly today we have A Dream of Poe, as you can expect and Edgar Allan Poe inspired Doom Metal band from Portugal with members of In Peccatum.

In this 5 song and 36 minute EP the band does a great job in crafting crushing songs that will make you want to dig up your older My Dying Bride albums and get on full-on melancholic mode. Starting with the slow (it’s Doom Metal!! what do you expect!) self-album-titled song “Lady of Shalott” the band quickly sets the tone in terms of down-tuned guitar riffs and mournful vocal atmosphere.

All the way from Portugal today we get Chaos in Paradise a very young band that is releasing their first demo. This demo features four very interesting songs that showcase the band’s talents, but it also shows the areas where they need work. Since it’s a short demo we will use the dreaded ‘song-by-song’ approach to this review.

The band opens their demo with “Dawn” a very well structured song that features what this band is all about in less than 4 minutes. With powerful riffing, you quickly get the impression this might be a Melodic Death Metal release, but soon Sara’s angelic vocals follow and your whole impression of this album is changed. The band does a very solid job in crafting a powerful chorus section with solid riffing and a catchy vocal melody. However, the small use of male vocals could have easily been avoided and this would have kept the song more consistent.