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Author Pete Woods

Quickly discovering in formative years that I was never quite going to fit in anywhere, I spent time growing up listening to punk, futurist, goth, industrial, metal and psychedelic sounds ranging from Hawkwind to The Sex Gang Children via Japan through to Crass mangled in with Psychic TV and New Model Army. Catching my first band live by accident; The Poison Girls at a G.L.C. free festival, I never looked back. Musical tastes have developed accordingly and I now spend time writing for both Terrorizer and Dominion magazine as well as co-running www.avenoctum.com and pushing the boundaries of genre definition to mould around my own eclectic tastes. Not having the patience to play any instrument myself, I see my writing, to a certain degree as putting something back into the music I love. If I didn't spend time doing this I would be an alcoholic slumped without hope on the cold streets of London. Instead I can be found pint, camera and notepad in hand covering bands both old and new and will happily accept free cider without

Autopsy – Morbidity Triumphant (Peaceville)

Back on the slab and casting musical Y shaped incisions, everyone’s favourite revolting death metal surgeons return with their first full length album since 2015 release ‘Skull Grinder’. There has been one replacement since that outing with Greg Wilkinson the… Continue Reading →

Ruinas – Resurrekzión (Spikerot)

If you are one of those people that organise all your discs by genre, this one is going to really screw you up. It might at first seem an easy task as the act helmed by ex Machetezo and current… Continue Reading →

Coldworld – Isolation (Eisenwald)

Much as we would like the spectre of Covid to be forgotten it is still cropping up as a musical theme and the title here is self-explanatory of the effects that we were saddled with. I have noticed that many… Continue Reading →

The Scary Of Sixty-First – Dasha Nekrasova (Fractured Visions)

The premise of this new fright-flick might be a well-worn one but it takes a bit of a gamble by making its theme both contemporary and highly contentious. On the one hand we have an apartment in New York which… Continue Reading →

Fogos – Corpses And Ashes (S/R)

This quartet only gathered under a cloak of second wave darkness a year ago and this is their debut album and indeed 1st release of any kind. With that in mind and no perfecting over demo material one may expect… Continue Reading →

Crone – Gotta Light? (Prophecy)

All good things must come to an end and it was a bit of an unwelcome shock to hear back in the early days of an already dismal year (again) that Phil Jonas had decided to lay Secrets Of The… Continue Reading →

Vardan – No Exit From The Forest (Moribund)

As I sit here listening to Vardan, hundreds of miles from his native Sicily in the United Kingdom, things are decidedly strange here. It is as though we are in a state of enforced mourning, the Queen is dead. Wherever… Continue Reading →

Altars Ablaze – Life Desecration (Lavadome Productions)

There seems to be a huge amount of new blood within the extreme metal scene and here are yet another bunch of upstarts plying a debut album after forming very recently. Perhaps it’s a pandemic thing. As far as Altars… Continue Reading →

Wyrms – Sarkhral Lumaenor – La lueur contre les fléaux (Purity Through Fire)

Formed by the normal sounding Tedd back in 2007, Wyrms are we are informed, part of the Francophile medieval scene along with the likes of Véhémence, Griffon, Sühnopfer and Darkenhöld. Being a sucker for this sort of stuff mainly thanks… Continue Reading →

Spectrum Mortis – Bit Meseri – The Incantation (Listenable)

Mesopotamian vibes via Madrid here and if you are wondering about the album title, Bīt mēseri is an incantation text for protection against invading evil. Spectrum Mortis are easier to fathom being a Spanish quartet active since 2015. They may… Continue Reading →

KMFDM – Hyëna (Metropolis)

If you used to fraternise all the second-hand CD and Record shops across the land (remember them?) you can’t fail to have noticed all those distinctive sleeves by artist Aiden Hughes for the band KMFDM. I wish I had picked… Continue Reading →

Valborg – Der Alte (Lupus Lounge)

This German trio have quite the work ethic, releasing their eighth album here since the first ‘Glorification Of Pain’ back in 2009. Although I only discovered them relatively recently, tackling just three of their releases, it’s obvious that they are… Continue Reading →

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