Brooklyn-based doomsters Fin’Amor, which translated to ‘courtly love’, were formed in 2008 to bring down the world and make its citizens perpetually glum. That is to say: No Fun. No Smiles. No Happy. No Sunrises. Along with Fin’Amor’s doom bringing they’re also taking in goth, progressive music, and death metal. Essentially, fans of My Dying Bride, Draconian, and Swallow the Sun are in for a true (and rare) American treat.

Screaming Banshee hail from Rome, home of Fleshgod Apocalypse and Hour of Penance, and they ply an admirable racket that draws from all kinds of deathly styles from melodic and technical to old-school and raw.

Hailing from Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, progressive power thrashers Anuryzm are set to release their second full-length on June 15th, All is Not For All. I got in touch with guitarist John Bakhos and vocalist Nadeem Michel Bibby in order to explore my on-going curiosity about metal from places not normally associated with metal and to discuss the band’s forthcoming album.

Even the title of the album suggests an act of grand defiance. Demanufacture. Breaking everything down to the component level, stripping away the inessential elements, salvaging the best parts for recycling and reuse.

Oceanic was truly magical, a confluence of songwriting and tone quality and pacing that signaled a new depth for this rapidly evolving musical collective.  Opinions will differ about the quality of what came next, but it’s hard to deny that Oceanic marked an exciting developmental stage for Isis, when burly distortion was still a thematic element rather than an accent piece and contemplative crescendos built themselves into stunning peaks.

Back in 2005, I talked to Starkweather guitarist Todd Forkin about his band’s then new album for issue #16.  It was one of my first freelance pieces for the magazine after leaving the friendly confines of 1032 Arch.  At the time, Croatoan was the band’s third LP and first since 1995’s Into the Wire.  While the Philadelphians have dropped another LP and split in the intervening years, April saw the re-release of their first two records via Translation Loss. So 113 issues later, it’s fitting in some way that vocalist Rennie Resmini closes out this little series after the break. To every one who has contributed to or read even one word of these playlists over the last three plus years — thank you.

Pyrrhon caught our attention last year with their excellent album The Mother Of Virtues, which combined technical yet chaotic death metal with frontman Doug Moore’s staccato prose poems. A lot has happened in the ensuing year. The album made many year-end lists but the band split from Relapse and has since teamed with David Hall and Handshake for a new EP.

I am gobsmacked that I’m being asked to defend Obituary’s World Demise, a record that, in my mind, is nothing less than a classic extreme metal record which I assumed was pretty much universally respected.

Always glad to bring you guys a little optimism for your Hump Day: German melodeath monsters Dying Humanity

Most of us were busy keeping our Trapper Keepers shut and our pencils sharpened when the members of Death Angel were woodshedding in drummer Andy Galeon’s garage and recording a legendary demo with none other than Kirk Hammett.