Exit Strategy – “The Apostate’s Creed” (CD)
“The Apostate’s Creed” Track List:
1. In The Name Of
2. Anti-Theist
3. Scraping Carmen
4. Fields Of Meat
5. The Infernal Fiction
6. Virus
7. The Rotting Acre
8. Bride Of The Prophet
9. Haggard
Release Date: August 28, 2010
Label: Independent
KING: Exit Strategy’s The Apostate’s Creed is a perfect example of intelligent brutality. The music is unrelentingly intense, but not without being memorable. The guitar and bass work together to create a technical whirlwind of riffs that are just as heavy as they are unrelenting. Casey Rogers’ blasting drum beats are tempered with …

Divinity – “The Singularity” (CD)
“The Singularity” Track List:
1. Abiogenesis
2. Beg To Consume
3. Lay In The Bed You’ve Made
4. Emergent
5. Transformation
6. Monsters Are Real
7. Embrace The Uncertain
8. Formless Dimension
9. Approaching The Singularity
Release Date: August 10, 2010
Label: Candlelight Records
KING: From beginning to end, The Singularity is a non-stop assault of technical brutality. The production on Divinity’s second full length album is top notch and crystal clear, without losing any of the sheer aggression or excitement.
The musicianship on the The Singularity is outstanding. While most albums seem to have one stand out performance …

Edenbridge – “Solitaire” (CD)
“Solitaire” Track List:
1. Entree Unique
2. Solitaire
3. Higher
4. Skyline’s End
5. Bon Voyage Vagabond
6. Inward Passage
7. Come Undone
8. Out Of This World
9. Further Afield
10. Eternity
11. A Virtual Dream?
12. Brothers On Diamir
13. Exit Unique
Release Date: July 2, 2010
Label: Napalm Records
KING: Solitaire is my first introduction to Edenbridge, although this is their 7th album since their 2000 debut. What we have here is female-fronted symphonic metal, a sub-genre that seems to have fallen out favour over the past few years, possibly due to the influx of bands following the exact same …

Necronomicon – “The Return of the Witch” (CD)

“The Return of the Witch” Track List:
1. Into the Fire
2. The Awakening
3. The Time Is Now
4. Necropolis
5. The Order of the Moon
6. The Return of the Witch
7. Lillith
8. Alpha and Omega
9. Seven

Release Date: June 4, 2010
Label: Napalm Records
KING: It’s impossible to listen to Necronomicon’s latest album and not draw comparisons to the likes of Behemoth, Nile and Dimmu Borgir. But Necronomicon are much more than the sum of those parts. They are certainly their own animal with a …

The Unravelling – “13 Arcane Hymns” (CD)

“13 Arcane Hymns” Track List:
1. Move Forward Until You Are Dead
2. Becoming Chaos
3. Fire Breather
4. Open Skull
5. Last Rights Protest
6. Revived
7. Unscripted Disclosure
8. In The Safe House
9. Where Will It End?
10. Disconnect – Connect
11. My Resignation
12. Arjuna
13. Victory Song
Release Date: May 13, 2010
Label: Independent
KING: It’s impossible to explain The Unravelling’s sound in one sentence. To say it has elements of metal, rock, progressive touches and even an industrial influence that occasionally raises it’s gritty head doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of …

Omega Crom – “Blood, Steel & Fire” (CD)

Release Date: April 5, 2010
Label: Reversed Records
“Blood, Steel & Fire” Track List:
1. Warpath
2. Battlefield
3. Calling of the Dead
4. The Passing of Azazel
5. The Prisoner (The Drawing)
6. Playing God
7. Parliament of Stone
8. F.F.O.H.T.L.
9. Metal Revolution
The problem with most debut albums is that they only gives you a glimpse of what a band could be, but Omega Crom’s Blood, Steel & Fire comes across as a very focused and cultivated effort. This may have something to do with the fact that Omega Crom has been …

“Viral Nation” Track List:
1. Viral Nation (intro)
2. Oblivion
3. The Execution
4. Sing For Freedom
5. Ignite
6. Metafilth
7. A Dark Chapter
8. Human Crutch
9. Home
When the four member’s of Obey the Fist headed into Alchemy Recording Studio one November day in 2008, they were quite the optimists.
“We thought we’d be done in two weeks,” confesses vocalist/guitarist Chris Kreuger, “but it took a hell of a lot longer.”
They recorded the final tracks for their upcoming debut album in December 2009, just over a year from when they laid down the first drum tracks with Alchemy …

“Prisoner of the Mind” Track List:
1.The Death March of Bataan
2. Nailed to the Cross
3. Vendetta
4. Metal Alliance
5. Prisoner of the Mind
6. Futile Rebellion
7. Going For Glory
8. Ghost Rider
9. Raining Fire
10. Warlord
“We’re really big in Germany, you know,” states Dan Houser, bassist for Calgary, Alta. metal quartet Hellrazer. He’s kidding, but the fact of the matter is, the band does have fans worldwide, thanks to the MySpace universe. With over 24,000 “friends,” Houser cites it as their biggest marketing tool, except when doing “really ballsy things like call up promoters and …

“Behind the Curtain” Track List:
1. Agenda
2. Demonseed
3. Blackened Sunsets
4. Behind the Curtain
5. Bad Boy
6. Cattle Drive
7. Closer
8. Fight My
9. Sever the Spine
10. Sexual Degenerate
11. Usurper
12. Bleedthrough
“We’ve learned to pack bedding, because a lot of times we sleep either in a vehicle or on a floor. We haven’t made a lot of money on the road, so we have to prepare to just live. And friends are a huge, important things for us, because they usually put us up,” says Marcus Steiner, guitarist and vocalist for Lies From Elysium. The Calgary, …

“Watching the Devils Work” Track List:
1. Hold Your Arms Out
2. Watching the Devil’s Work
3. Break ‘Em Down
4. Confusion On the Dance Floor
5. In a Crowd of Few
Calgary hardcore act Stab.Twist.Pull start growing their musical roots in 2007, with vocalist Mike Hoogars joining the group in February 2008. A series of line-up changes plagued the band, even as they were still struggling to find their sound. But that struggle was not in vain.
Armed with a new EP, Watching the Devils Work, set for release 2010 and new drummer, ready for unveiling …

“The Physics Demos” Track List:
1. White Flag
2. Locust Years
3. Safe Harbor (B-side)
4. Wrapped Around a Bullet (Acoustic)
5. Safe Harbor (Black Flag)
“We’ve never been that type of band to have some big scheme to write a certain style of music or do anything we could to become these self-indulgent rock stars. It simply began as four guys doing what they love,” explains drummer Nathan Navetto, on Somastate’s 2006 formation. “It really just started out as us dudes jamming in random basements and a big ol’ woodshop.”
The heavy hitting rockers from High …

“13 Arcane Hymns” Track List:
1. Move Forward Until You Are Dead
2. Becoming Chaos
3. Fire Breather
4. Open Skull
5. Last Rights Protest
6. Revived
7. Unscripted Disclosure
8. In The Safe House
9. Where Will It End?
10. Disconnect-Connect
11. My Resignation
12. Arjuna
13. Victory Song
It was a cold, gray afternoon in the fall of 2008 when the paths of two musicians crossed.
“It was one of my first experiences of this season in Calgary and I remember how enthralled I was with the energy in the air,” recalls The Unravelling’s founder and instrumentalist Gustavo De Beauville, who moved to …

“Devastate Insisted Existence” Track List:
1. Blackwing
2. Return Of Mars
3. Tracks Of Red
4. Buried Alive
5. Without Warning
6. Infidel
7. Long Way Home
8. Slaughterhouse
9. Ravenous
10. D.I.E.

It’s been a long and challenging year in the making, but Kilyakai’s full-length debut is finally ready for release.
On October 23, the hardcore influenced death metal juggernaut from Calgary, Alta. will unleash Devastate Insisted Existence on a local audience, followed by a cross-province series of shows to further spread the metal fury, before taking it online.
“We did extensive amount of writing and a lot of practicing, a lot …

“Little Ineffectual Nothing” Track List:
1. Mental Anorexia
2. Beyond Shut Eyelids
3. Shuddercase
4. The Harlot Prophecies
5. The Hate That Binds
6. Choke Out Your Pride
7. The Sardonic Blast
8. Beyond Despair
9. Untouched/Unspoiled
Up-and-coming Red Deer metal act Awkward Silence is fast gaining credit and fans across Alberta.
On the eve of the band’s debut album official re-release, vocalist and bassist J Michalski offered a little insight on how the Little Ineffectual Nothing [Awkward Silence, 2007] came to be, and the band that eventually followed.
You see, most bands form, write a while, play a few shows, and …

“Lock It Up” Track List:
1. Lock It Up
2. City Lights
3. Comfort
4. Hold On
White Lightning is about to strike in cyberspace. On July 7, the St. Albert, Alta. rock band’s EP “Lock It Up” will be available through CD Baby, which in turn gets distributed though most reputable digital distribution sites.
The band’s first EP “Hold On” was also released through CD Baby in August 2008, so what’s the big difference this time? “Hold On” was available in hard copy. “Lock It Up” is only going to be sold online. At least …

“The Order of Chaos” Track List:
1. Get in the Pit
2. Invictus
3. Forever In Hell
4. Hate What You’ve Become
5. Sullen Darkness
6. Neverending
7. Cast In Stone
8. Left In Ruins
Guitarist John Simon Fallon and bassist Sterling Burrows first met up and started jamming together in 2003.
“It’s a very complex story,” Fallon said, when asked how the rest of the Edmonton-based quintet rounded out The Order of Chaos, adding that one of the first gigs they ever played together was with drummer Tim Prevost’s progressive death metal band Quietus.
“Tim arrived at the venue with …

“As The Romans Do” (EP) Track Listing:
1. Never Heard Of It (0:16)
2.The Cure For Insomnia (3:18)
3. Bollocks! (3:47)
4. The Mechanism (3:54)
5. Bloody Sea Men (5:56)
As The Romans Do released their self-titled debut April 4 at the Forest Lawn Community Centre in Calgary. In spite of a few technical difficulties during Stab-Twist.Pull’s opening set, which resulted in the lights being disconnected for the duration of the show, as a whole it went off with a marvelously metal yell.
Fellow Calgary metallers We Found The Body – who released their own full-length debut …

We Found the Body has been raising a ruckus on the Calgary circuit since 2007, and on March 20 the Alberta metallers released their debut six-song EP at a killer sell-out show at The Stetson, with comedian Jason Rouse and Calgary thrashers Kilyakai in tow.
Guitarist Denim Wentzell graciously let us in on a few of the curiosities we had about the five-piece modern tech metal act’s recording process:
You decided to record at the Beach. What was behind this decision?
We wanted to record at a studio that had great gear to …