First off, how THE HELL does a band’s sophomore recording, mix, and master sound severely worse than a debut with less means of production? I do not goddamn know, ask Defeated Sanity. 2007’s Psalms Of The Moribund is pretty damn phenomenal, but a healthy (ha really?) appreciation of their first album, Prelude To The Tragedy, highlights (and proves) this band’s ability to write and play rifftacular death metal. Seriously, it is like…gore stuffed hog offal and… gore stuffed hog offal’s antithesis, night and day, ok? That is the dynamic between what you are able to hear on Prelude versus the near inaudible sludge of Psalms. I also prefer their debut because of it’s focus on composition over their follow up’s (still admirable) goal of wiping out their competition in terms of brutality. What makes this release top of the list over a horde of technical brutal death metal bands, is the careful forging of each measure, the blah blah blah, I will not coat this one with protracted over- explanation; basically, it is a really original, badass collection of riffs, obviously created by musicians who understand their genre and instruments inside and out. Prelude To The Tragedy barely has any hints of fusion or prog in it’s eight tracks, but this is an album that depends on it’s instruments interactions and complex musical patterns. The legendary Lille Gruber orders these songs into their off kilter time signatures, never sacrificing groove for sterile brutality. Another consistently impressive facet of this release is Tino Kohler’s clinically precise bass performance. His fills are certainly a high point in the instrument’s history, and his skill enables his bass to be heard underneath the treble meandering. Wolfgang Teske began this band in 1994, and I am pretty sure this dude is in his fifties. While he has since left the band, I can say his experience in writing riffs obviously took this disc to the next level… Do I also hear a Christian Muenzner-esque phrase in “Horrid Decomposition”? Hell, the guy played with them for three years before this was released, so I am sure his fingerprint is all over this beast. Markus Keller delivers a vastly more comprehensible growl to the table, and yeah, it has more personality than Jens Staschel’s formidable gurgle on successive releases.  Conclusively, this is a death metal album that rarely gets confused over what it is. It is so uniform in it’s style that there is never a fundamental mis step breaking up the surge of violent mathematical mayhem. Yeah, it rules, and it remains the touchstone of quality that every “brutal” band should refer to.

- Alec

It seems that any decent metal band that comes out of North Carolina has some sort of affiliation with Between the Buried and Me.  But no, this Weekly Worship isn’t going to be about the relatively-known pre-BTBAMers Prayer For Cleansing, or Azazel (who had their Ashes to Ashes EP re-released last year).  Instead, it is going to be about From Here On, a metalcore outfit that released only one EP for their disbanding.  Hope For A Bleeding Sky is that EP.

Yes, the title is horribly generic by today’s standards, but considering it was released in 1999 (and recorded and mixed in one day), it is actually an EP years ahead of when From Here On could have had commercial success.  The breakdowns are dissonant and dominant, the tremolo picking riffs are still being ripped off to this day, and the dual vocal attack of Tommy Rogers (the now-BTBAMer) and Chris Rubenstein is powerful.  Actually, not only is Hope For A Bleeding Sky an obvious prelude to BTBAM’s self-titled effort vocally, but the music isn’t far off either (even though no other BTBAM members were involved).

So, if you like Between the Buried and Me’s first record (and come on, who doesn’t?), From Here On’s Hope For A Bleeding Sky is a collection of songs that not only will you find crushing, but will almost make you wish BTBAM didn’t exist until a few years later.

- Logan

This album has already made its round as one of the most influential grind releases this side of Scum.

In 2000, Discordance Axis dropped The Inalienable Dreamless, an art-grind opus of varying texture, timbre, and sonic experimentation. The results are oddly pretty, but chaotic in an apocalypse of sound.

It’s very difficult not to rave about this record, but think about this: If you like any grindcore released after the turn of the millennium, be it Nasum or Gridlink (which features Axis mastermind Jon Chang), chances are it was influenced by this album.

- Nick

If there’s one thing Memphis crust kings His Hero is Gone should be convicted for, it’s for dizzying a mass of extreme music fans with a generation of gloomy, sludge-infused hardcore. Not only did they keep the hardcore scene alive through tough years, but they also brought forth names such as Rise and Fall, Mind Eraser, and Cursed, who have become household names in the genre, over the years.  While Fifteen Counts of Arson wasn’t responsible for pioneering crust punk, it certainly put the style in its prime, with a much darker, chunkier sound, a larger community of bands than ever, and progressively a larger following, as well.

From brooding sludge atmospherics, to reckless core antics, the nihilistic nature of the music is another factor contributing to its distinctiveness, as tracks like “Professional Mind Fuckers” and “Raindance”, are easily identifiable from the bulk of extreme music streaming music libraries, as of late.

Defunct or not, His Hero Is Gone are as explosive as the album title suggests, and a staple band in the transformation of hardcore in the last two decades.

- Vuk