Under the needle

With the uncanny, preternatural strength of a freshly-awakened zombie’s cold, undead grasp, Deceased have maintained a tenacious grip on death metal ever since the crude beginnings of the genre in the early '80s. And although it’s been a few years, like all the best reanimated, B-movie horror monsters, Deceased are impossible to keep down and have risen again, grizzled and grotesque and ready to wreak havoc. Back with a vengeance, their new album 'Ghostly White' returns to th

From the first glance at their album cover, one can see that Saint Karloff make no bones about their influences. Taking influence from the godfathers of doom themselves, and channelling the feel of classic horror, it’s clear that there is going to be some heavy-duty Sabbath worship on this album. But underestimate ‘Saint Karloff’ at your peril – while their riffs, jazzy breaks and thunderstorm-laden opener are very evocative of Iommi, Geezer, Ward and Osbourne, ‘Saint Karloff

It's hard to imagine a band of such towering status and staggering longevity possibly surpassing the dizzying heights of blackened excellence for which they've long been so fanatically admired. And yet, in this electrifying act of crushingly immense, sinewy power and frostbitten atmospherics, that's precisely what these legendary Norsemen have achieved in rich and seemingly limitless abundance. With its gargantuan slabs of reverb and madly revolving whorls of tremolo accelera