Ahhh Italy, home to beautiful couture clothing, magnificent sports cars, and don't even get me started on how sexy Italian men are. Over the centuries Italy has been defined as a place the creates beauty. The tradation of Italian beauty blends with brutality in the form of HUmangled's "Old Epics". Sure you can find good death metal all over the world, but it often seems like Italian bands are over looked often. Maybe it's because we expect everything Italian to be soft, beautiful or fast that it can be easy to dismiss Italian bands as not heavy enough. With "Old Epics" Humangled pushes their soul pounding sound to a whole new level. It is heavy and brutal, but there is something beautiful about in lurking between the folds that does make it very Italian. "Old Epics" is scheduled  to drop sometime this summer, in the meantime feast your eyes on the cover art designed by Marko Somero.

Swedish death metal gods Altar disbanded back in 1995. And while there doesn't seem to be any hope in getting the band back together, Altar and the fiends at Pulverised Records will be releasing a compilation of all Altar's recorded work in the form of "Dark Domains". Dedicated to the late great Mieszko Talarczyk "Dark Domains" covers Alter's regin of terror from their unholy conception in 1989 to the their unfortunate demise in 1995. "Dark Domains" doesn't have a release date just yet but you can get more info over at www.pulverised.net.