Back catalogue: Metal

Review: British heavy metal outfit Fastway was of course put together in 1982 by 'Fast' Eddie Clarke. He is best known for his work as a guitarist with Motorhead but this band's debut album - originally released in 1983 - was also a hit with fans old and new. Its biggest moments are the singles 'We Become One' and 'Easy Livin', but the title track - which oddly was never actually put out as an official single, managed to become the band's most successful hit. This 40th-anniversary version is one of 1000 individually numbered copies on red vinyl.

Review: An extremely tehchnical tech-death metal gem from French-Canadian band First Fragment. If there's any metal that 'Gloire Eternelle' deals in, it's mercury, because this band, since their formation in 2007, have always treated the genre with infinite malleability, wafting their talent for double-kicks and solos about the room like an inescapable gas. Even touches of flamenco and neoclassical epic storytelling touch on this wholly instrumental odyssey, which you can now catch for the first time in 'gold splattered' 2xLP form since its initial digital release.

Review: Full of Hell join forces with Primitive Man for the new release Suffocating Hallucination, a collaborative record that is followed up by both bands touring. The music is controlled chaos with lots of harsh sonics and violent textures across the tracks which all drag you kicking and screaming through pure metal misery and torture. Walls of guitar noise, heavy doom and gloom atmospheres and plenty of distortion define this most abrasive of listens - which will no doubt be a joy to the ears of hardcore metal fans. What a monster of an album and a real showcase of sonic scuzzery.

Review: Taking both acts on their core traits, Full Of Hell primarily deal in death-grind fusion with some blackened aspects and a powerviolence twist, with their tracks rarely crossing the two-minute threshold and their average album length clocking in at approximately 20 minutes and some change. Primitive Man on the other hand, are the type of abyss dwellers that deal in lengthy sonic dirges, often running for well over an hour at a time. What happens when you combine two unmatched forces of modern extremity into one nightmare-fuelled hellscape of sonic torture? You get a truly oppressive display of grinding, trudging sludge-soaked doom with walls of caustic harsh noise which drone on for lengthy uncomfortable sections. Ugly, slow, unwelcoming and vile, 'Suffocating Hallucination' does its utmost to earn its nihilistic title, and offers little in the way of hope on its successful pilgrimage into the abyss.