About the site

OnlyDeathIsReal.rip – exploring the dark, hard underbelly of the music underground since 2019. From the extremest of extreme metal to the most esoteric of neofolk, from the most psychotic psychobilly to the vilest horrorcore rap, OnlyDeathIsReal.rip covers all kinds of hard, dark, extreme and obscure underground music past and present. Without prejudice, but with some predilection.

About the reviews

We no longer assign a numerical score to the reviews, as of summer 2021. Older reviews have a numerical rating system, described below:

The point scale in them is from 0 to 5 with 0.5 point intervals, eg. 0, 0.5, 1, 1.5 and so on. 2.5/5 indicates an average album that is neither good nor bad, just perfectly average and quite characterless. Anything above 2.5 means we like it, anything below 2.5 means we don’t like it.

About submissions

Yes! We do accept submissions for reviews. We accept both digital and physical material (CD, CDr, tape, vinyl). For digital material, we request a download; we will not review streams (for example Soundcloud or Spotify). When queuing material for review, physical items will always have precedence over digital items.

You can get in touch via the contact form.

Due to the volume of promo submissions we get, we regrettably cannot guarantee we will review everything or always even be able to respond to every email – especially when it comes to digital only promos.

About the author

J. is a guy in his forties with 20 years of experience in writing about music with a large range: from underground metal to post-industrial to punk to rockabilly, country and roots music. His musical tastes range from Hank Williams to Hellhammer, Big Bill Broonzy to Black Sabbath, Toots & The Maytals to Those Poor Bastards, Incantation to Insane Clown Posse, Death In June to Depeche Mode.