PERSEFONE: “AATHMA”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Feb 282017
 

 

(DGR prepared this detailed review of the new album by Andorra’s Persefone, and we have a full music stream for you at the end.)

If there is one thing that I’ve come to admire in music over the past few years, it is a sense of ambition. As music has become democratized and we’ve found bedroom and studio projects achieving just as much as groups with label backing, I’ve found bands who seem to have decided that since there is no more ‘living within their means’ any more, they can just go for it every time they step up to the plate. Persefone are one of those bands.

Now a handful of albums deep into their career, each disc has seemingly grown in size and scope compared to the last one. They come off as a group that has overdosed on just as many Dream Theater and Symphony X keyboard-laden discs as they have the late ’90s and early 2000s melodeath scene. Continue reading »

SLAGMAUR: “THILL SMITTS TERROR”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Feb 272017
 

 

(Wil Cifer wrote this review of the long-awaited new album by Norway’s Slagmaur.)

This band from Norway have found their own dark path to stomp down with a grandiosity that elevates them over many of their peers.

They often find themselves chugging into more death-metal-like waters while holding the guitar textures with enough darkness to earn them the label of blackened death metal. At the end of the day, sub-genres be damned, it’s clear these songs are crafted with the understanding that no matter how heavy you are, the songs have to come first. Continue reading »

DARKEST HOUR: “GODLESS PROPHETS & THE MIGRANT FLORA”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Feb 242017
 

 

(Here’s Andy Synn’s review of the new album by Darkest Hour.)

Now Darkest Hour’s last album was… how do I put this delicately… a big fat disappointment.

Anodyne and formulaic to a fault, it sounded less like the thrashing melodeath maniacs we’d all come to know and love, and more like a band trying desperately to streamline and sanitise their sound in pursuit of some (arguably long overdue) crossover success.

Heck, the band pretty well said as much in interviews at the time, citing their disappointment at seeing so many of their peers garnering a tonne of mainstream (by Metal standards, at least) attention and commercial success, while they were still struggling for their “big break”, as one of the driving factors behind their shift towards a more generic, Metalcore-friendly sound on their (ultimately sub-par) self-titled endeavour.

But it takes a big man (or, in this case, a big band) to admit when they’ve made a mistake. And, although it may not say so in so many words, Godless Prophets… is not only a heartfelt mea culpa from the DC destroyers, but also just happens to be their heaviest, angriest album since Hiddens Hands… Continue reading »

ANCST: “FURNACE”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Feb 222017
 

 

(Andy Synn wrote this review of the new EP by Ancst from Berlin.)

Seeing as how I selected Moloch by Ancst as one of my Personal Top Ten Albums of 2016, it only makes sense that I be the one to cover their brand new EP, Furnace.

Of course, it’s not like the band have been idle in the intervening period between the release of Moloch (March 25th, 2016) and Furnace (February 19th, 2017), having also provided a track (“Arctic Waste”) for a four-way split last April, as well as delivering another extended instrumental EP in the form of October’s Stormcaster.

It’s simply that, as endlessly prolific as the band are, some of their releases stand out more than others.

And Furnace is one of them. Continue reading »

CATCHING UP ON 2016 -– BEDOWYN / KORONAL / MELDING PLAGUE

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Feb 202017
 


Bedowyn

(Andy Synn contributes three more reviews of releases from 2016, focusing on the music of Bedowyn (North Carolina), Koronal (Poland), and Melding Plague (Finland).)

Ok, last one. Deep breath. Big finish.

Here are the final three albums from 2016 which I have handpicked for your listening pleasure.

I hope you enjoy them, and I sincerely hope you’ve all discovered a gem or two over the last few weeks of these “catch-up” posts.

I’ll probably be following up on a few of my personal favourites over the next month or so, so we’re not quite done with 2016 just yet, but, for the most part, I’m now going to be switching my focus to albums and EPs from 2017, as I’ve built up quite a backlog over the last several weeks.

In the meantime, however, why not get stuck into the cavalcade of humongous riffs, ear-catching melodies, and badass grooves provided by this triumphant triptych of bands? Continue reading »

RUNNING THE GAUNTLET: EXPANDER, WOUNDVAC, KEITZER, THE DEVIL WANTS HER SWAGGER BACK

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Feb 192017
 

 

We usually begin Sundays here on our metallic island with a REARVIEW MIRROR post, but I decided this week I’d rather use the time to spread around some more new music — even though I did a shitload of that yesterday.

I was also motivated by the fact that the music of the following four bands — three of whom I discovered in the last 48 hours — seemed like it would all go together pretty well, because they’ve all got varying degrees of punk or hardcore in their DNA (though they’re all metal as hell, too). By the time you get to the end of this post, you’ll be smiling through broken teeth.

EXPANDER

First up is Expander. They’re ensconced in my old hometown of Austin, Texas. I paused in my musical explorations to check out some music from their new album Endless Computer when I spotted the very recognizable artwork of Luca Carey on the cover. The fact that the album is being released (on May 16th) by Nuclear War Now! was an added inducement, and another nail in the coffin came when I saw that the album was engineered by Kurt Ballou and mastered by Joel Grind. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: HOODED MENACE AND ALGOMA — A SPLIT

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Feb 162017
 

 

On New Year’s Day of this year I posted a large round-up of new music that included brief teasers of music from a vinyl split release by Finland’s Hooded Menace and the Canadian band AlgomA. At that point, release of the split by Doomentia Records had been delayed past its originally scheduled November 2016 release date, but it finally became available at the end of January (and the limited-edition splattered-color version of the vinyl is already sold out), and full streams of both songs are now up on Bandcamp.

The artwork for the split was painted by the Italian maestro Paolo Girardi. My own admiration for his work probably appears slavish to regular readers here, but man, what he did for this split really makes me drool. I’ve ordered the split on vinyl just to be able to hold it in my hands, though I didn’t find out about the vinyl release until too late to grab one of these: Continue reading »

POWER TRIP: “NIGHTMARE LOGIC”

 Album Reviews  8 Responses »
Feb 152017
 

 

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the new album by Texas-based Power Trip.)

One of the worst offenders within the utter triteness that was the so called “re-thrash” movement was the rise of the whole crossover party thrash scene. I came to intensely dislike certain bands (who shall remain nameless) who seem to place all their emphasis on the energy and aesthetic of thrash but completely forsake all of the power, attitude, and uninhibited human rage that thrash encapsulates so well — while also having no good idea how to truly manipulate the hardcore aspects of their sound to give the music high-impact groove when needed.

Newer crossover thrash, however, has been seeing a YUGE renaissance. The newer Ringworm material, Iron Reagan (a band with Municipal Waste alumni), and the subject of this review — Power Trip — are producing music that is on a mission to recapture the genre and hit the turbo button, producing some of the most straight-up genuinely pissed metal on the planet. Continue reading »

KING WOMAN: “CREATED IN THE IMAGE OF SUFFERING”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  No Responses »
Feb 152017
 

 

(In this post Wil Cifer reviews the new album by San Francisco’s King Woman.)

King Woman’s full-length debut has the kind of thick, dream-like haze cast over it that makes the mood much darker and heavier than what we got from their previous EP. Like many albums that I sing the praises of, this one tickles the sweet spot of my taste buds, and once again proves you don’t have to adhere to typical metal trappings in order to be heavy.

Kristina Esfandiari allows some of her backing vocal tracks to move into more of a scream. And there is weight to the guitars, which often carry the dense distortion of doom. By the second song, it sounds to me that this album is going to take them to the next level of recognition. Continue reading »

CATCHING UP ON 2016: BHAVACHAKRA / ENDOLITH / HAUNTER

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Feb 142017
 

 

(Here we have a trio of reviews by Andy Synn, who’s still not finished with 2016.)

So it looks like, barring some sort of unforeseen intervention by an outside source, this will be my penultimate catch-up post for 2016, and very soon I’ll be able to divert my full attention to new releases – both from lesser-known acts and from bigger names – from 2017.

In the meantime, however, here are three more killer albums from last year that really deserved a lot more attention and acclaim than they received. Continue reading »

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