(DGR is playing the game of review catch-up. Is today’s four-album installment the first inning of nine, or the first half of two? We shall see.)

I say this every time I’ve done it in its twice-yearly fashion, but smaller review collections like this are not ones that I feel good about doing. It doesn’t feel fair to the bands not paying the imagined debt I have with them, that I’ve done something so criminal as enjoy their music and yet not find the time within myself to dedicate toward the usual essay-long dissection and exploration of their newest release.

Yet, it is festival season now in Europe which means that metal’s biological clock is seeing fit to give birth to a ton of new releases. You may have noticed during the last month or so there has been a steady drip of reviews coming from my corner of the world, but truth be told, all of those were done just prior to our unwitting heavy metal May that we’ve created. The assumption being that they would run once a day so the site would always have something to post while we were out and about witnessing music or drinking ourselves into apocalyptic stupor.

You’ll note, that’s not how it happened, and instead the collective of releases that I had fished up from the world’s murky musical depths ran well into June. That doesn’t mean the exploration and listening stopped, either. Just as many were caught up in the nets or came out while we were on that aforementioned vacation, and we now find ourselves at the doorstep of a collection of music spanning months that needs to be caught up on.

You, dedicated reader of the site that you are, know next what is coming. It has traveled by many names: review roundup, things you may have missed, clearing the slate, material befitting the ethereal, music by swedes for long-haired plebes, a million other names that all translate to one basic idea – we need to catch up on stuff so we can maintain some semblance of being current yet refuse to leave these albums sitting in the dust. Continue reading »