Conan — Blood Eagle
★★☆☆ This album is really heavy. And really moody. And unrelenting. And a bit boring, honestly. Then again, I don’t smoke dope, so what do I know. See the rest here
Author Archives: arse
Carnifex — Die Without Hope
★★☆☆ This album is caught halfway between deathgrind and technodeath, between sounding like The Black Dahlia Murder and The Acacia Strain. While that sounds great, the problem is that the shifts between modes happen too quickly to really seat the listener in either. It’s still a well-done bit of nastiness, though, with a nice assortment of riffs and leads. See the rest here
Prostitute Disfigurement — From Crotch To Crown
★★☆☆ Very technical death metal, on a par with Gorguts or Disincarnate. Impressive, furious, but a little dated by now. By the way, I can’t say that I’m in love with the band’s gratuitously misogynistic tone. I get the need to be shocking, but c’mon. See the rest here
Junius — Days of the Fallen Sun
★★★☆ This is a gorgeously nihilistic EP with hints of The Ocean’s “Pelagial”, Chino Moreno’s side project †††, and even Death Cab For Cutie when they’re not aiming for accessibility. It sounds like a bunch of things all at once, and at the same time it sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard before. See the rest here
Grand Magus — Triumph and Power
★☆☆☆ This is a joke. Oh, I know that they don’t think it’s a joke. The album is painfully self-serious. But you can’t tell me this doesn’t remind you of Spinal Tap. See the rest here
Morbus Chron — Sweven
★★☆☆ This is a conflicting album. On the one hand, you get the sense that it does an excellent job executing on whatever kind of music it’s trying to be. On the other hand, it’s not quite outlandish or groundbreaking enough to be notable. Combined, it comes across as a high-water mark of self-informed nonreferential music that’s equal parts doom, sludge, and Southern rock. See the rest here
I can believable
I am shocked to tell you that Angela Gossow is stepping down from her duties as vocalist for Arch Enemy, with an even shockinger “to spend time with my family” message (and this is from the band’s website):
I have decided to step down from being Arch Enemy’s voice of anger.
See the rest here
Behemoth — The Satanist
★★☆☆ This album is as good as Behemoth gets. And that there is mixed praise. It is relatively expansive, and more mature than you’d suspect. But it’s also a bit tired and unexciting. Still, it’s a bit of an improvement over Evangelion. See the rest here
Exmortus — Slave To The Sword
★★★☆ This album is pretty frickin’ sweet! It’s one long excuse for unbridled shredding. And battleaxes. I mean, I could draw all kinds of comparisons to this one — Racer X, Manowar, Revocation, even DragonForce — but that’s just me talking to your brain, when in fact your heart is going to want to hear this. See the rest here
Architects — Lost Forever // Lost Together
★☆☆☆ This album is a bit of a mess. Part djent, part tweenaged metalcore, with a smidge of EDM sensibility thrown in. I can’t say that I liked it very much, although there were a few moments that elicited genuine headswaying. See the rest here
