★★☆☆ Of the many bands to be produced by Kurt Ballou this year, Skeletonwitch may have benefited the most from his touch. Their latest album is as short and unsubtle as ever, but it’s definitely punchy, accessible, and fun. See the rest here
★★★★ Everything you could ever want from a PtH album: blistering guitarwork and jerkily progressive rhythms, plus (dare I say it?) a hint of maturity from the otherwise famously immature Rody Walker. In fact, the entire album has surprisingly more depth, breadth, and ambition than I expected to hear (especially the track “Plato’s Tripartite”). See the rest here
★★☆☆ This album has a damn fine sound, clearly written by a band who never gave up the dream of thrash. All the same, it does take some time to warm up, and the high points are eclipsed by tedious tropes that we’ve heard before (not that that’s a bad thing, but their staleness is made all the more obvious by the surprising freshness found in other places). See the rest here
★☆☆☆ Remember a few years back, when Exodus stunned us all with “Tempo Of The Damned,” a stubbornly triumphant work of neo-thrash? Yeah, well “Generation Nothing” is pretty much the polar opposite of that album. It’s a a thrash time capsule with nothing (except for somewhat better production value) to show for it. See the rest here
★★☆☆ A trippy, confusing work, “Infinitas” sounds like a djentier Protest The Hero, with a liberal dash of synth earcandy. Their innovations may be entirely based on the surprising mashups they foist on the listener, patching unsurprising and well-worn bits together into a novel whole, but at least it ain’t a boring listen. See the rest here
★☆☆☆ A couple of shining moments in the back half of this album (including sublime leads by Corey Beaulieu, and a fun-enough palate cleanser of a Misfits double cover) can’t save an otherwise dreary and forgettable 47 minutes. You can really smell David Draiman all over “Vengeance Falls”… and it doesn’t smell good. See the rest here
★★☆☆ At its best (ie: “Bad Vibes”), this album demonstrates an energy and vitality that is undeniable and infectioous. At its worst, it is just another forgettable exercise from The Kurt Ballou School Of Overdrive. See the rest here
★★☆☆ While others are trying to reform their djenty excesses, Vildhjarta doubles down on their latest EP. The result: a somewhat satisfying, yet very confusing, 24 minutes that goes whichever way it pleases. Perhaps it’s the unpredictability that makes the EP’s high points so good… but the overall experience is not unlike getting roofied (or so I hear). See the rest here
★★★☆ Don’t let the sophomoric title or cover art fool you. Instead of a bad COC knockoff, this is basically a Massachusetts metalcore supergroup (with ex-members of Shadows Fall and KSE), giving themselves free license to use metalcore as a base camp for all their frenetic, frantic excursions into many other metal genres. See the rest here
★★★☆ Definitely taking more than one page from the Black Dahlia Murder playbook, this melodic death metal manages to sound just different enough from the rest of the pack to feel interesting. This is a grower (and not an easy one at that), and not entirely as original as BDM. But IKE does have something going for it that BDM does not: easy accessibility to their latest fucking album online, that’s what. See the rest here
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