Animals As Leaders — Parrhesia
✦✦✦✧ This is AAL at their heaviest in a very long time, if ever. Feel free to thank Misha Mansoor, whose production and arrangement assistance can be heard throughout the album. See the rest here
Author Archives: arse
Meshuggah — Immutable
✦✦✧✧ I’m sure my Meshuggah fanboyism is well established by now. Imagine then the pain I feel in having to give this album the lowest rating I’ve ever given the band.
The problem really comes down to the first three or four tracks, which establish a feeling for the album as a collection of B-sides, outtakes, and demos of guitar tone. See the rest here
Dream Widow — Dream Widow
✦✦✧✧ Dave Grohl is awesome, and this album is not. It’s the audio equivalent of Kylie Jenner wearing a Slayer t-shirt. Then again, I refuse to go along with the Tenacious D thing, so maybe it’s just me. (Then again again, this album really only exists as a prop for Dave’s horror flick “Studio 666,” so let’s relax.) See the rest here
Dark Funeral — We Are The Apocalypse
✦✦✦✧ This album delivers everything you might want from these exemplars of black metal’s second wave, but Dark Funeral do it in ways that sound anything other than trite or formulaic. This is a surprisingly expansive and experimental collection of songs. See the rest here
Sabaton — The War To End All Wars
✦✦✧✧ The only thing new about this album from Swedish extreme metal war historians Sabaton is that this suite of songs literally tells different specific stories from the First World War. I guess they just never got around to talking about the Christmas armistice in Bastogne until now. Hate on them all you want, but I think that’s actually kinda dope. See the rest here
Arkaik — Labyrinth Of Hungry Ghosts
✦✦✦✧ Very tasty tech death from a bunch of Californian veterans (Alterbeast, Vale Of Pnath, Hatriot). The music shreds, it’s inventive, and it’s even got groove at times. And I’m glad that they kept the mean and median song length to six minutes; when it comes to metal this frantic, you’re still going to suffer blisters. See the rest here
Stabbing Westward — Chasing Ghosts
✦✦✧✧ If you need some background music for a movie or a TV show in which the camera movies through a goth club, and for whatever reason you can’t use any of the other Stabbing Westward albums out there, this one will do quite nicely. (I really dig that cover art, though.) See the rest here
Crowbar — Zero And Below
✦✦✦✧ Crowbar are like well-oiled clockwork. This album delivers the heavy, sludgey goods that we require of the band. While nothing here stands out as career-defining, that’s like complaining that a particular lasagna isn’t the best you’ve ever had. Quit yer complaining. See the rest here
Haunted Shores — Void
✦✦✧✧ Did you know that, before he joined Periphery, Mark Holcomb had started a metalcore band named Haunted Shores? And that, rather than formally ending that group, it morphed into a side project between him and Misha Mansoor? Don’t be minimized by this instrumental shredfest’s small footprint; 37 minutes tends to stretch when it’s almost completely filled with 16th and 32nd notes. See the rest here
Vio-Lence — Let The World Burn
✦✦✧✧ Really good rethrash from Bay Area veterans. Five tracks, 25 minutes. Perfect. Who needs innovation when you’ve got this ferocious pit?! See the rest here
