✦✦✦✧ This, Ozzy’s twelfth solo album, is immediately comparable to some of the high points of his solo career and even some earlier Sabbath albums. Kudos to his support band (featuring Duff McKagan, Chad Smith, and Slash!). The production is surprisingly muddy, but it works pretty well for Ozzy. I could do without the title track (featuring Elton John!), See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ How do Napalm Death make politically aware grindcore sound so ferocious yet so catchy?! These songs, mostly penned by bassist Shane Embury, lean more experimental and unpredictable than we’ve been getting from ND lately, which is great news. And great noise. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Somehow, this is both Katatonia at their most pop-oriented… and their most moodiest album since Dead End Kings. The production by Jonas Renkse and Anders Nyström is as lush and appropriate as ever, with a heightened focus on atmosphere and songwriting. Special shout out to lead single “Lacquer,” which uses electronica in a new (to this band) way to convey something unique, accessible, but oh so doomed. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ This is as ridiculously heavy a noisescape as anything else PM have put out, with a slightly more pronounced focus on song structure than their previous album Caustic (and mercifully less than twice the running time). But it’s still a bit of a one-trick diversion of an album, and definitely not something you’ll ever hear on any radio request line. See the rest here
✦✧✧✧ This is 74 minutes of power metal bolstered incessantly by a German armed forces orchestra. So of course it’s over the top epic at times, what with the horns and woodwinds and whatnot. But aside from that, the latest from Accept frontman Udo Dirkschneider is surprisingly limp. Also, this album cover looks like it belongs to the Now That’s What I Call Music series. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Another 41-minute grind/industrial/death/black metal maelstrom, this time with a hint of… growing maturity and reflection? This album is in fact unusually thoughtful (don’t like the song title “Libidinous (A Pig With Cocks In Its Eyes)” fool you), with Dave Hunt’s lyrics touching repeatedly on the state of the Western world. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ An album length of 22 minutes might seem a little skimpy, but that doesn’t stop these tech death shredders from cramming an hour’s worth of riffs into it. It’s blistering fun at a million miles an hour, of course, but the listening experience is a little like doing shots; I can’t remember much after it’s all done, but I feel like I got hit by a truck anyway. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ The band’s previous album Vector had me worried, but somehow the band correct for past sins here, without abandoning their trademark accessible eccentricity. Indeed, the band continue to wear their influences on their sleeves (Dream Theater, Devin Townsend, Leprous, SikTh, Karnivool, Porcupine Tree, Tool) while also managing to surprise and delight. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ More like Long Album Good Night, am I right?! 31 years after “Nothing Left To Say,” Fates’ thirteenth album of thirteen songs is 72 minutes long (about 20 minutes too many). The songs don’t feel particularly related to each other (and this is somewhat of an aberration in the band’s catalog of albums with unifying themes). See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ This is definitely my preferred portion of the now collective 3 hours that make up the Phanerozoic suite. Seemingly more deliberate than Phanerozoic I: Palaezoic, Messrs. Staps et al find novel ways to express their creativity without sacrificing coherence or ferocity. Definitely listen to the whole album, as it looks to map the passage of geologic time, lyrically and musically, over a span of 250 million years… with accompanying genre shifts along the way. See the rest here
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