✦✦✧✧ Perhaps Pyrrhon’s most accessible album to date… by which I mean that normies will be all “NO FUCKING THANK YOU” after about 10 seconds of this virtuosic cacophony. If you stick with it, however, you’ll find the progressive death metal band’s malevolent logic is a bit closer to the surface than before. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ This, finally, is an Enslaved album that I can enjoy without reservation. The pacing is great, bordering on psychic; the blending of styles (black metal, prog, beerhall, Viking, jazz) is tasteful, sensible, and pleasing to the ear. This is a Must Listen for sure, and my favorite Enslaved album ever. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Far be it for me to accuse DevilDriver of being experimental, but this album (or rather, this first half of a double album) takes a lot of chances with the band’s formula. By and large, those gambles pay off handsomely, leading to the most brutal yet interesting album they’ve put out in a decade. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Perhaps the most inscrutable, internally consistent album I’ve heard since The Mars Volta’s Amputechture. The band’s third album introduces a new element to their sound: throughout, there’s now a new sense of Something Gone Wrong here, which really hones the edge of their music’s inventiveness and unpredictability. Give it an honest chance; this album has surprises up its sleeve. See the rest here
Bold statement, Zig! It’s certainly the most electrifying debut hard rock album I can think of, that’s for damned sure. But….
Honestly, I’m not gonna fight you on this one, as it’d be like a knife fight: ugly, with both of us winding up bloody, and for no good reason. So, all hail VH I! See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Delicious prog death! BCI’s sound is leaning now more in the prog direction. It’s also the most surgical and precise kind of brütal hëaviness I’ve heard in a long time, maybe ever. It’s quite an achievement. Also, I am loving the split vocal stylings of James Dorton (growls) and Andy Thomas (cleans). See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ I don’t remember Paradise Lost sounding quite so much like Type O Negative spent a holiday in Gothenburg. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ This is a fun old-style prog debut that’s halfway between Mastodon, Tool, and Intronaut… but with more grit than any of those. It is remarkable (in a good way) that an album this full of innovative twists and turns can come across as so unsurprising or natural. Aside from that faint praise, my only gripe is that this album feels overlong by a lot. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ If you’re a Deftones fan, this album offers tantalizing glimpses of near greatness. It’s the first time in 17 years that the band have worked with the great Terry Date, and their combined production choices yield very listenable, if not always straightforward, sonic decisions. Those choices just contribute to an overall sense of the band now being so post-meta that us listeners are just going to have to play catchup. See the rest here
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