Battles — Juice B Crypts
✦✧✧✧ Mildly engaging bleeps and bloops occasionally mixed with elements of currently popular music genres. I have no need to ever hear this again. See the rest here
Author Archives: arse
Norma Jean — All Hail
✦✦✧✧ All of the ferocity you’ve come to expect from these glitchy metalcore legends. What makes this album interesting is how the band simultaneously pummel the listener and hold their fire for better pacing throughout the album. The album’s back half is as compelling and brutal as its front half, not an easy feat for anyone in this genre. See the rest here
Alcest — Spiritual Instinct
✦✦✦✧ Shoegazey black metal/post-black done to perfection. That is to say, it’s moody, meandery, and slippery. The album’s high marks are a testament to how well the emotionality works. See the rest here
Singularity — Place Of Chains
✦✦✧✧ Symphonic tech death that feels like a cross between The Faceless and Fleshgod Apocalypse. When it’s on (“Sisyphean Cycle”, “Consume And Assume”, “Desmoterion”, it’s fucking on. Otherwise, the music here does trend toward the derivative or at least very familiar. That’s pretty much the worst criticism I can level against this otherwise epic and impressive shredfest of an album. See the rest here
Lacuna Coil — Black Anima
✦✦✦✧ It makes a lot of sense that gothic metal would appropriate some of the milder, more polished elements of djent. And it makes a lot of sense that gothic mainstays Lacuna Coil would lead the charge. But what will blow your mind is just how much this new version of the Lacuna Coil formula works (or at least doesn’t outright fail). See the rest here
1349 — The Infernal Pathway
✦✦✧✧ Speed metal and black metal, two subgenres that don’t often get successfully blended together, find an uneasy alliance in 1349’s latest album. Or rather, this happens in different ways throughout the album, which feels like at least three slightly different EPs, bookended by a few recurring “Tunnel Of Set” interludes, themselves a continuation of a trick first heard on 1349’s Demonoir album. See the rest here
Refused — War Music
✦✦✦✧ The best way to enjoy this album is to be open to the idea of what Refused used to be, without thinking for a moment about “The Shape Of Punk To Come.” If you can thread that needle, you’ll have the mindset needed to enjoy this energetic, guttural punk/metal hybrid. See the rest here
DragonForce — Extreme Power Metal
✦✦✧✧ Gods love DragonForce, who continue to hold down the fort for power metal with unwavering commitment and enthusiasm (hell, they put it in this album’s title!). As always, the latest DragonForce album just feels so damned good. The shredding is exactly as it should be: as ridiculously adroit as it is over the top. See the rest here
Alter Bridge — Walk The Sky
✦✦✧✧ Unsurprisingly polished rockmetal from a band that is ostensibly Creed with a different singer. (No flippant dismissal intended by that statement; you merely have a right to expect a certain amount of polish from these guys.) The biggest problem here, then, is that all that gloss is in service of material that is uninspiring. See the rest here
Dysrhythmia — Terminal Threshold
✦✦✦✧ Staggeringly complicated, perverse, and heavy progressive metal; if I had to draw a comparison, it’d be to some segments of latter-era Death or Gorguts. I wish there was more bass (or at least that the bass was more present in the mix), but otherwise this is a tight and compelling listen. See the rest here
