Coffins — Beyond The Circular Demise
✦✧✧✧ This sounds like reheated crap. See the rest here
Author Archives: arse
Borknager — True North
✦✦✦✧ This is everything you could possibly want from a Norwegian black metal band. You can almost feel the icicles dangling off this album. It’s also a better example of the potential fusion between vintage prog and modern metal. This album is atmospheric and folksy and energetic and so epic. In other words, this album is what I’ve really wanted from Opeth for quite some time now. See the rest here
Opeth — In Cauda Venenum
✦✦✧✧ Of course Opeth would start this album with a Mellotron sample. And yet, everyone’s favorite was-metal prog rock band are newly channeling 70s proto-metal here. The result is darker and more interesting than their last few albums. I’m still waiting in vain for a Damnation Part II, but I give Messrs. See the rest here
The Agonist — Orphans
✦✦✦✧ This is an enchanting extreme metal (and then some) album, combining the glossy symphonic sensibilities of Blind Guardian with adroitly placed hints of TesseracT, The Contortionist, and even Protest The Hero and Gojira. Aside from the clever and surprising songwriting, the MVP on this album is unquestionably vocalist Vicky Psarakis, who deftly pulls out all the stops, pivoting from wannabe-operatic to hard rock to cookie monster and back again in a way that should finally free her from predecessor Alissa White-Gluz’s shadow. See the rest here
Exhorder — Mourn The Southern Skies
✦✦✦✧ Pioneers of Southern groove metal Exhorder are back, and as ferocious and energizing as ever! Technically, this is rethrash, except that this album very much feels like what you’d expect if the band had just continued the trajectory they started in the late 80s. The truth is, this is their second reunion, and they’ve been disbanded longer than they’d ever been together. See the rest here
Devourment — Obscene Majesty
✦✧✧✧ This might just be the most brutal death metal album of 2019. Unfortunately, the production is so godawful that you really can’t be sure about what you’re hearing. I do think I have a concussion from listening to it on headphones, so that’s a plus I guess. See the rest here
The Number Twelve Looks Like You — Wild Gods
✦✦✦✧ This album from kings of the second wave of mathcore TNTLLY (their first in a decade) seem to fill a void left by The Dillinger Escape Plan, Mr. Bungle, and pre-Parallax BTBAM… but really it’s anyone’s guess what the band are actually trying to do with this. This album is nothing short than a compendium of inventiveness; believe frontman Jase Korman when he says, “This album is like a galactic freak show advertisement to aliens, telling them to come see this insane place we call Earth.” See the rest here
Cult Of Luna — A Dawn To Fear
✦✦✦✧ With this highly anticipated followup to “Mariner” (2016’s critically fawned-over duet with Julie Christmas), Cult Of Luna set a new standard for what post-metal is capable of… this sounds like a mix of Isis, the Inception soundtrack, and BTBAM. Deeply evocative, peerlessly heavy, and interesting enough to justify the uncompromising pacing (8 songs, 79 minutes). See the rest here
Artificial Language — Now We Sleep
✦✦✦✧ This is the blend of Leprous, The Faceless, Scale The Summit, and BTBAM you didn’t know you needed. See the rest here
Spirit Adrift — Divided By Darkness
✦✦✧✧ A cozy blend of early Mastodon’s playfulness and Baroness’s swampiness. Dark, dirty fun. I just wish it was more emotive or interesting. See the rest here
