Author Archives: arse

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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).

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