✦✦✦✧ Soilwork continue their explorations beyond their own formulaic confines which started with The Ride Majestic. The result is fresher, more lyrical, and surprisingly subtle for these melodeath champions of consistency. Definitely worth at least one listen. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ This is destined to be thought of as the opening salvo of the Great Thrash Offensive Of 2019. As such, it’s a very capable tip of the sword: plenty of tasty, high-speed riffs and infectious headbanging in tighter songs than I’m used to from Flots. Plus, A.K. Knutson’s voice sounds better than ever (faint praise, but worth mentioning). See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Props to DT for coming out with a grittier, tighter version of themselves on this album (somewhere in the musical ballpark of “Scenes From A Memory”). The shorter compositions lead not only to a sharper focus often missing in the past, but this feels in some ways like the best-yet fusion of DT’s twin penchants for heavy technicality and pseudo-emotive composition. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ A decidedly more Behemoth-y brand of death metal than I remember from Malevolent Creation. If only the album sounded as interesting as that description does. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Ukrainian djenty nu metal! That’s likely to evoke a bad reaction, but if you can look past your preconceptions, you’ll be left with a unique (and, at times, surprisingly heavy) EP that reminds me a bit of Torrential Downpour, Mudvayne, and SikTh. Tatiana Shmailyuk’s clean vocals work more often than not, but her gross vox are always great. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Glitzy and glossy as always, this time around BOS actually manage to deliver some interesting songs as well! What’s interesting about this album (other than its 25-minute length) is that the 8 songs tend to fall into either a strongly metal-with-techno camp or in a techno-core vibe. What’s detrimental about that is that BOS has yet to integrate their djent, synthwave, emocore, and blackened death tendencies into a cohesive whole. See the rest here
Thank you, my friend! I think the First Listens have had the key effect of keeping my tastes fluid and evolving. I’ll keep that going, as I said, so that I can keep my self-understanding sharp. That, and being in frequent contact with other (younger?) metalheads in my area; these folks are not shy about talking at me about <insert random band or subgenre> at me until I relent and promise to give it a listen with an open mind. See the rest here
Today, I published my final installment The Arsies, wrapping up what I certainly didn’t intend to be a ten-year, 81,000-word odyssey. Now that the bittersweet end is finally here, I have some thoughts. See the rest here
It’s time: the bracket is here for what is sure to be the most bizarro Arsies ever!
(It’s also the last, friends. So let’s make it count!)
✦✦✦✧ A particularly nasty bit of blackened death, this debut from a trio out of Idaho packs a lot of interesting riffage and punishment into its scant 35 minutes. It’s noisy and devastating, but beneath that offputting veneer lays a progressive beast of an album. Production values may hurt the band here, but either way I’m going to be keeping my eyes open for them in the future. See the rest here
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