Author & Punisher — Beastland
✦✦✧✧ This is Tristan Shone at the top of his game. Nasty, brutal, uncompromising industrial. This is also pretty much not metal. See the rest here
Author Archives: arse
Unearth — Extinction(s)
✦✦✦✧ Once again, Unearth bust out of their metalcore pigeonhole and bring us an expansive, reimagining of the genre. Do I detect hints of Acacia Strain, Meshuggah, and Machine Head between the breakdowns? Headnoddin’ good times, brah! See the rest here
The Ocean — Phanerozoic I: Palaezoic
✦✦✧✧ While I applaud Robin Staps and his voracious creativity, this time around the result feels less focused and enthralling. The music starts out in solidly familiar territory, but then veers into post-metal, sounding at times like Deftones and A Perfect Circle. You would think this would be a good thing; I’m just not sure it is. See the rest here
Monuments — Phronesis
✦✦✧✧ More or less, this is an embodiment of everything that djent is trying to get away from. See the rest here
Revocation — The Outer Ones
✦✦✧✧ On one level, this is every bit what you’d expect from a Revocation album: unabashed virtuosity in the most fun metal ways imaginable. On another level, the album laudably goes for a wide assortment of musical genres (rethrash, death metal, grind), but does not particularly stick this landings very well. See the rest here
Behemoth — I Loved You At Your Darkest
✦✦✧✧ Somehow, Behemoth keep getting better even after all this time. Their latest is every bit as moody and emotive as anything they’ve done before, and epic as always. Also, I’m beginning to think that Nergal has something against religion. See the rest here
Haken — Vector
✦✦✧✧ It’s an odd thing to hear a band try to be simultaneously accessible and fucking weird. In Haken’s hands, it comes across like an awkward fusion of Leprous and Muse. By now, the band have made the logical evolution from 80s-inspired prog metal to a metal-and-synthwave melange of influences. Just about the solitary cohesive element here is almost pathological usage of odd time signatures, which sometimes work out just fine, but often wind up euthanizing the material’s sense of flow or momentum. See the rest here
Beyond Creation — Algorythm
✦✦✦✧ As to be expected, this BC album starts out sounding primarily like a showcase for fretless bassmanship. (Playing to the judge? I’ll allow it.) And while I’m talking about the bass, I need to highlight that “newcomer” Hugo Doyon-Karout more than fills his predecessor’s shoes. But the album quickly shifts gears into a more nuanced form of technical death metal, jazzier and more inventive than before. See the rest here
Gorod — Aethra
✦✦✦✧ Three years since their last album, Gorod return with a more honed approach. Their sound now is still solid technodeath, but with a renewed commitment to songcraft. The band wields a more diverse palette this time around, channelling Gojira, Revocation, and early Mastodon… while simultaneously reining in their prior self-indulgences. See the rest here
Soulfly — Ritual
✦✦✧✧ This is a Soulfly album. Need I say more? See the rest here
