✦✦✦✧ This new Rolo Tomassi album operates in two modes fairly equally: interestingly jazzy post-trip-hop and chaotic mathcore, like DEP meets Lamb meets Norma Jean. The beautiful thing here is that neither mode feels like filler against the other. It’s all internally consistent, cohesive, and compelling. And in a further evolution for the band, the album’s emotional range is almost cinematic in scope. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ The Isis-meets-APC vibe of TAL is more finely tuned on this album than ever before. Heavy, moody, and unique. See the rest here
✦✧✧✧ I swear to god, when this album started I thought at first that I’d popped on a Primus album. Unfortunately, that’s probably the listening high point of the debut album from this high-concept stoner band. I’m hardpressed to think of another supergroup as intent on casting its constituent pieces in a worse light. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ This album feels both novel and dated at the same time. Its production values and humble musical ambitions lend the proceedings a tiredness that’s hard to look past. But the album is also fresh in some of its riffs and chord progressions, as well as its interweaving of Swedish death metal, thrash, and black metal. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ A syrupy, grungy hard rock album for a modern metalhead’s sensibilities. Zakk Wylde et al channel their inner Tommy Iommi and Jerry Cantrell, but put enough enough spit on it to make the album moderately smirk-inducing. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ This album vacillates between routine prog metal (with light Israeli flavor) and straight up mizrahi rock with heavy metal adornments. This winds up sounding a lot like Serj Tankian singing along with a very good band overseas. Interesting. See the rest here
✦✧✧✧ This is a different project than usual for Dream Theater’s drummer Mike Mangini: a “rock novel” that reimagines the narrative of Joseph Campbell’s “A Hero’s Journey,” an instrumental album save for “chapter” “intros” from voiceover actor Larry Davis. And it’s pretty much what you’d expect: utter wankery, more fit for a drum clinic than anything else. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Goddamn, this industrialcore album is unapologetically nasty. There are fun and clever flourishes throughout, which only accentuate the otherwise singleminded pummeling on every track. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ This album is nuts. Lo-fi avant garde progressive black cvlt noise, like Boris played on vinyl that also happens to be a cat’s scratching post. Put another way, I imagine this must be what non-metalheads think all metal sounds like. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ The supergroup’s sophomore album still has a lot of the magic as was evident in their 2015 debut “A Head Full Of Moonlight“, but the band’s musicality, emotionality, ambition, and strangeness are all dialed down a bit. This comes across more as a new maturity than any loss of momentum or inspiration, the result still captivating in its not-quite-*core pop-metal sensibilities. See the rest here
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