✦✧✧✧ 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
✦✧✧✧ What the actual fuck with this album.
There are touches here (isolated riffs, really) that remind me of the Machine Head I thought I knew: precise, mean, effective metal. The vast bulk of this album unfortunately is something else: a confused and incoherent melange, liberally peppered with references to latter-day nu metal staples like Slipknot and Korn. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Not only does this album mark a return to COC’s classic lineup, featuring Pepper Keenan, but it also marks a return to a very old sound (albeit with new sludgey Down-ish qualities, not surprisingly). I’m not sure exactly who this album is for, but it’s kinda nice to know that the band is still doing what they do. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ More engaging than your typical old-school Scandanavian black metal, but don’t worry: the shitty production values and Crypt Keeper vocal stylings are still in full effect. Not quite as experimental as past Watain albums, but the band strike a good balance here between unusual chord progressions and obligatory-screaming-in-the-cold-forest fundamentals. See the rest here
(The listening party starts over at TIDAL.) See the rest here
I do believe this is one of the first metal albums that Zig ever made me listen to. Or was it you, JaPaBo? Pouring out a tall boy…. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Take the band’s last release (the two-month-old “Loüm”) and blend it with… the Inception soundtrack? See the rest here
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