✦✦✦✧ This reminds me of the attenuated excellence on DEP’s “One Of Us Is The Killer.” The energy and rawness is still here, but this is a somewhat more evolved Converge. Somewhat more experimental with their riffs and motifs. Somewhat more expansive. And somewhat more reserved emotionally (not the worst thing in the world, but noticeable coming from the guys that gave us the juggernaut “Axe To Fall”). See the rest here
✦✧✧✧ This sounds like a swarm of stoned goth bees. See the rest here
Revolver Magazine just launched a new series that they call “Game Changers,” and the debut piece is a good one: Deftones talking about the making of “Around The Fur.” They make mention of Our Old Best Friend Terry Date, and what happened there. Check it out. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ While Narcotic Wasteland established their sound as blistering death metal on their 2014 debut, it’s not until this followup that the band really found their footing and comfort zone. It’s fun, it’s technical, it’s guaranteed mosh fodder, and most of all it’s relentless. Most Improved! And, dare I say it, the third-to-last track “You Will Die Alone” is an instant classic. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Wow. Just when I think I’ve got a handle on what APMD is all about, they go and weave more musicality into their caustic cacophony. The nihilistic anger is constant, but the band have found ways to explore their domain, and the result is more surprising, listenable, compelling, and yes heavy than anything they’ve done before. See the rest here
✧✧✧✧ Who is this even for? See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ This is not your run-of-the-mill black metal, although it ticks all the important black metal checkboxes. Instead of the humorless pastiche nature of the genre, Der Wag einer Freiheit opt for a more thoughtful, energetic, and thoughtful approach. You can hear it from the refreshingly calm intro, to the songs’ almost progressive composition, to the vigorous drumming (although the whole band is tearing it up throughout, in a way I’d have no reason to expect from other black metal bands). See the rest here
✦✧✧✧ Well, at least this one has guitars in it. Otherwise, this is one uninspiring bit of Cascadian black metal. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Not quite as Carcassy as their previous effort, which is a good thing; this is still very much an alternate-universe grindcore album in the best tradition of Exhumed, but now with 25% more originality woven into the mix. In fact, there’s enough originality here that, somewhere around the third half of the album, one tends to forget that this sounded like anything other than a wholly original collection of shreddy tunes. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Brutally heavy, thuggishly singleminded, and punishingly long. This is as much an Expressionist reinterpretation of blackened noise than it is an overt collection of songs, with the tracks vacillating between those two blueprints. As such, it’s extremely effective at setting its atmosphere of dark futility, but this is not the kind of album that imparts a sense of momentum or offers a glimpse of variety. See the rest here
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