Rings Of Saturn — Ultu Ulla
✦✧✧✧ This is little more than an 8-bit chiptune album with breakdowns. See the rest here
Author Archives: arse
Prong — Zero Days
✦✦✧✧ This is a wildly off-balanced album. Track after track, you’re not sure if you’re listening to a Prong deep cut, a latter-era King’s X single, a particularly aggressive Linkin Park track, the title track of the next Tremonti album, etc. But despite the odds, this makes for an oddly compelling listen. See the rest here
Decrepit Birth — Axis Mundi
✦✦✧✧ Neoclassical technodeath with an almost self-conscious fixation on deconstructing the form. This reminds me of Disincarnate’s debut, in the context of the early-to-mid-90s status quo. It is both unfortunate and telling that this Decrepit Birth album reminds me of something from 24 years ago; while there’s definite progress with great listenability on here, I’m left with the feeling that this album belongs to a different decade. See the rest here
Pathology — Pathology
✦✦✧✧ The good: this is good old-fashioned death metal, with tasty riffs that are sure to please and make you sneer and nod your head. The bad: you’ve definitely heard a lot of this before, except for the vocals, which are particularly disposable here, to the point of distraction. Nevertheless, the second half of the album is worth getting to, as its tunes are more memorable, its riffs more lethal. See the rest here
Origin — Unparalleled Universe
✦✦✦✧ Ridiculous technodeath is ridiculous. That’s to be expected from Origin. They may have taken things a bit too far this time around, with their wankery devolving at times into pure implausibility. The drums are particularly unbelievable. However, undergirding the comically precise shredding is a latest catchiness that feels more pronounced since the band’s last album (2014’s “Omnipresent”). See the rest here
Bison — You Are Not The Ocean You Are The Patient
✦✦✦✧ Bison (formerly Bison B.C.) return after five long years with a new label and a “new” take on their energetic stoner metal. The sound is brighter but not necessarily more polished, and their sludge has burrowed down so far as to come out the other side, sounding more like Unsane, Kyuss, or Fu Manchu than Baroness. See the rest here
Boris — Dear
✦✦✦✧ The experimental trio from Japan return to a doomy form that they’ve been distancing themselves from for at least 7 years. Far from a tired capitulation, this album feels like a reinvigoration. The music here resonates with a brawny emotionality that belies the band’s laboratory leanings. See the rest here
Tombs — The Grand Annihilation
✦✦✧✧ What starts as a moody, cocksure study in sludgy decay… slips sideways into a tendency toward gothiness. By the midpoint of the album, their transformation to a Deafheaven-inspired Type O Negative sound is complete. See the rest here
Sentient Ignition — Enthroned In Gray
✦✦✦✧ A really interesting and lovely technodeath debut that does a remarkable job of broadening the usual scope of others in the subgenre. The music here cartwheels from Euro-style symphonic bombast to moments of mature, laid back atmosphere. Also, the shredding is nonstop (but not overbearing). Prog this busy, and yet this endearing, is a rare beast indeed. See the rest here
Broken Hope — Mutilated And Assimilated
✦✦✧✧ Very familiar cookiemonster death metal, cut from the same cloth as Cannibal Corpse. If that’s the sort of thing you like, you’ll like this sort of thing. See the rest here
