✦✦✧✧ Keep in mind that when I say the track "LAND LORD" sounds like it was rejected for the Matrix soundtrack, I mean that with corrosive, fistpumping love. The problem with this industrial noisefest is one of consistency; when it works, it’s glorious, but when it misses, it feels like underdeveloped material. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ A suitably venomous album from these chronically displeased Northern Irish alt-rock bastards (their 16th). As ever, this sounds like five different bands simultaneously, but a mashup of contemporaries like Killing Joke, XTC, pre-fame Nirvana, and The Jesus Lizard is as compelling as ever. One of their strongest efforts in a decade. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Very well-crafted dark symphonic metal. Some of this feels a bit low-key and by-the-numbers, but the riffs are suitably heavy, and the scope feels nice and epic. Fans of Soilwork or Scar Symmetry should definitely check this out. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ I haven’t been this justifiably excited about a TesseracT album since Altered State. This is the band at their darkest yet. The two stars here are bassist Amos Williams and vocalist Daniel Tompkins, turning in a career-best performance in a career full of great performances.
Criticisms: the album, and most of the songs, are possibly 10-15% too long. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ This absolutely shreds, which one would expect, being that this band is, what, 75% The Faceless by now? Tech death bona fides aside, this music finds itself at times in the unfortunate uncanny valley between Unpredictable Metal Mayhem… and Just Goofy. This is territory best ceded permanently to Protest The Hero. See the rest here
✦✧✧✧ Oh sure, this is loud and heavy and whatnot. But this is an album for people who think brickwall compression is still too dynamic, to the point that a lot of the potential shredding here is smeared out into the rest of the postimpressionistic cacophony. This sounds like the worst parts of soundtracks for Christopher Nolan movies… with screaming. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Don’t let the on-brand weak album cover put you off too much: there’s some tasty rockin’ out here. Sure, Udo’s voice feels a little shaky at times. But many of the tracks here remind me of Accept, albeit with an updated production that makes this sound more rethrash than retread. See the rest here
I’ve been idly ruminating about the idea of the opposite of a sophomore slump… cases in which a band has made a big splash with their debut album, only to eclipse it with a followup album that was widely heralded as superior. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ The good news is that this album is a clear progression from 2015’s Epistemology, more cohesive, anthemic, and self-assured. It’s a barnburner of a symphonic black metal album, one where musicianship (largely that of Obsidian, naturally) is showcased in a way not normally heard in this genre. The bad news isn’t all that bad: this album is maybe one track longer than it needs to be. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Who needs subtlety when you’re flinging jackhammers like these fuckers are? They do have a penchant for digital frippery that borders on the nü-metal, but with heaviness this remorseless, I’ll allow a bit of digression. See the rest here
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