All That Remains — Madness
✦✧✧✧ Nu-metalcore through and through. Every formulaic ploy (breakdowns, cleansingings, background keyboards, etc.) falls at least a little short, and the riffs are universally lackluster and tired. See the rest here
Author Archives: arse
Battle Beast — Bringer Of Pain
✦✦✧✧ Beerhall power metal served up with a heaping dollup of 80s nostalgia thrown in. It starts off well, but loses its cohesion about halfway through. It’s just not as good as I’ve heard from Battle Beast before. But at least you’ll still have fun losing count of all the callbacks to Heart, Pat Benatar, Stevie Nicks, etc See the rest here
Author & Punisher — Pressure Mine
✦✦✧✧ A surprisingly listenable EP from an artist who generally revels in artisanally industrial filth. But don’t worry; A&P’s brand of corroded doom is still in the mix, merely leavened. This reminds me of NIN’s song for the game Quake… or Fredrik Thordendal’s song for Wolfenstein: The New Order… These are probably not favorable comparisons, but they accurately hint at a halfheartedness that dogs this release. See the rest here
Set And Setting — Reflectionless
✦✦✧✧ Pleasing instrumental post-metal in the vein of Russian Circles or even Godspeed at their most sinister. They’re not pushing the envelope very hard here, but they are delivering solid and dramatic shoegaze. Nota bene: they’ve got two drummers, although not really using that dynamic to its fullest potential, if you ask me. See the rest here
Pain Of Salvation — In The Passing Light Of Day
✦✦✧✧ A classic case of an album in need of a proper editor. This is a weird mix of metalcore, avant-garde, prog metal, Queensrÿche-ish sensibilities, and bad poetry. Of the album’s 71 minutes, at least 15 minutes may have been better left unreleased. The stuff that works here is quite commendable, and skews toward Daniel Gildenlöw’s and the rest of the band’s experimental natures; the stuff that doesn’t work tends to fail on the ground of emotional resonance. See the rest here
Artificial Brain — Infrared Horizon
✦✦✧✧ This is not an easy album to listen to, even with the by-now-familiar technodeath caveats and Gorguts comparisons that this inevitably invites. For one thing, the production is even less polished than that of the preceding “Labyrinth Constellation,” if you can imagine that. At the same time, it’s oddly more… obvious?… See the rest here
Night Demon — Darkness Remains
✦✦✧✧ This feels like an album of montage music from 80s American karate flicks. I just checked to make sure I wasn’t actually wearing sweatbands. At least the bass is all up in yo face. See the rest here
Mors Principium Est — Embers Of A Dying World
✦✦✧✧ Pseudo-orchestral, pseudo-electronic melodeath that, despite the overly long adjectives, hardly nudge the envelope in any meaningful way. Did DT’s “Atoma” leave you wanting more last year? Fortunately for you, this album will certainly dull the edge of your want. Unfortunately for MPE, it does so without leaving much of a lasting differentiable impression. See the rest here
Persefone — Aathma
✦✦✦✧ Let me get this out of the way: when you say that Paul Masvidal does guest vocals on two of your tracks, you’re really only referring to Paul Masvidal’s vocoder.
That said, this is shockingly compelling and well-done modern prog metal from Andorra. Think equal parts Dream Theater, Protest The Hero, Cynic, and Periphery. See the rest here
Deep Purple — Infinite
✦✦✧✧ Crisp and clean swagger-rock, aged like a fine British wine. And yet, I cannot ignore the fact that this feels a whole lot like Spinal Tap’s “Break Like The Wind.” See the rest here
