Author Archives: arse
Obscura — Akróasis
✦✦✦✦ This is a hard-hitting technodeath triumph, and sets a high bar for any other progressive metal in 2016. Unlike recent examples from other technodeath staples, this album does a better job in offering a (relatively) diverse musical palette, at times evoking Death, BTBAM, The Faceless, and Gorguts. Every song feels substantial without being overlong (even the 15-minute closer “Weltseele”).
Exmortus — Ride Forth
✦✦✦✧ This is glorious neoclassical speed metal, and a paean to cokehead Vikings everywhere.
Drowning Pool — Hellelujah
✦✧✧✧ It’s not that the songs on this album are bad per se, but what you’ve got is 48 less-than-inspiring minutes of a hybrid of latter-day Alice In Chains, Godsmack, and Nickelback. Jason Suecof produced this, and you can definitely hear a bit of Trivium’s DNA in this, but the music here flirts with metal without truly committing to it.
UXO — UXO
✦✦✧✧ A lo-fi adventure in screechy hostility with a marred execution. You can definitely hear the Unsane pedigree in this supergroup, but in a decidedly retro way.
Toothgrinder — Noctural Masquerade
✦✦✦✧ This is a pleasantly unusual and self-assured album that claims metalcore roots, but this music is as likely to remind you of Periphery or Symphony X or American Head Charge as it will of Killswitch Engage. In particular, the band do a masterful job of melding melodic sensibilities with wall-of-noise mayhem.
Trying something new
In my continuing efforts to make The Arsies the best imaginary metal tournament on the planet, I’ve started work on a new scoring system, which feeds into the First Listens. Now, instead of coming up with an arbitrary rating (0 to 4 stars), I’m scoring an album on multiple criteria. This adds up to a star rating, which hopefully will influence the battles come next January.
Dream Theater — The Astonishing
✦✦✧✧ This feels like DT’s take on Pink Floyd – The Wall… but doesn’t work nearly as well. The band repeatedly make bad trades by subduing their collective virtuosity in exchange for limp and forgettable songwriting. Also, these songs have a bad habit of going from Shred to Meh’d and back again, undercutting any hope of momentum.
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Now that the Arsies are over, I can get back to the work of listening to as much new metal in 2016. To that end, I’ve set up a TIDAL playlist of all the albums and long-enough EPs that I’m giving a first listen to. I work hard so you don’t have to!
Megadeth — Dystopia
✦✦✧✧ This isn’t the worst thing that Megadeth have done (that honor still stays with Super Collider). Also, the shredding here is satisfyingly sharp, and the production is crisp and heavy. I’ll remind you here that Chris Adler is playing drums on this, because otherwise you’d never know it from listening to the album.
