★★☆☆ No-nonsense punkthrashrock. As odd as that phrase seems, it’s the best description I’ve got for this album. Once it starts, the ride don’t quit. It’s a bit simplistic and without a huge amount of variety, but it’s excellently executed for what it is. Also, it’s got a good beat, and I can bug out to it. See the rest here
★★★☆ This latest album from Tristan Shone is dystopian in a way that most industrial acts only give lip service to, evocative of Skinny Puppy and NIN at Trent’s most experimental. It’s also awfully heavy, and yet manages to be catchy (just not in a Taylor Swift way). It’s perhaps one track too long for my tastes, but coming from someone with a documented distaste for the terminally slow, that’s saying a lot. See the rest here
I’ve been thinking a lot about your answers to my question. I agree with both of you on some points.
In particular, I can think of plenty of examples of bands that have a shifting relationship with the genre over time. (Hey, we can’t all be Overkill Inc.) And yet, most people don’t talk about metal albums; the categorization happens around the band. See the rest here
★★☆☆ This is some excellently moody doomish metal, but it’s ponderous in length, and after a while I kinda tuned out. I could tell now and then that interesting stuff was happening, but those gems are surrounded by a whole lot of interchangeable plodding. I rate this 2 out of 4 grunts. See the rest here
★★★☆ This is music designed to be heard at painful volume in a smoky beer-stained bar, a winning blend of grindcore and sludge. It sounds like Carcass and Entombed had a nasty baby. See the rest here
★★★★ This is the prog metal masterpiece that I always knew Intronaut had in them. On this album, the band have managed to showcase all of their strengths: tight performances, complicated rhythms, dynamic moods, and tips of the hat to worthy progenitors like King Crimson and Tool. There’s not a lot on here that will come across as unfamiliar to Intronaut fans, and that’s great news. See the rest here
★★★☆ This album is rooted in atmospheric black metal, but also evokes The Ocean, Opeth, even some 80s goth. The doom+bluegrass+folk+goth fusion here is seamless, and in a surprise twist the resultant sound comes across as more heartfelt and upbeat than one would expect. More importantly, this album is eminently listenable. See the rest here
★★☆☆ This is another brickwalled slab of noise, short-ish and intense as you’d expect from Enabler. You’ve got a handful of standout tracks that feel like fresh territory, and you’ve got a number of tracks here that feel painfully and regrettably rote by now.
All of that said, I actually listened to this album twice. See the rest here
★☆☆☆ The best thing I can say about this album is that it sounds just like Def Leppard. To be fair, the band do try a few new tricks throughout the album (most notably, more groove), and they’re by and large interesting and laudable. And the band’s performances are all as excellent as you’d expect them to be. See the rest here
★★☆☆ DYK take a definitive step closer to djenty metalcore. The brutals are even more brutal than last time, and that’s the good news. The bad news (and this is indeed news to me) is that apparently you can’t really pull off the clean singing metalcore thing with a detuned 8-string sound, at all. See the rest here
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