★★★☆ This album chronicles the band taking a couple of half steps in jazzier, erratic directions. In other words, it’s slightly more BTBAM than their previous album. But it’s still guitarwankery at its finest, and I’m stoked that the band are venturing out into new territories while still repeatedly coming back to Shredsville. See the rest here
★★★☆ This is one fun and energetic album to listen to (although the metal in the music’s DNA is by now very hard to grok anymore). This feels very much like a sequel to the band’s previous album “Gloss Drop”, with more emphasis on Ableton-style electronics than ever before. As always, John Stanier’s drums nail down a fierce and infectious rhythm throughout, but Ian Williams and Dave Konopka alternate fluidly between atmospherics and grooves. See the rest here
★★☆☆ SFTP get a lot of shit for sounding like little more than RATM v2 (and not undeservedly). That said, their latest album has them drawing less from that source, and instead introducing more of a vintage Mudvayne sound. I wouldn’t have thought of Rage and Mudvayne as promising wellsprings for a modern band, but you know what? See the rest here
★★☆☆ These guys make Gorguts sound formulaic by comparison. The opening track’s sludgy twelve-tone serialism establishes an atmosphere of unpredictable chaos that carries through the rest of the album, but aside from that, there’s not much cohesion to it. The band’s performances are admirable to say the very least, and they’re very good at whatever the hell it is they’re doing on here. See the rest here
★★☆☆ So much material, so much to critique. First: every once in a while, a talented band of ambitious musicians put out an album that captures the essence of a live performance, instead of a carefully manicured studio artifact. Unfortunately, this is a miscalculation for Maiden, especially since they seem to be going dogmatically for a mid-80s live aesthetic. See the rest here
★★☆☆ There’s nothing overtly wrong with this album that I can put my finger on… but this entire collection of songs nevertheless sounds ambivalent, pro forma, tired. There’s plenty of moments of utter heaviness throughout the album, but there’s also more than one buildup or breakdown that fails to pay off. See the rest here
★★★☆ A darker, and yet more expansive turn from the usually uber-predictable kings of melodeath. Everyone in the band is in top form, of course, with special props to Dick Verbeuren and Sylvain Coudret on drums and rhythm guitars, respectively. As for the songsmithing, the departures from their norm are generally very welcome, and at times remind me of Dream Theater, Gojira, and other proggy bands (each at their own darkest). See the rest here
★★★☆ The first track is arguably the weakest song on this album. It’s a warmup, a tone setter. It’s also a good gatekeeper to the rest of the album: if you can’t stomach the first five minutes, you might miss all the really good parts of this deceptive shower. This is Ghost, returning to the form of their debut album: unabashedly fanboyish of the best parts of the 70s, joyously rockin’, and genuinely epic. See the rest here
★★☆☆ Enslaved continue making themselves comfortable in the micro-niche between classis black metal tropes and Opeth/Ihsahn-style intricacy. In fact, they wind up sounding a little too comfortable. The songs all go on a minute too long, in part because the extremes — the most energetic and the most subdued — are anything but. See the rest here
★★☆☆ The band’s sophomore album is a big improvement over their messy, gimmicky debut. The stink of derivativeness, while not entirely gone, is much less noticeable. What you have here instead is a cleaner slab of unsubtle aggression, clearly inspired by Meshuggah, Machine Head, and Slipknot. The vocals are screamier than before (which is a good thing), and the interesting riffage get downright nasty at times. See the rest here
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