★★☆☆ I’ll be the first to admit that I generally fucking loathe The Darkness, largely for just how self-consciously tribute-y they are. That said, I don’t thoroughly hate this album… although none of it really moves me, either. The guitarwork here is as crisp and spot-on as ever, so that’s a saving grace. See the rest here
★★★☆ Take the best parts of Converge and Cave-In (naturally, given this supergroup’s members and Kurt Ballou at the helm), and add a touch of Queens Of The Stone Age. While there are very few pretentions here in the path between their fists and your face, the band do explore unusual music territory just enough to keep your interest. See the rest here
★★☆☆ The antisocial aggression is predictably front-and-center on this album, but this time around it’s filtered through the clear aesthetics of producer Steve Albini. The end result is The Jesus Lizard pushed to self-parody, a proudly noisome half-hour with ridiculous vocals that are unfortunately impossible to ignore. See the rest here
★★★☆ This is a stunner, and really hard to do justice with a simple description… but, here goes anyway: imagine if Dillinger, Emperor, Evanescence, Sigur Ros, and Glassjaw were warring nations; this album would be the uneasy peace accord between them. One of the most original albums of 2015, without a doubt. See the rest here
★★★★ This is a challenging album, for both band and audience. This is still very recognizably BTBAM, but the music here also expands on the band’s bailiwick in virtually every direction. Indeed, in addition to sly tips of the hat to the band’s previous best works, there are also noticeable borrowings from many other prog metal standard bearers — Opeth, Dream Theater, Porcupine Tree, and Leprous leap immediately to mind — as well as a healthy reverence to classic rock, power metal, and musical theater at large. See the rest here
★★★☆ This album is pure meat-and-potatoes HOF. And while at times it can sound more like a collection of the band’s B-sides than music to stand up with the rest of their body of work, it never fails to deliver on the promise of any High On Fire album: snarly sludgey mosh fodder. See the rest here
★★★☆ The good news: this is shoegazey sludgey post-metal at its finest, with nary a misstep. Listenable, evocative, internally consistent… this is a well-crafted album. The not-so-good news: by dint of the genre, there’s not much on here to take away once the music stops (although the second half of the album comes closest to delivering memorable moments). See the rest here
Chris Squire had a bigger impact on my bass playing than anyone else I listened to in my youth. Ged taught me how to step forward and fill up musical space with the instrument, which is a great counterpoint to Mike Rutherford’s subdued, almost Frippian unshowmanship. But Squire was really my Coltrane. See the rest here
I’ve been in mourning all week. It’s still too soon to listen to Fish’s bass playing (although maybe I’ll break my fast by finally listening to “Fish Out Of Water”). See the rest here
★★★☆ On paper, there should be nothing remarkable about this album. It’s extreme noisecore, produced by Kurt Ballou, with no real standout performances throughout. But in a strange way, that chimaeralike quality is the album’s greatest strength; without the distraction of distinctions, the resulting impact is more pure and devastating. See the rest here
This work by Metalligentsia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.