Torche — Restarter
★★☆☆ This is okay. I guess. 60-bpm sludge all the way. Whatever. See the rest here
Author Archives: arse
Psycroptic — Psycroptic
★★★☆ High-octane thrashy technical death from Tasmania that feels really fresh for the most part (although a few songs do feel very familiar indeed). This reminds me of a punkier Sylosis or a sped-up Gojira (and I say that with headbanging respect). See the rest here
Minsk — The Crash And The Draw
★★★☆ A deft, disturbing, and thoroughly captivating 75 minutes of doomy post metal, cut of the same cloth as Indian, Isis, and The Ocean at their most plodding. There’s not a dull moment here, which is saying something; while it’s a long work by any objective measure, it generally doesn’t feel overlong, Still, this is Minsk’s best work so far. See the rest here
Abiotic — Casuistry
★★☆☆ A masterfully performed collection of technical death metal tunes, marred by wildly uneven pacing, and by how blatantly derivative it is throughout the whole album (lifting whole-cloth from Meshuggah, BTBAM, Intronaut, The Faceless, and a bevy of others). See the rest here
Therapy? — Disquiet
★★☆☆ This is a mixed bag of an album. On the one hand, the band’s production has never sounded so good. On the other hand, I can’t think of a time when they sounded more impotent. The net result is not unlike what you might get if XTC put out a Nirvana covers album. See the rest here
Byzantine — To Release is To Resolve
★★★☆ The Soilwork-meet-Kings-X-meet-Lamb-Of-God stylings heard on the band’s last eponymous release are all here again. This time around, they’re even more alien, even more polished and convincing, and there’s even a strong aftertaste of Meshuggah on a few tracks. This album’ll get your head nodding for sure! See the rest here
Oceano — Ascendants
★★★☆ For my money, this is one mean improvement over the last Oceano album. To get there, apparently the band traveled halfway between The Acacia Strain and Vildhjarta… and then tunneled straight down. With the right kind of thinking, you can hear this as an intellectual level-up. With a different kind of thinking, this is a suitable soundtrack for breaking your hand on concrete. See the rest here
Irreversible Mechanism — Infinite Fields
★★★☆ Impressive. Most impressive. This album bears more than a passing resemblance to The Faceless, Obscura, and other technodeath groups, which is the good news. The bad news is that, while it’s eminently replayable, it just misses the mark in terms of emotional resonance. Too many notes, perhaps? Still, I put this in my Don’t Miss bucket. See the rest here
Godspeed You! Black Emperor — Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress
★★☆☆ This is a relatively uplifting dirge-suite, and as cocksure as anything GYBE have ever done. The problem is that there’s just not that much “there” there; of the album’s four tracks, two are atonal noisescapes. As a King Crimson-style calling card of a teaser release, this would be dandy, but as a standalone affair it leaves me wanting more. See the rest here
The Monolith Deathcult — Bloodcvlts
★☆☆☆ This album reminds me very much of the transition that Malevolent Creation made from the sublime “Retribution” to the forgettable followup “Stillborn.” Similarly, many of the elements found on “Tetragrammaton” are present and account for on this new album, but this time around the combination just doesn’t work nearly as convincingly or compellingly enough. See the rest here
