Re: Poor Fish
On a related note: over at Stereogum, a columnist just spent what must have been a ludicrous amount of time listening to every Yes album, and then ranking them from worst to best. It’s hard to argue with his choices. See the rest here
Author Archives: arse
Poor Fish
I just found out that Chris Squire has been diagnosed with leukemia, and will be sitting out a Yes tour for the first time in the band’s history. All necessary asterisks related to the “band”‘s singular history are assumed. More info here. See the rest here
Veil Of Maya — Matriarch
★★★☆ A meaty, albeit nu-metalish and slickly overproduced, post-djent bouillabaisse (with definite nods to Periphery, Chimp Spanner, et al). But what it lacks in originality per se, this album more than makes up for with a doubled-down commitment to all the tropes that make this microgenre so great: feminine subject matter, pseudorandom switching between clean singing and incoherent screaming, and above all, spasmodic aggression. See the rest here
Mare Infinitum — Alien Monolith God
★☆☆☆ I kinda fell asleep there for a bit. I mean, I get that this is doomy as fuck, but the plodding is just so unwavering that it’s easy to feel your mind wander. See the rest here
Shining — IX: Everyone, Everything, Everywhere, Ends
★★★☆ This is such a compelling tour of audio aggression that at times hard to even call it black metal. The thrashing is crisp, the doom pervasive, and every track is epic in its own way. See the rest here
Sigh — Graveward
☆☆☆☆ This is like King Diamond mixed with the soundtrack for Transformers: The Movie. I mean the 80s one. This is fucking horrible. Sure, there’s blistering leads, but so what. See the rest here
Torche — Restarter
★★☆☆ This is okay. I guess. 60-bpm sludge all the way. Whatever. See the rest here
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
