★★★☆ Everything lacking on Juggernaut: Alpha is fully evident here on Omega. It’s far more cohesive, even as it tilts from djent to late-70s prog and back. And, more importantly, it’s fucking heavy. Nice! See the rest here
★☆☆☆ This album would be a whole lot better if it showed any signs of cohesion aside from sudden transitions into new material. As such, it comes across as a lovingly engineered collection of B-sides and experiments that don’t always pay off. See the rest here
★☆☆☆ With this album, Napalm Death have reasserted their role as the honey badgers of the metal world. Call it an improbable three-way head-on collision between punk, indusrtial, and grindcore. The resulting carnage works better than you’d think, especially at high volume. It’s impressive, really! At the same time, I’d be very very surprised if I ever willingly listened to this again. See the rest here
★★☆☆ A meatily-produced album of post-metalcore (I just made that up) that nevertheless manages to feel both overlong and disposable. Good for a listen, but I’ve already forgotten it. See the rest here
My proclivity to fix other people’s audio problems is well-known. So I’m excited about this, a note-for-note remake of Metallica’s St. Anger, recorded by guys from Adust and Grace The Skies. No, I’d never heard of them before either, but it’s a great way of getting your name on the map. See the rest here
This handy tool for generating fake band names is 100% spot-on. I’ll never need to struggle again! (Thanks to @sfbrian for the link.)
Awww yeah, it’s about ten days before we get started with the Arsies. And for your listening pleasure, I’ve put together a TIDAL playlist of all the contenders. (I’ll also be added battle-specific playlists to all our installments as we go along.)
★★★☆ This is quite simply one of the finest black metal albums of 2014. With the right kind of ears, you could hear this as if Deliverance-era Opeth decided to fully commit the dark. And the reverb. See the rest here
★★★☆ This is satisfyingly straightforward thrash, not bogged down by overthinking or overproduction. There is a sameness to the material and pace that starts to bog you down after a while, but the overall sound is just different enough to not sound too derivative (while still be very firmly rooted in the genre it so lovingly emulates). See the rest here
★★☆☆ I’m going to throw out some names that crossed my mind as I listened to this prog metal epic, and you tell me if you can resist the siren call: Textures. Chimp Spanner. Allan Holdsworth. Fredrik Thordendal. Compelling, right? And yet, about halfway through, the album loses its footing and starts sounding like just another djent band. See the rest here
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