Nightingale — Retribution
★☆☆☆ This is some lovingly crafted schmaltz. We’re talking album-oriented gloss, like a modern update on ending credits music to a movie from the 80s. I kept expecting a duet with David Coverdale. See the rest here
First Listens With One-Star Ratings
Diabulus In Musica — Argia
★☆☆☆ Aside from the appropriately clean production, this symphonic metal album is fairly ho-hum. The riffs are standard operating procedure, the bombast not very triumphant. Honestly, this feels like an off-label Epica clone, with a touch of In Flames thrown in for good measure. See the rest here
Obituary — Inked In Blood
★☆☆☆ I want to like it more than I actually do, based largely on the band’s status in the annals of Floridian death metal. But that band seem to have doubled down on keeping their sound rooted in the early 90s. At times, they sound more like Biohazard on this album than Malevolent Creation. See the rest here
Slipknot — .5: The Gray Chapter
★☆☆☆ This album wavers between two modes: slow moodpieces, and more accessible riff salad. While the latter is no real surprise, it’s all cut from the same misguided cloth of polished accessibility that we’ve come to expect from the Knot. In fact, the few moments that are legitimately shredding sound a whole lot like Slipknot trying to tap into their former selves; song titles like “Sarcastrophe” and “The Negative One” do nothing to dissuade from the feeling that we’re listening to Iowa b-sides. See the rest here
Today Is The Day — Animal Mother
★☆☆☆ I continue to not get this band, at all. I mean, you guys hear how sloppy this sounds, right? It’s all super self-distracting. See the rest here
Rings Of Saturn — Lugal Ki En
★☆☆☆ Take the ultra-low speed-death stylings of The Acacia Strain, then digitalize and crabcore the fuck out of it all. Repeatedly, this album sounds less like metal and more like an overdriven 8-bit soundtrack. I was headbanging all the while, but only if you also count me shaking my head at the unapologetic artiface of it all. See the rest here
Electric Wizard — Time To Die
★☆☆☆ While this is a credible paean to vintage Black Sabbath, this albums gets ponderously tiresome in a hurry. The album is so relentlessly sludgy and lo-fi that it goes from “stoned immaculate” to “trying too hard.” Also, every single track has the ability to feel like it’s too long, regardless of actual clock time. See the rest here
1349 — Massive Cauldron of Chaos
★☆☆☆ This is a whole lot of so-what, punctuated by occasional sprinkles of halfway interesting riffs. To make matters worse, the band veer between black metal and other genres (death metal? speed metal? punk?) in ways that sound arbitrary and ill-fitting. I’ll give them props for not being predictable, at the very least, but otherwise I’m not really a fan. See the rest here
Nonpoint — The Return
★☆☆☆ This album lives somewhere between Saliva, King’s X, and Sevendust. There’s a somewhat satisfying snarl throughout the very-self-conscious radio-friendly tunes here, although I wish the whole affair wasn’t quite so polished-to-a-smooth-finish unoffensive. Also, let’s be real: the album art looks like a concept art reject from The Amazing Spider-Man. See the rest here
Mayhem — Esoteric Warfare
★☆☆☆ It’s not that this album is bad per se… but it just sounds so derivative and dated. The performances are blistering, but the anemic production and clichéd use of samples are so distracting that I just had a hard time wanting to pay attention. See the rest here
