Todd La Torre — Rejoice In The Suffering
✦✦✧✧ This is an adequate showcase for a Queensrÿche lead vocalist. Aside from that, there’s not a lot to get excited about here. See the rest here
Category: First Listens
Rivers of Nihil — The Work
✦✦✧✧ Ambitious and genre-defying, for good and for ill. RON are continuing their evolution from techdeath into full-on progressive high-concept auteurs. Without an outside editorial voice to help them keep focus, the resulting album feels uneven when taken as a whole. There are stellar moments here and there, and then there are moments that aren’t bad, but certainly feel like a setup to something else. See the rest here
Converge — Bloodmoon: I
✦✦✦✧ This is Converge (with Chelsea Wolfe and Stephen Brodsky) at their most brooding and contemplative. Not sure if that’s what anyone wanted from them, but that’s what they did with their pandemic; how about you? Shit talking aside, I really like this album, but if you think you’re getting “Axe To Fall II” here, you’re going to have a bad time. See the rest here
Cynic — Ascension Codes
✦✦✧✧ Moody, jazzy, unique… undeniably Cynic. Also, very navelgazey, twice as long as it needs to be, and (you had to know this was coming) barely metal. Seriously, this is in some ways pathologically anti- metal. Like, any time Paul Masvidal starts getting close to groove or a riff, the band has to stop, change the tempo and cut the volume. See the rest here
Exodus — Persona Non Grata
✦✦✦✧ Finally, a halfway-fresh-feeling album of rethrash from Bay Area veterans Exodus! You’d have to go back to 2004’s Tempo Of The Damned to find its equal. Guitarists Gary Fucking Holt and Lee Altus deliver the goods, and Steve Souza sounds as manic as ever. That said, the album does go on a little too long… there, I said it. See the rest here
The Armed — Ultrapop
✦✦✧✧ Former Arsies winners The Armed return with yet another slab of performance art (noise) that is about as metal as The Mars Volta or Boris, which is to say: tangentially. Still, Ultrapop hits my ears as subjectively more interesting than its predecessor Only Love. Pitchfork loves this album, so there’s that. See the rest here
Spiritbox — Eternal Blue
✦✦✦✧ Six years ago, I noticed that iwrestledabearonce were starting to “[trade] their goofy self-indulgences for unsubtle savagery.” Then that band broke up. Courtney LaPlante (singer) and Mike Stringer (guitarist) went off and created Spiritbox. This album, their debut, is a continuation of iwabo’s evolution, with a sound that lands somewhere between Evanescence, TesseracT, and A Perfect Circle. See the rest here
Knocked Loose — A Tear In The Fabric Of Life
✦✦✦✧ A borderline great hardcore album that succeeds precisely because it gives you all the tropes you’d expect, only it pushes each’s intensity up to the maximum. Brickwall compression! Breakdown! Overdriven scream! Sudden left turn! Repeat! Familiarity does not always breed contempt. Now shut the fuck up and break something! See the rest here
Turnstile — Glow On
✦✦✦✧ Turnstile’s third album takes the experimentation of its predecessor and makes it look safe and timid by comparison. Here, the post-hardcore quintet set out to see just how far they can push and expand the limits of the beloved genre that they have so faithfully served. Track after track is full of surprises and delights. See the rest here
Ice Nine Kills — Welcome To Horrorwood
✦✦✧✧ I like the idea of a metal album inspired by a collection of horror flicks (Child’s Play, Hellraiser, Candyman) as much as the next guy. And I have a surprisingly high tolerance for radio-friendly melodic metalcore. Together, they feel at odds with each other, the music’s J-Pop tendencies clashing with and belying the subject matter’s demands for gross heaviness. See the rest here
