Category: First Listens

First impressions do count. Here are ours.

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The Number Twelve Looks Like You — Wild Gods

✦✦✦✧ This album from kings of the second wave of mathcore TNTLLY (their first in a decade) seem to fill a void left by The Dillinger Escape Plan, Mr. Bungle, and pre-Parallax BTBAM… but really it’s anyone’s guess what the band are actually trying to do with this. This album is nothing short than a compendium of inventiveness; believe frontman Jase Korman when he says, “This album is like a galactic freak show advertisement to aliens, telling them to come see this insane place we call Earth.”

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Cult Of Luna — A Dawn To Fear

✦✦✦✧ With this highly anticipated followup to “Mariner” (2016’s critically fawned-over duet with Julie Christmas), Cult Of Luna set a new standard for what post-metal is capable of… this sounds like a mix of Isis, the Inception soundtrack, and BTBAM. Deeply evocative, peerlessly heavy, and interesting enough to justify the uncompromising pacing (8 songs, 79 minutes).

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While She Sleeps — So What?

✦✦✦✧ If you absolutely have to put out music in 2019 that’s inspired by nu metal and industrial, at least be as fun as WSS are on this album. It helps tremendously that they’ve mastered the art of blending early 00’s sensibilities and present-day tropes; I never would have thought to blend metalcore, Chester Bennington-style screams, and trap music… but it’s so crazy and fun that it just might work for you!

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Sonata Arctica — Talviyö

✦✦✧✧ Tired riffs and arbitrary chord progressions mar this latest effort from these power metal mainstays. Worst still, there’s just not enough cheese here to distract from the rest of the material, which feels like a retread. There are lots of examples in 2019 of veteran bands coming out with new, invigorating material; this is definitely not one of them.

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