✦✦✧✧ At its best, this album reminds me of vintage Sub Pop; at its worst, this is just more hipster-sludge. Of special note is the production, which offers a dynamic range of a shouting match. At least the songs are all mercifully brief. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Do you like well-produced power metal that deals with warfare? Then you already know about Sabaton, and this album gives you more of what you’ve come to expect. For the rest of us: this is sortakinda epic symphonic Eurometal with awkward vocals but tasty guitars. The most entertaining part of this album (about World War I) is just how literal the lyrics are; for proof, you need go no further than such songs as “In Flanders Fields,” “82nd All The Way,” and of course “The Red Baron.” See the rest here
✦✧✧✧ Uninventive, uninspiring, and unnecessary. This is industrial by the book… if the book is from the mid-90s. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ If only all black metal was this interesting! Surprisingly shreddy and NWOBHM-tinged, while this is not quite as good as the band’s first album, “Outstrider” is still commendably inventive and easy to listen to. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Sludgy black noise post-metal word salad ouch my fucking ears! This makes The Armed sound tame, Torrential Downpour sound predictable. And that’s the main problem here: the album is such a punishing listen, I’m having a hard time feeling any kind of relationship to the music. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ On this album, He Is Legend have ratcheted up both their cheese and their heaviness. Their long-documented similarities with Alice In Chains are less glaring now, crowded out by hints of Converge, Mutoid Man, and Entombed. The band continue to be both a guilty pleasure and an under-discovered gem. One of the most unique sounding albums of 2019, even if it sounds like it’s straight out of 2004. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ The band once known as the launching pad of Larry LaLonde, and whom no one has heard from since my college days, are back with some new Bay Area thrashy death metal. And yet, everything from the guitar tone to the still of riffage to the production by Hypocrisy’s Peter Tägtgren all combine to craft a package that is expertly and lovingly vintage. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Take half of Job For A Cowboy, add the bassist from Black Dahlia Murder, and tell them that their longest song has to be under 4 minutes long, and what do you go? Your face in a meat grinder, that’s what! See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Look: I’m giving this album two stars in part because it’s amazing that this duo is still making music (if you know of any other studios at nursing homes, let me know!), but otherwise I could do without it. This is allegedly an album that explores different genres, but it all still sounds to me like vintage Norwegian black metal. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Squeeeeeeze those invisible oranges! This is Inter Arma at their most inhospitable and devastating; and while album-over-album increases in heaviness should be no surprise by now to anyone who’s been paying attention to this band, it’s still utterly debilitating to hear their latest culminations firsthand. The band continue to be progressive in their own way, but this time around they all but abandon any pretense of melody, channeling their creativity instead into rhythm and rage. See the rest here
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