Category: First Listens

First impressions do count. Here are ours.

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Gruesome — Twisted Prayers

✦✧✧✧ The good news is that this is often a spot-on homage to Death (specifically, the classic album “Spiritual Healing”). And when Gruesome is in this Tribute Mode (as they largely were on their debut album “Savage Land,” you had a sense of extrapolation into something both old and new. The bad news is that, more often than not, the music on this new album feels like the band simply took Spiritual Healing sheet music, put it in a shredder, taped the scraps back together, traveled from Orlando to Tampa (and from 2018 to 1989), found Scott Burns, and got him to record it.

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Micawber — Beyond The Reach Of Flame

✦✦✦✧ A subtly interesting album, evincing a rethrashed form of progressive tech death album, with hints of Revocation, Black Dahlia Murder, Job For A Cowboy, and even Control Denied. Just when you think you know where it’s going, it throws a curveball. If there’s a downside here, it’s that it trades immediacy for memorability.

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Skindred — Big Tings

✧✧✧✧ This makes nu metal sound like Deathspell Omega by comparison. It’s actually impressive just how densely packed this Skindred album is with all of the most hated elements of music from the last 10 years. Cowbell! Claps! Girl chants! Reggaeton! Even the rare moment when the band approaches actual decentness is inevitably marred by their insipid “ragga rock” proclivities.

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Sevendust — All I See Is War

✦✦✧✧ After years of defending Sevendust, this album from them is finally a little more Nickelbackish than I’d like to admit. The big change is the swapping out of actual riffs for DR5-crushed walls of tone, which lays bare some fairly pedestrian songwriting otherwise. At least Lajon Witherspoon continues to deliver world-class vocals.

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Parkway Drive — Reverence

✦✧✧✧ Everything goes well until the vocals start; the wah-wah just seals the nu-metal-core deal. In the album’s defense, there are some meaty riffs undergirding the whole affair. Unfortunately, they’re deployed in the service of an outmoded and adolescent sensibility. What a waste.

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Ihsahn — Ámr

✦✦✦✧ This is a subtler work from Ihsahn (which is funny, because the album starts out with this huge-ass synth patch that sounds anything but subtle). The epic power comes from the impeccable arrangements and production, featuring the lushest strings I’ve heard in metal in a long time. The songwriting is a bit “safer” than that on “Arktis,” but Ihsahn still delivers solid doubles throughout, if not actual home runs.

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