✦✦✧✧ 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. See the rest here
✦✧✧✧ 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. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ 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. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Giving my beloved The Armed the benefit of the doubt, this is definitely some next-level noise art. However, the dearth of actual tunes here is notable, and a detriment to the album. I’ll listen to it again to see if it grabs me any more, but after my first listen, I’m not (yet?) See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Epic technical death metal that utterly shreds in the moment, but somewhat fails to stick in one’s memory. Also, it goes on and on and on. Still, it’s blistering and super impressive. These guys definitely put in the work (there’s probably something like a quarter million notes on this album, no exaggeration)! See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ The good: delightfully meaty riffs, a tight runtime, and a punkish production sensibility. The bad: there’s really not much else to say about this album. It gets the job done, but doesn’t give much reason to give it another thought otherwise. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ This is the Platonic ideal of a stoner metal album, from one of the O.G. progenitors of the genre. Is it groundbreaking? Not really. Is it technically shreddy? Hell no. Am I going to put this on heavy rotation this weekend? Already on it, son. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ TesseracT have expanded their emotional resonance on their fourth album, but the price is a somewhat lessened emphasis on their foundational djent. The sacrifice isn’t too dear, as the songs don’t spend too much time away from the band’s bread and butter. Speaking of time, I wish this album was longer; as it is, it is evocative of their debut EP “One” for brevity. See the rest here
✧✧✧✧ This album is so bad that it’s forcing me to talk about it, even though it’s clearly not even close to metal. Guitars give way to pianos, which give way to glitch? EDM? And through it all, Maynard continues his decades-long penchant for trolling those who love him most (although it feels like he may not even realize it any longer). See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Muddy and meandering, this is a surprisingly limp effort from a band known for energetic excellence. The songs here feel underedited, in terms of musical refinement, emotional resonance, or even just plain length. And the shame of it is that, even with those knocks, you can still get a sense of what might have been: a unique, surefooted, melancholic masterwork. See the rest here
This work by Metalligentsia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.