✦✦✧✧ Typically, one doesn’t listen to TAIM for subtlety, or innovation, or expansion of the genre. One listens when in need of a good beating. Well, on this album the Australian deathcore quintet give you that brütality in spades, and they successfully throw in just a little innovation to boot. Still, you can depend on blast beats and breakdowns to carry you through this frenetic fusillade. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ This is a thoroughly solid speed metal/melodeath album, with tasty riffs throughout, and top-notch shredding by everyone in the band (who, it should be stated, are the same people behind Dethklok). That said… while this could be thought of as an unlicensed Dethklok album (at least according to Brendon Small and Gene Hoglan), the name isn’t the only thing missing from this album. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ This latest album is quintessential Haunted, but not in a way that relies on the proven formula. There is a reinvigorated savagery here, as well as a new melodic sensibility throughout. Those two observations don’t normally coexist well, but on “Strength In Numbers” they thrive in equal measure. I know that, when reviewing their last album “Exit Wounds,” I’d said that it was the best thing the band’s done since “The Dead Eye.” See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Cormorant continue their dirty Mastodon-meets-The-Ocean blitz, trading some of their progginess for straight-up sludge. Doubling down on their doomier tendencies seems like a smart move for the band, as it gives them more space to explore and elaborate than ever before. But the last ten minutes is ten minutes too long for this album. See the rest here
✦✧✧✧ Well, this is at least a little better than the band’s previous album “Dirges Of Elysium.” But it’s still stonily and remorselessly retro. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ An old fashioned slab of music that splits its time between deathy thrash and energetic stoner metal, like a bunch of Slayer B-sides as if hastily mixed by Joe Barresi. The title track reminds me of a sloppier Slipknot. But I’m not harshing on this album with any real malice; it’s a fun enough time, in a barroom-brawler way. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ I’m sure there are great ways to avoid having Dead Cross sound like “Mike Patton, Dave Lombardo, and two other dudes.” This album, however, is not one of them. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ This is what vintage Swedish Death Metal is all about: rawness and blast beats and “blech”s and nasty tone. This is also something you’ve definitely heard before. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ This mostly-Burnt-By-The-Sun not-a-supergroup (also featuring ex-members of Municipal Waste and Revocation) is some nasty business. It’s first and foremost a tour of various kinds of aggression and swagger (evocative at times of Norma Jean, Entombed, and Sepultura at their punkiest). This, the band’s eponymous debut, is a weighty chunk of red meat without any filler. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Groovy, surefooted, at once familiar and alien… this is classic Byzantine, doing what they do best. As has become par for the course with this band, I still don’t know whether to classify them as prog, thrash, hard rock, djent, agitprop… comparisons to Lamb Of God, Porcupine Tree, Alice In Chains, Meshuggah… all of these approximations fit, and yet all miss the mark. See the rest here
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