✦✦✦✧ The experimental trio from Japan return to a doomy form that they’ve been distancing themselves from for at least 7 years. Far from a tired capitulation, this album feels like a reinvigoration. The music here resonates with a brawny emotionality that belies the band’s laboratory leanings. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ What starts as a moody, cocksure study in sludgy decay… slips sideways into a tendency toward gothiness. By the midpoint of the album, their transformation to a Deafheaven-inspired Type O Negative sound is complete. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ A really interesting and lovely technodeath debut that does a remarkable job of broadening the usual scope of others in the subgenre. The music here cartwheels from Euro-style symphonic bombast to moments of mature, laid back atmosphere. Also, the shredding is nonstop (but not overbearing). Prog this busy, and yet this endearing, is a rare beast indeed. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Very familiar cookiemonster death metal, cut from the same cloth as Cannibal Corpse. If that’s the sort of thing you like, you’ll like this sort of thing. See the rest here
✦✧✧✧ TAC are best when they aim for over-the-top detuned mayhem. What you get on this album instead are passages of riffs that are more often tepid rather than dreadful, interspersed with flow-killing bits of maudlin atmosphere, ill-timed tempo changes, and other bad choices. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ This is a terse, energetic, and fun Decapitated album, better than its predecessor “Blood Mantra” but not quite as insta-classic as “Carnival Is Forever.” This also feels like a gateway Decapitated album, in a couple of ways. First, while the songs are replete with stock Decapitatedisms, there’s also plenty of new influences to be found here (Meshuggah and Slipknot chiefly among them). See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ No muss, no fuss, just well-executed, energetic crossover thrash. I love that the longest song on here is under 3 minutes long. I love that I’m reminded of S.O.D. and D.R.I. I love that you can hear bass! I just wish that this album offered as much innovation as it did adoration of the old. See the rest here
✦✧✧✧ The album opens up with the lyric, “…This is our time/the dawn of a new era.” But the debut from this “supergroup” (featuring Biohazard’s Billy Graziadei, Cypress Hill’s Sen Dog, Fear Factory’s Christian Olde Wolbers, and Downset’s Roy Lozano) is in no way new. In fact, it’s hard to not be cynical about this effort, which is a shame because there are interesting moments strewn about throughout this otherwise pervasive cacophony. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Just as nasty as you’d expect from Goatwhore (think somewhere between Belphegor, Entombed, and Morbid Angel)… but damn is this groovy and tasty and interesting. Never have these guys sounded as self-assured and rollicking. The second half of the album is even more special than the first, so stay for the whole thing. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ I was going to say that this isn’t half bad, but that’s the problem: it’s exactly half bad. The riffs are tasty and groovy (if forgettable), and speak to Chad Kroeger’s metal tendencies. But his vocals and lyrics are just so schmaltzy. And then there are the unforgivably saccharin intentional hits; “Song On Fire,” “After The Rain,” and their ilk constitute the kind of music I’d hear while driving quickly through some place I wouldn’t want to linger. See the rest here
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