✦✦✧✧ I really should stop listening to Opeth. This album is even further removed from progressive metal, and much closer to what I’d expect from Leprous or Ghost. Or the more expositional tediums of Dream Theater. It’s really not until “Will O The Wisp,” fourteen minutes into the album, that the band revisits familiar musical territory. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Another blistering slab of thrash from these modern masters. No one track stands out here as a career definer (as opposed to the band’s eponymous 2013 masterpiece), but what you do get here is trademark Revocation doing what they do best, with a subtle leaning toward more emotional variety. But don’t let that stop you from listening with a gleefully slack jaw. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ There’s nothing complicated or earthshattering here… just good, old-fashioned, material for a good sweaty slamdance. The band are tighter than ever, and even Cyco Miko’s vocals sound a little more polished (but only a little). The album ends illadvisedly with two back-to-back ballads; I’d skip them if I were you. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ The first half of this album starts out sounding like Norma Jean doing a decent impersonation of Tool. Not that that’s a bad thing (especially when we’re untold years away from another album from Maynard & Co.); it’s just weird for the usually unbridled metalcore impresarios. But keep listening. The Toolisms fade quickly, the metalcore is still here throughout, and there is a pervasively broodingly quality to the music that builds to a satisfyingly lachrymose conclusion. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Here’s a grungier, even nastier (if you can believe it) ETID album. Less overly metal, but just as twisted and angry. There are palpable traces of QOTSA and Clutch all over the Converge-ish core of the band’s music. There’s also an almost Beatles-esque listenability in the melodies that surprised me… and ETID surprising me just shows that they’ve still got it. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ This sophomore effort from Anciients feels like a strong document of a band in transition. This album is more of a grower than their debut “Heart Of Oak,” but it’s got all the same meat on the bone as its predecessor. But their homages to Mastodon and Baroness are more subtle this time around, as the band’s witches’ brew has taken on new flavors; some are additional nods to bands like Tool and Kylesa, and some are clear signs of the band zeroing in on their own voice. See the rest here
✦✧✧✧ Korn’s interesting rough edges have by now been repeatedly bleached away into anonymized oblivion… except for Jonathan Davis’s trademark vocals of course. (If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear this was a solo album.) Worse, any semblance of real angst has long abandoned the band, only to have been replaced with well-honed but generic volume. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ As much as I love DEP, I can’t help but feel like they took all their learnings from their last album, the most excellent “One Of Us Is The Killer,” and turned their collective backs on that wisdom. “Dissociation” is DEP’s most self-indulgent album in a long time; whether that’s a good thing depends on the listener. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ The gravitational pull of Wo Fat’s sludge on this album is apparently so immense that apparently the band stoned themselves into self-inflicted dispassion. It gets the job done, but there’s an uncharacteristic so-what familiarity that’s hard to shake. I can definitely imagining hearing this on the P.A. in between sets at a concert; if that’s the aim of the band, they knocked it out of the park. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ The first two tracks? Super strong shred. Exactly what I want from Periphery. And then the band revert to their personal blend of emo cleans and GIT-type noodling. The emo stuff sounds pretty, but lacks the emotional resonance of a similar move from TesseracT. The ship gets righted in the back half of the album, though; there’s more heaviness, and the band’s melodic side comes back in a more tempered form. See the rest here
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