✦✦✦✧ While I won’t go so far as to call BABYMETAL victims of the sophomore slump, there is definitely a new aimless quality to the music on this album. The shredding is as ridiculous as ever, and there’s some catchy shit on here, but you’re also lacking any classic memorable moments. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Mighty Anthrax serve up an excellent sampling of modern thrash, which manages to come across as fresh and invigorated while still sounding very much like Anthrax. New lead guitarist and ex-Shads founder Jon Donais ably fills Rob Caggiano’s shoes (and then some), while Scott and Charlie and Frank are peerless in their performances. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ The phrase “15 songs, 23 minutes” can only mean one thing: blast beat grindcore mayhem! And yet, there are some surprising twists and turns on this EP. The mandatory fury is tempered with pace changes galore, in delightfully unpredictable ways (my favorite is on “The Opportunist”, wherein the band switch into half time about six seconds before the end of a 68-second tune). See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ This album is for those Entombed fans for whom “Wolverine Blues” sounded too polished. Unfortunate, the unvarnished production is matched by a set of unfiltered, meandering compositions that are just tedious throughout the front half of the album. Things do improve in the back half, but by then the damage is done. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ FGA take their neoclassical pretensions to ridiculous heights with this one; it says something that they were able to release a deluxe double-length edition, with soloed-orchestral versions of every song on the standard release (and it says something else that this bonus actually kinda stands up on its own, like a video game soundtrack). See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ KSE’s latest feels like an odd fusion of Meshuggah, pre-Black Album Metallica, and heaps of metalcore-by-the-numbers. And while I applaud the band for trying to be more progressive, their efforts manifest in largely arbitrary and distracting time signature changes. Still, if you already love KSE, you’re probably going to be just fine with all this. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Yep, this is definitely Voivod. I will also say: this is a really good length for a Voivod release; there’s enough Québécois madness on here to whet your whistle, but not so much to grow into tedium. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Y’all know that I’ve loved Prong from back in the day (Headbanger’s Ball, holla). But this album gets off to a boring start, and has a hard time shaking off that misstep (even though the riffs get better as the album unspools). Then we get to the twin surprises of the album: the bizarre metalcorish “Do Nothing” and the purposefully detuned “Belief System”. See the rest here
✦✦✦✦ This followup to the 2011 prog masterclass “Dualism” finds the band doubling down on their Meshuggahness. This results in ridiculous heaviness when the band want to wield it, and next-level time signature/syncopation madness. The danger here is that their penchant for slippery rhythm goes so far as to make some sections virtually headbang-proof, the cleverness-for-clever’s-sake coming at the cost of effective emotional delivery. See the rest here
✦✦✦✦ This is a hard-hitting technodeath triumph, and sets a high bar for any other progressive metal in 2016. Unlike recent examples from other technodeath staples, this album does a better job in offering a (relatively) diverse musical palette, at times evoking Death, BTBAM, The Faceless, and Gorguts. Every song feels substantial without being overlong (even the 15-minute closer “Weltseele”). See the rest here
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