★★☆☆ Seeing as there’s a new Terminator movie in the theaters, it must be time for a new Fear Factory album. So what if there’s not a lot of evolution to the band’s sound; they got that out of the way with “Demanufacture.” And there are a few moments on here that inject new energy into the proceedings. See the rest here
★★☆☆ No surprise here: the best parts of this album are the parts that don’t have Max Cavalera’s heavy hand all over them. There are some gusts of freshness in here, but they are quickly smothered by your usual brasilishit. But hey, if that’s your cup of tea, have another swig. See the rest here
★★★☆ You might as well call this “Monolith Of Inhumanity v2.0″… and I mean that in the best way possible. The band have taken the best parts of that previous album, and expanded on what worked before. This is a cohesive, self-assured blackgrind with plenty of twists and turns, but also tons of technical shredding. See the rest here
★★☆☆ When this album succeeds, it does so by distancing itself from its obvious bedroom recording djentisms. In this regard, the latter half of the album outdistances the former, which can’t help but feel like a collection of TesseracT B-sides. See the rest here
★★★☆ From an instrumental aspect, this album is metal as fuck. The pacing is excellent, and the extremes are as extreme as I could ever ask of a band with a hard rock pedigree. But vocally, it lies somewhere between King’s X and Saliva, and that’s hard to not hear. Still, this ill-fitting formula works really well when the metal eases up a bit, and the more emotive songs on this album work a kind of retroactive magic on the more jarring fist-to-face tracks. See the rest here
★★★☆ This 9-song, 24-minute living homage to classic/ancient grindcore is near perfection. It’s heavy as shit, and mean, and the energy is off the charts. And just when you think you know what playbook the band are using, they add enough flavor from other related genres (noise, doom, punk) to keep it interesting. See the rest here
★☆☆☆ This album sounds exactly like what it really is: the side project of a talented metal drummer. It even sounds like a playthrough video, with the drums high in the mix and obviously the focus of the whole affair. And make no mistake: the drums here are top-fucking-notch. Unfortunately, everything else surrounding (or, more accurately, underpinning) the drums is lackluster at best, and unimaginative at worst. See the rest here
★★★☆ ABR manage to walk a tightwire act of opening up their sound and adding experimental elements to their sound, while still being recognizably metalcore. At first blush, I can hear borrowings from near (KSE, AILD) and far (The Mars Volta, BTBAM), but even at their riskiest the band never stray too far from The Metal, which is a good thing. See the rest here
★★★☆ This reminds me of The Ocean, Indian, The Faceless, and Gorguts all at the same time. Those are all great ingredients, and the musicianship is tight, and oh my god so much bass in the mix! I don’t really even mind the all-screamo-all-the-time vocals, although that’s definitely costing ’em. Also, big props for naming a song after the town next to the one I live in. See the rest here
★★☆☆ Symphony X continue their lifelong reappropriation of prog metal tropes, but whereas they pulled it off with aplomb on their previous album “Iconoclast,” this time around the results inspire less forgiveness. Maybe part of the problem is that the album starts out with a truly unconvincing Overture. Or maybe it’s the limp ballad-by-the-numbers “Without You.” See the rest here
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