★★☆☆ 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
★☆☆☆ My opinion here bears some explaining. This supergroup and album are quite intentionally a tribute to the first three Death albums (ie: the really lo-fi pre-Cynic ones). As such, they succeed brilliantly: listening to “Savage Land” is like listening to a remastered version of “Scream Bloody Gore,” assuming you’ve never heard a moment of that album before. See the rest here
★★☆☆ This is equal parts Isis, A Perfect Circle, Eleven, Silversun Pickups, and Pink Floyd. And if that’s hard to grok, that’s okay — that’s part of the listening experience, too. The album’s shoegazer tendencies are its Achilles heel, and I wouldn’t blame you for skipping the last third of it, but otherwise this is a tantalizing breath of fresh air. See the rest here
★★★☆ With my short and sweet Firstie for IWABO’s previous record still in my memory, I’ll admit I was not looking forward to listening to this album today. And so, I wasn’t prepared for how… thoroughly effective this one is. The band have settled into a much more economical brand of still-insane 8bitdigidjentymetalcore, trading their goofy self-indulgences for unsubtle savagery. See the rest here
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