★★★☆ LOG’s seventh album showcases the band tempering their tried-and-true shredding with slivers of other kinds of metal (metalcore, thrash, heavy metal). The approach doesn’t always pay off (Chino Moreno’s guest vocals are a low point for the whole album), but on the whole it’s a welcome addition. Of course, when the band return to form, they really deliver the goods. See the rest here
☆☆☆☆ This is a barely listenable assortment of bad choices: here’s what happens when you take Rammstein’s most awkward element — their vocalist — and prop him up with what can best be described as the Teutonic answer to Static-X. As a bonus, Lindemann doubles down on lyrics so puerile that they make Steel Panther sound like Walt Whitman by comparison. See the rest here
★★★☆ This shit is cray. You know BTBAM will spin off for a while in a self-indulgent jazzy bit, or a circusy section? Native Construct’s debut album makes that stuff sound like the comparatively superficial larks that they really are. You can pause any song at any point, walk away for a bit, and when you resume the music later, completely forget who you’re listening to… that’s how fully committed the band are to their manifold genre proclivities (symphonic metal, speed metal, classic rock, jazz, 80s, musical theater). See the rest here
★☆☆☆ I’m giving this a star for good production. That said, this is one well-polished but tedious album. Once you get past the very slow beginning, and the alleged single “Failure,” the album opens up and reveals a few genuinely fun moments in its second half. But you know you’re in trouble when all you can aspire to is being Sevendust-Lite (especially if you miss the mark more often than you hit it). See the rest here
★★☆☆ While the idea of these grosscore stalwarts trying to add a touch of symphonic grandiosity to their normal fare seems great on paper, more often than not the results fall short of anything compelling. The band do much better on this album when they return to form, and on those occasions what you get is exactly what the band do best. See the rest here
★★☆☆ I’ll be the first to admit that I generally fucking loathe The Darkness, largely for just how self-consciously tribute-y they are. That said, I don’t thoroughly hate this album… although none of it really moves me, either. The guitarwork here is as crisp and spot-on as ever, so that’s a saving grace. See the rest here
★★★☆ Take the best parts of Converge and Cave-In (naturally, given this supergroup’s members and Kurt Ballou at the helm), and add a touch of Queens Of The Stone Age. While there are very few pretentions here in the path between their fists and your face, the band do explore unusual music territory just enough to keep your interest. See the rest here
★★☆☆ The antisocial aggression is predictably front-and-center on this album, but this time around it’s filtered through the clear aesthetics of producer Steve Albini. The end result is The Jesus Lizard pushed to self-parody, a proudly noisome half-hour with ridiculous vocals that are unfortunately impossible to ignore. See the rest here
★★★☆ This is a stunner, and really hard to do justice with a simple description… but, here goes anyway: imagine if Dillinger, Emperor, Evanescence, Sigur Ros, and Glassjaw were warring nations; this album would be the uneasy peace accord between them. One of the most original albums of 2015, without a doubt. See the rest here
★★★★ This is a challenging album, for both band and audience. This is still very recognizably BTBAM, but the music here also expands on the band’s bailiwick in virtually every direction. Indeed, in addition to sly tips of the hat to the band’s previous best works, there are also noticeable borrowings from many other prog metal standard bearers — Opeth, Dream Theater, Porcupine Tree, and Leprous leap immediately to mind — as well as a healthy reverence to classic rock, power metal, and musical theater at large. See the rest here
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