★★★☆ For my money, this is one mean improvement over the last Oceano album. To get there, apparently the band traveled halfway between The Acacia Strain and Vildhjarta… and then tunneled straight down. With the right kind of thinking, you can hear this as an intellectual level-up. With a different kind of thinking, this is a suitable soundtrack for breaking your hand on concrete. See the rest here
★★★☆ Impressive. Most impressive. This album bears more than a passing resemblance to The Faceless, Obscura, and other technodeath groups, which is the good news. The bad news is that, while it’s eminently replayable, it just misses the mark in terms of emotional resonance. Too many notes, perhaps? Still, I put this in my Don’t Miss bucket. See the rest here
★★☆☆ This is a relatively uplifting dirge-suite, and as cocksure as anything GYBE have ever done. The problem is that there’s just not that much “there” there; of the album’s four tracks, two are atonal noisescapes. As a King Crimson-style calling card of a teaser release, this would be dandy, but as a standalone affair it leaves me wanting more. See the rest here
★☆☆☆ This album reminds me very much of the transition that Malevolent Creation made from the sublime “Retribution” to the forgettable followup “Stillborn.” Similarly, many of the elements found on “Tetragrammaton” are present and account for on this new album, but this time around the combination just doesn’t work nearly as convincingly or compellingly enough. See the rest here
★★★☆ Sure, Israel+Dutch extreme metal sounds like a gimmicky proposition on paper. But “Enki” is so self-assured and full-throated that you can’t help but dig it. See the rest here
★★★☆ Trascendent sludge that is utterly engrossing (and… dare I say, listenable?) from start to finish. Sure, the band give up some of their potential ferocity in exchange for cohesion and mood, but it feels like a good trade. This is now my favorite Ufomammut album to date. See the rest here
★★☆☆ This album comes from an alternate reality wherein 70s prog rock blossomed forty years later than it did here. The resulting hodgepodge has as much in common with Camel, Bill Laswell, and Barber’s Adagio For Strings as it does with Emperor. It’s a fascinating listen, marred by a difficult production aesthetic and an over-reliance on the glacial crescendo. See the rest here
★★☆☆ This is a meaty blend of Ballou-esque sludge and SOIA/Biohazard-inspired urban thug-gression. There is something inescapably retro about the whole album, but it’s interesting and evocative in spite of that flavor. Sometimes the groove of the band is a little too… groovy for my tastes. That, and a handful of awkward and sloppy moments, hamstring the whole effort just enough to rob the band of a three-star first rating. See the rest here
★★★☆ Easily the best album you’ll hear all year from a band featuring an Amott brother. As such, you’ll definitely hear the Arch Enemy imprint throughout, which is not a bad thing of course. This album may not revolutionize metal, but if you like your melodeath tinged with progressive elements and adorned with virtuosic shredding, this’ll be your jam. See the rest here
★★☆☆ It takes this album a few tracks to find its feet, by eventually finds its voice as a pounding screamfest, somewhere between Kyuss and Converge, yet somehow without the real moxie of either. See the rest here
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