✦✦✦✧ These guys aren’t the kings of NPR Metal for nothin’. Equal parts black metal, prog, and Dead Can Dance, this album once again marks an evolution of their sound, if not a complete departure. It’s full of surprises from start to finish. Do me a favor and give it a listen, if for no other reason than we can talk about it afterward. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ This is undeniably Metallica. It’s also pretty boring. Also also, it’s about twice as long as it needs to be. Not only does it have too many songs, and not only are the songs overlong, but even at the riff level, they tend to repeat too many times. You know you’re in trouble when you’re thinking about the Skip button about 20 seconds into a track. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Longtime readers of this blog won’t be surprised by my initial thoughts on this, the 714th album from thrash metal’s most consistent band. (It even had the exact same score as the previous album, for the first two-thirds of the album). But I’ve gotta call out the track “Fever,” which is so nasty and sludgy and rad. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Entheos is now a power trio. Think about that as the safety lapbar comes down and you are immediately launched onto this wild ride. Navene Koperweis handles the guitars as well as drums on this album, while Evan Brewer is back on bass. The result is a sound that slides adroitly from death metal to prog to jazz, equal parts Torrential Downpour and Meshuggah at their most experimental. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ BABYMETAL meets… Evanescence? Periphery? The problem with this version of the band is one of restraint. The over-the-top extremes of their first album are what I loved most about BABYMETAL. Without them, I’m just not as interested. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ This album is a challenge to listen to, in part due to its ridiculously brickwalled mix. Too bad, as ABR have managed to imbue more emotion into their music, without sacrificing their by-now trademark experimental brand of metalcore. But my ears! My ears!! See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ This is one of the Finnish band’s best efforts to date, improving on its predecessor Heart Like A Grave in all aspects except for pacing, which does tend toward the overblown. Still, a fine almost-hour of melodeath, best served cold. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ This album, more than most, feels like a product of the CoViD-19 pandemic, for good and for ill. By way of delays and other exigencies, Ne Obvs were required to spend years on this album, and the resulting level of refinement and honing on display here is without equal. There is no filler, no fluff; this beast is all muscle and precision. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ A massive and appealing album of Finnish black metal, with just enough keyboard work to make things a little surprising and more interesting than your typical fare. But don’t worry; the band’s bread-and-butter blast beats and tremelo picking are constant companions here. Also, the production is surprisingly good, something that I don’t take for granted in this genre by any means. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Deathcore brutality par excellence. What it lacks in variety, it makes up for with clever sound sculpting, thoughtful brevity, and endless kicks to your teeth. See the rest here
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