✦✦✦✧ While not as experimental or envelope-pushing as previous albums, this is still a tasty slab of grindish thrashy metalcore. Half the many riffs here are groovy as hell, while the other half are just punishing. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ This is a frustrating mixed bag of an album, with passages of satisfying crunch tempered by synthpop-informed atmospherics and no real consideration for flow or momentum. Holocene is dogged by a pervasive feeling of building up for a climactic payoff that never comes. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ This is a goddamned winner, folks. Virtuosic technical death metal with surprisingly catchy hooks and even more unique cleans sprinkled tastefully throughout. I don’t know how they manage to sound dynamic while also keeping the foot on the gas. Innovative, groovy, just rad as hell. Also did I mention that Cattle Decap is as gross as ever? See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ This is my frontrunner for the most ChatGPT djent album of the year. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Body Count meets Sick Of It All meets latter-day Childish Gambino. II feel that shit! Also, for lots of reasons, this might be the sexiest metal album I review all year. Just listen to it; it’s 15 tracks in under 30 minutes. See the rest here
✦✧✧✧ Oh great. More Brooklyn black metal Boris nonsense, only with even less listenability and more of their hellshrieking and unintelligible chaos. Good thing they made it a double album. I warned them last time that they were flirting with a one-star review. And here we are. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ This is actually pretty good! Kip frankly sounds better than ever. And the rest of the band are a murderer’s row of musicianship. That said, the band now find themselves exactly where they’ve always been: just outside every envelope we’d assumed contained them. Not quite Kix, not quite Dokken, not quite King’s X, not quite Queensrÿche… but somehow evocative of all of them. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ This is what it would’ve sounded like if Slayer had pivoted to thrash in 1987.
What are you waiting for? Get in the pit, hessians! No mercy!! See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ A stunningly beautiful and powerful album that defies genre boundaries. The band’s unique blend of melodic black metal, progressive metal, and post-rock creates a sound that is as haunting and uplifting as it is unpredictable. Avienne Low’s vocals are a standout, soaring over the complex instrumentals with grace and power. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ One of In Flames’ better late-stage albums. This feels like a return to the Gothenburg melodeath form that this band helped define. The back half of the album does wear out its welcome a bit, though. See the rest here
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