Godsmack — 1000hp
☆☆☆☆ “Wow.” “WOW.” “Jesus no.” These were my first reactions to this album. This is Godsmack’s St. Anger. Zero fucking stars. See the rest here
Category: First Listens
Darkest Hour — Darkest Hour
★★★☆ This album starts out with some a fierceness that never completely dissipates, even as the music transitions from ballsy detuned death to a more traditional metalcore. Even at their most derivative, Darkest Hour have an undeniable energy pumping right into your face. Scowlworthy from beginning to end, and that’s a good thing. See the rest here
KXM — KXM
★★☆☆ The new supergroup featuring Doug Pinnick and George Lynch has got perhaps the most faultless production I’ve heard in months. Beyond that, there is no way that anyone unfamiliar with the album is going to hear this as anything other than an amazing new King’s X album. That of course is faint praise, as there’s no escaping a right-down-the-middle radio-friendly blandness that haunts the hard rock pretentions of the first half of the album. See the rest here
Grave Digger — Return Of The Reaper
★★☆☆ This is some good old-fashioned power metal, so unabashedly playing to type that it’s difficult not to admire the band’s singlemindedness. But with the only innovation (arguably) being a more modern sound, it’s really difficult to hang on to any of the material, which comes across as forgettable, even as you listen to it. See the rest here
Savage Messiah — The Fateful Dark
★★☆☆ A curious and good blend of power and thrash metal from Savage Messiah. There’s some tasty, tasty guitarwork on this album, strong enough to elicit a warm nodding of heads, but the rest of the performances do feel a bit phoned-in. See the rest here
Goatwhore — Constricting Rage of The Merciless
★★☆☆ Energetic and nasty, but also clean. Surprisingly clean. I hear the angry, but it also feels a little cautious in its delivery. Also, these tunes don’t have a long shelf life in my memory. The album is a bit like a lesser hot sauce: it packs a punch, but its flavor doesn’t stick with me. See the rest here
(Hed) p.e. — Evolution
☆☆☆☆ Let me be at least a little charitable: the sound quality on this album is quite nice. Otherwise, this is a curiously dispassionate rapcore recording, bereft of any excitement. If the band themselves can’t muster the enthusiasm and energy anywhere on the album, how can they expect me to feel any? See the rest here
Bastard Feast — Osculum Infame
★★★☆ I’m not entirely sure how this band did it, but they’ve created a rough and rugged album of deathy noisy hardcore that doesn’t feel exhausting or derivative, no matter how much those words might objectively apply. There’s a cleverness and freshness to their onslaught, even while never straying very far from their Cannibal-Corpse-meets-Kurt-Ballou ethic. See the rest here
Boris — Noise
★★☆☆ So much of this album sounds like a conscious expansion (best case) or plagiarizing (worst case) of Queens Of The Stone Age, Radiohead, Deftones, with recognizable motifs extruded rustily through an art-house mesh. But rather than being annoying or easy (as if anyone could call Boris “derivative”), these touchstones of listenability help to orient you throughout the course of the album. See the rest here
Lazer/Wulf — The Beast Of Left And Right
★★☆☆ There’s a lot going for this bizarre math-/prog-/post-metal opus. It’s got ambition and precision and energy when it wants to use it, and once again here’s a band that outmastodons Mastodon. And in particular, the two “Choose Again” tracks that more or less bookend the album are worth a few listens. See the rest here
