★★☆☆ 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
★★☆☆ 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
☆☆☆☆ 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
★★★☆ 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
★★☆☆ 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
★★☆☆ 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
★★☆☆ Catchy aggressive sludge (with a smidge of noisecore thrown in for good measure), but the utter sameness and duration of the songs make this a hard album to get into. See the rest here
★★★☆ Long live Overkill Incorporated! Their latest product is just as ferocious as any before it. The songwriting on this album aims less for coherent songwriting and more for fun thrashy moments… and the trade-off works remarkably well. Also, of particular note to me: D.D. Verni’s bass tone is just as coppery as ever, but the way that the mix has dialed in his mids and low end is gonna be hard to improve upon. See the rest here
★★☆☆ Yep, this is a Priest album, alright. It’s fun, though. Not super special or an instant classic, but I’m not facepalming either. (Although, does it sound to you like Rob’s pipes are a little tired, or is that just me?) Okay then! See the rest here
★★★★ For a band who made their bones with a solid reputation for technical death metal, this album is more firmly grounded in an ethereal territory that sounds more like Cynic than anything else. What makes that notion remarkable is just how successfully and frequently that intricacy is mated with shredding and screams. See the rest here
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