☆☆☆☆ This is doggedly imperfect and retro death metal/grindcore, to the point of embarrassment. Seriously, the only allowable excuses for a roomful of disparate people thinking that releasing an album in this sad condition was acceptable would be:
★★☆☆ Very middle-of-the-road beerhall metal. It’s fun, but the whole album sounds like you’ve heard it all before… because you have. See the rest here
★☆☆☆ There are a couple of interesting ideas on here, but the relentless and tiresome wall-of-lo-fi production aesthetics that are so typical of black metal wind up getting in the way. See the rest here
★★★★ This energetically technical metal album has it all. Euro-style synth intros, faultless musicianship, a lower-than-thou tuning, tasty solos, not to mention a whirlwind tour of virtually every metal subgenre of relevance today. It’s hard to imagine someone being underwhelmed. Yet, they manage to consistently sound fresh and novel and interesting, even as they sprinkle their music with nods to Gojira, The Faceless, Attack! See the rest here
★★☆☆ This is a lovely, gory blend of Entombed and “Scream Bloody Gore.” It does go on a bit monotonously, though… which is impressive for a 9-track, 30-minute album. See the rest here
☆☆☆☆ Believe it or not, I remember Mushroomhead being better than this. Avoid at all costs. See the rest here
★☆☆☆ This album puts forth the difficult-to-dispute premise that Mastodon is slowly, steadily, smoking enough dope to transform themselves into Baroness. There’s some interesting musical direction on here, and the band’s performances are generally as good as they’ve ever been. But even on tracks like “High Road” and “Chimes At Midnight,” where you can still detect a glimmer of the swagger and bravado that really was the whole point of the band to begin with, everything feels like it was processed through a cheap King’s X or QOTSA filter. See the rest here
★★★☆ This is one of the most interesting things I’ve heard this year so far, somewhere between The Jesus Lizard, The Ocean, Filter, The Melvins, Zombi, Fantômas… or just hovering around The Black Keys, once those guys grow up and develop a serious problem with black tar heroin. This album is a controlled, snarling exploration, one that rewards repeated listenings even with its seemingly lo-fi pretensions. See the rest here
★★☆☆ Once this short and sweet hardcore album starts out in earnest, you get an affable what-you-see-is-what-you-get slugfest that’s well-produced (for what it is) and generally smileworthy, if not exactly groundbreaking. On that subject, the opening ambient track is a complete red herring that has nothing to do with the rest of the album, and doesn’t serve the band at all. See the rest here
★☆☆☆ While this is pretty well-executed emocore, it’s still an aspirational Norma Jean replica at best, and something approaching Emmure at its worst. See the rest here
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