✦✦✦✧ While The Police were falling apart in the mid 1980s, Stewart Copeland put increasing energy into scoring for film and television. One of his first products was a soundtrack for the TV show The Equalizer… an ultra digital, mood- and tone-heavy soundscape with elements at turns progressive, jazzy, and dark. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Djenty deathcore with a shiny (somewhat distractingly) digital gloss. Even more Vildhjarta-ish than Vildhjarta (which makes a kind of sense, seeing as HLB currently boasts two members of that other band). One thing’s for sure: this album is unformulaic, jarring (djarring), and above all else, dark. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ “Hey man, good to see you again! …Me? I don’t know… ‘How long I’ve been a Deadhead’? I dunno… But then, what is time anyway? I mean, it’s all just a construct, you know what I mean? A figment. Wow, man. Wow.” See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ See, this is how you spring from a retro sound and make it fresh and fun! This epic tech-inspired deathcore album evokes comparisons with Fleshgod Apocalypse or Anaal Nathrakh more dependably than Thy Art Is Murder or Whitechapel, and this is a good thing. Oddly, the tracks with guest appearances by Alissa White-Gluz and Angel Vivaldi don’t add much; fortunately, the rest of the material stands on its own. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ I hope you’re hungry, because this 38-minute album is one seriously dense riff salad… served shredded! (See what I did there?) No longer satisfied with evoking a bygone era of death metal, Tomb Mold have apparently set 1990 as a starting point for interesting and innovative composition which rivals some of the most avant-garde offerings from 30 years ago. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ If only all black metal was this interesting! Surprisingly shreddy and NWOBHM-tinged, while this is not quite as good as the band’s first album, “Outstrider” is still commendably inventive and easy to listen to. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ On this album, He Is Legend have ratcheted up both their cheese and their heaviness. Their long-documented similarities with Alice In Chains are less glaring now, crowded out by hints of Converge, Mutoid Man, and Entombed. The band continue to be both a guilty pleasure and an under-discovered gem. One of the most unique sounding albums of 2019, even if it sounds like it’s straight out of 2004. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Take half of Job For A Cowboy, add the bassist from Black Dahlia Murder, and tell them that their longest song has to be under 4 minutes long, and what do you go? Your face in a meat grinder, that’s what! See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Squeeeeeeze those invisible oranges! This is Inter Arma at their most inhospitable and devastating; and while album-over-album increases in heaviness should be no surprise by now to anyone who’s been paying attention to this band, it’s still utterly debilitating to hear their latest culminations firsthand. The band continue to be progressive in their own way, but this time around they all but abandon any pretense of melody, channeling their creativity instead into rhythm and rage. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ While I’m enthusiastic about the idea of “prog doom” (“doom prog”?) on paper, this album is a tough one to get aboard, likely because the outcome of such a formulation is (by definition) shoegazey and moribund. Still, this album is probably the best prog doom implementation you can find. Props to vocalist/guitarist/flautist Kelly Schilling for girding the whole album with a sumptuous lushness, although really the whole band is committed to this layered enterprise. See the rest here
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