★★★☆ Sure, power metal may not be the most admired genre in the business, but given that… this album is pretty much flawless. It feels like a more energetic Soilwork, cross-bred with some Symphony X for good measure. Everything you’d look for is here in spades: tasty guitar work, pounding drums, a healthy bottom line, lush keys and strings, and very strong vocals (which is surprisingly rare in this field). See the rest here
★★★☆ Prong meets Sick Of It All meets Slayer meets 311 meets Helmet. And yet it works! The album’s twelve tracks (27 minutes total!) each hold surprises for the listener, and every twist and turn feels surprising and fresh and youthful and fun. You do get the sense that this is an early record, to be supplanted in the near future with bigger and better; likely, the band’s embrace of nostalgic production values contributes in no small part to this feeling. See the rest here
★★★☆ This EP is an excellent return from the long-dormant but well-beloved prog metal quartet. Their djent stylings are less front-and-center this time around, which I think is appropriate given the state of the subgenre. More importantly, you’ve got great headbanging moments, interesting chord progressions, and their best production to date. See the rest here
★★★☆ This is a pretty good poor man’s Gorguts. See the rest here
★★★☆ My first though, on hearing the typical-for-folk-metal intro, was “God, I fucking hate folk metal.” And then the actual metal proceeded to kick my teeth in. It drags about two-thirds of the way through, but then the band throw a wild curveball with the disco stylings of “Two Of Spades.” See the rest here
★★★☆ This latest album from Tristan Shone is dystopian in a way that most industrial acts only give lip service to, evocative of Skinny Puppy and NIN at Trent’s most experimental. It’s also awfully heavy, and yet manages to be catchy (just not in a Taylor Swift way). It’s perhaps one track too long for my tastes, but coming from someone with a documented distaste for the terminally slow, that’s saying a lot. See the rest here
★★★☆ This is music designed to be heard at painful volume in a smoky beer-stained bar, a winning blend of grindcore and sludge. It sounds like Carcass and Entombed had a nasty baby. See the rest here
★★★☆ This album is rooted in atmospheric black metal, but also evokes The Ocean, Opeth, even some 80s goth. The doom+bluegrass+folk+goth fusion here is seamless, and in a surprise twist the resultant sound comes across as more heartfelt and upbeat than one would expect. More importantly, this album is eminently listenable. See the rest here
★★★☆ Not only is the best Periphery release of 2015 (which is saying something, considering this is technically only half of the band, working under a different name), but this is the best djentish instrumental EP since Chimp Spanner’s 2012 release All Roads Lead Here. With some editing and more of a story to tell, this could have been a four-star album. See the rest here
★★★☆ Sweet, sweet technodeath. Although perhaps death jazz is more like it. This is BTBAM with less carnival, more progginess (if that’s possible), and a distinctly European sensibility. When it works, the music is stunning. That’s certainly not guaranteed on this album, and the band not infrequently careens into self-indulgence… but at least the album’s failures are always fascinating. See the rest here
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