★★★☆ ABR manage to walk a tightwire act of opening up their sound and adding experimental elements to their sound, while still being recognizably metalcore. At first blush, I can hear borrowings from near (KSE, AILD) and far (The Mars Volta, BTBAM), but even at their riskiest the band never stray too far from The Metal, which is a good thing. See the rest here
★★★☆ This reminds me of The Ocean, Indian, The Faceless, and Gorguts all at the same time. Those are all great ingredients, and the musicianship is tight, and oh my god so much bass in the mix! I don’t really even mind the all-screamo-all-the-time vocals, although that’s definitely costing ’em. Also, big props for naming a song after the town next to the one I live in. See the rest here
★★★☆ With my short and sweet Firstie for IWABO’s previous record still in my memory, I’ll admit I was not looking forward to listening to this album today. And so, I wasn’t prepared for how… thoroughly effective this one is. The band have settled into a much more economical brand of still-insane 8bitdigidjentymetalcore, trading their goofy self-indulgences for unsubtle savagery. See the rest here
★★★☆ LOG’s seventh album showcases the band tempering their tried-and-true shredding with slivers of other kinds of metal (metalcore, thrash, heavy metal). The approach doesn’t always pay off (Chino Moreno’s guest vocals are a low point for the whole album), but on the whole it’s a welcome addition. Of course, when the band return to form, they really deliver the goods. See the rest here
★★★☆ This shit is cray. You know BTBAM will spin off for a while in a self-indulgent jazzy bit, or a circusy section? Native Construct’s debut album makes that stuff sound like the comparatively superficial larks that they really are. You can pause any song at any point, walk away for a bit, and when you resume the music later, completely forget who you’re listening to… that’s how fully committed the band are to their manifold genre proclivities (symphonic metal, speed metal, classic rock, jazz, 80s, musical theater). See the rest here
★★★☆ Take the best parts of Converge and Cave-In (naturally, given this supergroup’s members and Kurt Ballou at the helm), and add a touch of Queens Of The Stone Age. While there are very few pretentions here in the path between their fists and your face, the band do explore unusual music territory just enough to keep your interest. See the rest here
★★★☆ This is a stunner, and really hard to do justice with a simple description… but, here goes anyway: imagine if Dillinger, Emperor, Evanescence, Sigur Ros, and Glassjaw were warring nations; this album would be the uneasy peace accord between them. One of the most original albums of 2015, without a doubt. See the rest here
★★★☆ This album is pure meat-and-potatoes HOF. And while at times it can sound more like a collection of the band’s B-sides than music to stand up with the rest of their body of work, it never fails to deliver on the promise of any High On Fire album: snarly sludgey mosh fodder. See the rest here
★★★☆ The good news: this is shoegazey sludgey post-metal at its finest, with nary a misstep. Listenable, evocative, internally consistent… this is a well-crafted album. The not-so-good news: by dint of the genre, there’s not much on here to take away once the music stops (although the second half of the album comes closest to delivering memorable moments). See the rest here
★★★☆ On paper, there should be nothing remarkable about this album. It’s extreme noisecore, produced by Kurt Ballou, with no real standout performances throughout. But in a strange way, that chimaeralike quality is the album’s greatest strength; without the distraction of distinctions, the resulting impact is more pure and devastating. See the rest here
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