Morbid Saint — Swallowed By Hell
✦✦✧✧ Very shreddy middle-of-the-road classic speed thrash. If you like Morbid Saint, you’re gonna love Morbid Saint! See the rest here
First Listens With Two-Star Ratings
Kerry King — From Hell I Rise
✦✦✧✧ A thoroughly passable Slayer-adjacent album. Don’t expect too many revelations or surprises; even Death Angel vocalist Mark Osegueda sounds more Arayaish here than usual. See the rest here
Mick Mars — The Other Side Of Mars
✦✦✧✧ I was going to say that I don’t know who this collection of lukewarm rockers is for, but I realized that I do know: it’s for Mick Mars, of course. See the rest here
Ace Frehley — 10,000 Volts
✦✦✧✧ Shake them buns! See the rest here
KMFDM — LET GO
✦✦✧✧ Poppy Eurodisco industrial which still works well enough. It kinda reminds me of a more party-friendly Rammstein, or a more aggressive Yello, if that means anything to you. (Oh yeah.) If you’re not already a fan of KMFDM, this isn’t going to bring you into the fold. But if you do already dig KMFDM, I’m sure you’ll eat this up. See the rest here
Static-X — Project: Regeneration Vol. 2
✦✦✧✧ This is the second Static-X album to be at least partially constituted from tracks written and recorded by Wayne Static before his death in 2014. As such, don’t be surprised by the strong industrial nu-metal nostalgia that permeates this music. All that said, this is much more entertaining than I thought it’d be. See the rest here
Upon Stone — Dead Mother Moon
✦✦✧✧ Man, this is the nasty. The production here both elevates and hamstrings the music; I really wish I could understand what the hell they’re even playing, but boy do they seem to be energized about something. See the rest here
Panopticon — The Rime Of Memory
✦✦✧✧ I refer to you perhaps my most beloved piece of critical writing ever, my previous Panopticon first listen. See the rest here
Immortal Guardian — Unite And Conquer
✦✦✧✧ This is catchy enough for power metal, almost shreddy enough for speed metal, and not nearly interesting enough for progressive. See the rest here
Prong — State Of Emergency
✦✦✧✧ At last, a pretty solid album from Prong! Tommy Victor is an excellent form as ever. The songs are more reminiscent of Beg To Differ than anything else they’ve put out in the last decade, and that’s for the good. So what if some of the songs sound like Black Label Society, or Biohazard, or Body Count? See the rest here
