Cannibal Corpse — Chaos Horrific
✦✦✧✧ Solid OSDM from the fucking champs. Expect the expected! See the rest here
First Listens With Two-Star Ratings
Code Orange — The Above
✦✦✧✧ I will give this much to Code Orange: they’re certainly not resting on their laurels. Unfortunately, their experimentation here feels like it never fully pays off (with results ranging from “almost” to “oh no thank you”). Also, with this album the band have gone so far post hardcore that they somehow created a wormhole and punched right back through to nu metal. See the rest here
Autopsy — Ashes, Organs, Blood And Crypts
✦✦✧✧ OSDM pioneers are back with another slab of gory filth. This time, they’re sounding more experimental and expansive than on their previous albums, and that’s for the good. You’ll hear plenty of nods to virtually all over kinds of metal… so long as those influences are from 1987. There’s lots of tasty shredding all over the place, too. See the rest here
Baroness — Stone
✦✦✧✧ At their best, Baroness approximates an unstable equipoise between Helmet, Intronaut, and The Decemberists. I don’t smoke nearly enough reefer to really enjoy them, but with this album, I can sorta see how you might. See the rest here
Skindred — Smile
✦✦✧✧ If you’ve never heard Skindred before, this is as good an example as any: Welsh nu metal with a decided Jamaican flair (thanks largely to vocalist and keyboardist Benjy Webbe). See the rest here
Sadus — The Shadow Inside
✦✦✧✧ Holy crap, new Sadus! Not that I was asking, but this album finally settles the question, What would this band sound like without bass legend Steve DiGiorgio? Answer: not-as-interesting Bay Area thrash. That’s not to say it’s bad by any means, so if that’s your mood and you want something new-ish and shreddy, give this a listen! See the rest here
Atreyu — The Moment You Find Your Flame
✦✦✧✧ Let’s call this radiocore, equal parts Panic At The Disco! and Stone Sour. I’m not sure who this is for (but it’s definitely not for me). See the rest here
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Scar Symmetry — The Singularity (Phase II – Xenotaph)
✦✦✧✧ Oh yeah, I totally forgot about this awaited sequel to 2014’s Phase I. All the various bits of the Scar Symmetry sonic palette are here, as are elements from almost any other Swedish melodeath band I can think of. That’s really my main complaint here: too much stuff, all very familiar, crammed together into a needlessly long runtime. See the rest here
Exmortus — Necrophony
✦✦✧✧ Relentless neoclassical speed metal feels good, man! So what if playing Paganini or Tchaikovsky on your high-gain guitar is hardly innovative. It’s still sweet, bro! See the rest here
The Acacia Strain — Step Into The Light
✦✦✧✧ This album has the same predilection for massive, plodding riffs, just like its companion piece Failure Will Follow. The difference is that, on this album, all but one track clocks in at under 3 minutes. The result is a collection of pieces that feel incomplete and fragmentary sketches. Perhaps this sort of thing will give metal new life on The Kids’ Social Media, but I find it harder to get into this particular material this particular way. See the rest here
