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
First Listens With Two-Star Ratings
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
Death Ray Vision — No Mercy From Electric Eyes
✦✦✧✧ This once-metalcore once-supergroup throws just enough metal into their blatantly hard rock formula on this album to make me pay attention here. (Do I detect hints of thrash and death metal?) That said, there’s a notable lack of variation that makes it difficult for me to keep my focus on the music even while it plays. See the rest here
Godflesh — Purge
✦✦✧✧ Keep in mind that when I say the track "LAND LORD" sounds like it was rejected for the Matrix soundtrack, I mean that with corrosive, fistpumping love. The problem with this industrial noisefest is one of consistency; when it works, it’s glorious, but when it misses, it feels like underdeveloped material. See the rest here
Therapy? — Hard Cold Fire
✦✦✧✧ A suitably venomous album from these chronically displeased Northern Irish alt-rock bastards (their 16th). As ever, this sounds like five different bands simultaneously, but a mashup of contemporaries like Killing Joke, XTC, pre-fame Nirvana, and The Jesus Lizard is as compelling as ever. One of their strongest efforts in a decade. See the rest here
Eleine — We Shall Remain
✦✦✧✧ Very well-crafted dark symphonic metal. Some of this feels a bit low-key and by-the-numbers, but the riffs are suitably heavy, and the scope feels nice and epic. Fans of Soilwork or Scar Symmetry should definitely check this out. See the rest here
