Anti-Mortem — New Southern
★★☆☆ If I’m being unkind, I’d call this album a more boring Hellyeah. But you know what? This album is also fucking fun. You will nod your head, despite yourself. So there’s that. See the rest here
First Listens With Two-Star Ratings
Young And In The Way — When Life Comes To Death
★★☆☆ Doomy and dirgy and noisy as you want. It’d be a little unfair to dismiss YAITW as another Converge clone, as they do try to add some twists through this album…. but the comparison is impossible to avoid nonetheless. See the rest here
Barrows — Red Giant
★★☆☆ This instrumental ode to a dying star is groovy, man. Groovy. See the rest here
Prong — Ruining Lives
★★☆☆ I’ve had this theory in my head for a while now: Prong has been dead and gone for almost 20 years, and everything we hear now from the band is akin to a new Michael Jackson release: resurrected from lost tapes and B-sides to the Cleansing and Rude Awakening recordings, perhaps propped up with guest musicians, but not truly new. See the rest here
Epica — The Quantum Enigma
★★☆☆ I’ll be the first to admit that symphonic metal isn’t exactly my cup of tea. But this album fuses the typical orchestral bombast with a speed and heaviness that is as effective as the former is saccharine. Epica get props for doing something a bit more compelling than your usual fare… but good lord, is “The Quantum Enigma” overlong. See the rest here
Mekong Delta — In A Mirror Darkly
★★☆☆ This Mekong Delta does a great job of sounding like both modern-day and retro Fates Warning, with some touches of Symphony X and Rush all at the same time. It’s really strange. It’s also very self-indulgent. But their clear ambition is admirable, and at least it’s certainly interesting throughout. See the rest here
Autopsy — Tourniquets, Hacksaws, and Graves
★★☆☆ This is a good Floridian death metal album, and more of a return to form after last year’s more grindcorish “The Headless Ritual.” And yet, aside from updated production values, there’s not much here that stands out or excites me. I wouldn’t call it boring, but I wouldn’t call it special either. See the rest here
Appearance Of Nothing — A New Beginning
★★☆☆ This is a curious prog metal album, one with great aspirations but quite a few stumbling blocks (the vocals and production chief among them). That said, if you’re looking for a Dream Theater clone with more unpredictability, this might make your day. See the rest here
Voice Of Ruin — Morning Wood
★★☆☆ This is solidly decent middle-of-the-road metalcore. There’s enough differentiation here that you might be able to differentiate Voice Of Ruin from As I Lay Dying or All That Remains, and there are a couple of interesting moments sprinkled throughout. But aside from all that mild praise, this album is fairly forgettable. See the rest here
Svarttjern — Ultimatum Necrophilia
★★☆☆ Slightly more interesting than just by-the-numbers black metal, but this still manages to not come across as surprising or inventive. It falls somewhere between Burzum and Dethklok somehow. See the rest here
