The Callous Daoboys — Celebrity Therapist
✦✦✧✧ I miss The Dillinger Escape Plan too, but c’mon. See the rest here
First Listens With Two-Star Ratings
Soilwork — Övergivenheten
✦✦✧✧ This is quintessential Soilwork product, even if it’s not imaginative or evocative. You get your hard rockers, your blast beat riffs, your anthemic choruses. Mostly this album sounds like a good enough reason for the band to tour again, so I’ll take it! See the rest here
Megadeth — The Sick, The Dying, And The Dead
✦✦✧✧ This new Megadeth album feels more like a successor of Rust In Peace or Countdown To Extinction than any other Megadeth album from the last fifteen years. Some of the songs on here even come close to Classic status. But it’s a long listen (even if you skip the last two uninteresting cover songs on the album). See the rest here
Halestorm — Back From The Dead
✦✦✧✧ No more than ever, Halestorm is Lzzy Hale is Halestorm. Her vocals are front and center in the mix, and the lyrical content is transparently autobiographical. There’s a good mix of emotionality to the songs as well. So what if it’s more hard rock than metal? See the rest here
Artificial Brain — Artificial Brain
✦✦✧✧ This album is perhaps the band’s catchiest. Relatively speaking. It’s still a feral dog of a sound, with production values that border on antisocial. But there’s an undercurrent of melody and progression that feels new. See the rest here
Nazareth — Surviving The Law
✦✦✧✧ Shake them buns! See the rest here
Decapitated — Cancer Culture
✦✦✧✧ Pretty damned good tech death by Decapitated, which shouldn’t be a huge surprise to anyone who knows the band. I applaud their maturation and experimental bent, even if it doesn’t always work. Okay, it rarely works… but I still want to give them props for trying. (That track featuring Tatiana Shmailyuk from Jinjer is straight fire, tho… truly don’t-miss material.) See the rest here
Monuments — In Stasis
✦✦✧✧ This is obviously a djentcore album, with equal parts SikTh and After The Burial. Beyond that, though, the band are not trying to escape or even redefine who they are. Rather, there’s more of a focus here on quality over quantity, and the relative restraint lends an air of self-assurance, such a rare find in a genre plagued by overcompensation. See the rest here
Caliban — Dystopia
✦✦✧✧ Groovy German metalcore. It’s more effective as a collection of metal tones than as actual songs, but it’s fun enough to listen to while it’s playing. See the rest here
Abbath — Dread Reaver
✦✦✧✧ What happened?! Outstrider was such an interesting and promising evolution of the Abbath sound, itself a sweet culmination and furtherance of Immortal’s journey. And now, Abbath’s third album, feels both less experimental and yet even more detached from its forebearers. It’s also not very intense, if I’m being honest. Maybe this just an awkward teen phase, while the band and music morph into what I can only assume will eventually be a Norwegian black-rock Stooges cover band. See the rest here
