✦✧✧✧ You might hope for some radical departures from form, when getting into a double album. Not so with HSB, who just give you a double helping of fairly formulaic metalcore. Also, hey, bands: STOP PUTTING OUT DOUBLE ALBUMS. See the rest here
✦✧✧✧ This one squeaks through with one star, barely. How did Converge pull off this major disappointment? By releasing a single, 31-minute track, that is literally just noisy soundscaping. Nice prank, Converge. Next time, give us some songs. See the rest here
✦✧✧✧ Look, I get it: Mayhem deserve at least a modicum of respect for birthing Norwegian black metal, and their general commitment to evil and whatnot. The problem is that this feels like Mayhem imitating themselves, or going through the paces. There are interesting and fun moments, but they’re too few and far between, especially for an album that’s entirely too long (a solid hour with two “bonus” tracks). See the rest here
✦✧✧✧ Mildly engaging bleeps and bloops occasionally mixed with elements of currently popular music genres. I have no need to ever hear this again. See the rest here
✦✧✧✧ I tried to listen to the new Leprous album (after not hearing any of their last few). My god, it’s fucking awful! I barely made it through half. Not even is it not metal, it is… I don’t know what the hell it is! Not even prog rock. Maybe vaguely in the vein of moodier stuff by bands like Marillion or Talk Talk, but not proggy either, and with vocals that are so ridiculously over the top falsetto that they sound like Justin Hawkins from the Darkness, but without any hint of irony. See the rest here
✦✧✧✧ This sounds like reheated crap. See the rest here
✦✧✧✧ This might just be the most brutal death metal album of 2019. Unfortunately, the production is so godawful that you really can’t be sure about what you’re hearing. I do think I have a concussion from listening to it on headphones, so that’s a plus I guess. See the rest here
✦✧✧✧ Very traditional (1st gen) black metal. It’s hard to believe this is a 2019 album. See the rest here
✦✧✧✧ Any itch this album attempts to scratch would be better served by Evanescence’s 2006 album “The Open Door.” (The fact that I had to go back 13 years for a comparison should tell you something.) See the rest here
✦✧✧✧ Some people really get off on slam death metal: the lack of subtlety, the cookie monster vocals, all of it. Even within that niche subgenre, this is not a great example of the form. It’s definitely a step up for Pathology, and I can hear them trying to do new cool stuff. See the rest here
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