★★★☆ This album is massive. It’s wall-to-wall unstoppable high-speed technicality that’s as much prog as it’s death metal. It may go on a bit long, but it’s still an enjoyable ride through and through. See the rest here
★★★☆ This is clearly a high water mark for technical death metal. The musicianship is blistering and precise, the songwriting is interesting and memorable (instead of a mere excuse), and the production is crisp without resorting too heavily to dehumanization. If there’s a fault to this album, it’s Fredrik Söderberg’s cookie monster vocals, which don’t always entirely fit in, and don’t add much to the overall fun. See the rest here
★★★☆ This is a gorgeously nihilistic EP with hints of The Ocean’s “Pelagial”, Chino Moreno’s side project †††, and even Death Cab For Cutie when they’re not aiming for accessibility. It sounds like a bunch of things all at once, and at the same time it sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard before. See the rest here
★★★☆ This album is pretty frickin’ sweet! It’s one long excuse for unbridled shredding. And battleaxes. I mean, I could draw all kinds of comparisons to this one — Racer X, Manowar, Revocation, even DragonForce — but that’s just me talking to your brain, when in fact your heart is going to want to hear this. See the rest here
★★★☆ I liked this a lot more than I thought I would. Imagine black metal done by Opeth, and you wouldn’t be far off the mark. There’s just enough progressiveness to keep things interesting, but also enough doom to haunt your nightmares. Absolutely a must-listen, especially if you’re not a dyed-in-the-wool lover of black metal. See the rest here
★★★☆ The debut album from this two-piece band from Phoenix is a surprisingly inspiring exploration of doomy wanderings. It’s interesting, listenable, and provocative… three words that don’t typically come to mind when listening to something so inherently sludgy. I am impressed! And I’m going to listen again right now. See the rest here
★★★☆ Too short for serious consideration, but what little is here is fantastic. This is The Haunted at their most metallic, a sound we haven’t heard from them in years. Very thrashy, and the last track sounds like something you might find on Slayer’s “Undisputed Attitude.” See the rest here
★★★☆ This little album rocks. While you can still here the sampler quality of this quiltwork EP in places, it’s still generally successful as a document of the band’s ambitions and directions, and manages to be cohesive enough to not be a total dysfunctional mess. It’s also both poppier and more metal at times that Periphery II (with standout tracks “directed” by the band’s rhythm section). See the rest here
★★★☆ A subtle, yet inexorable, exploration of sludge collages that are reminiscent of everything from Isis to The Ocean to Pixies to Dies Irae to Bill Laswell. The noise is literally another member of the band on this album. Honestly, I can’t really tell you exactly why it grabbed me from the first listen, but it definitely did. See the rest here
★★★☆ I think I love this. At first, I was ready to dismiss it as just another noisefest… but there’s a lot of depth to the album. Elements of all my favorite sounds: old Genesis, Isis, Don Caballero, even Fredrik Thordendal’s solo work. (And you can’t go wrong with the excellent cover of Larks’ Tongues In Aspic Part II.) See the rest here
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