✦✦✧✧ Yep, this here is my newest choice for The One Prog Metal Album You Point At To Prove Everyone’s Worst Fears About The Genre. It makes sense that it’d be a John Arch + Jim Matheos Joint, as neither man knows the words “editor” or “self-restraint.” Still, the guitarwork and singing are every bit as faultless as their respective artists are renowned for. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ It’s kind of refreshing to hear an album in 2019 that isn’t trying to temper its deathcore with other influences. Instead, here you’ve got naught else but metalcore by numbers. (The real pisser is that I can tell there could be some interesting riffs and musicianship under all that oppressive weight.) See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ QOTSA have done it again! See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Look on the bright side: if you’re wanting brand new death metal that sounds like it came from Tampa in 1991, have I got an album for you! See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ This album is fifteen minutes longer than Amon Amarth usually give us; this is one of those times when less would likely have been more. There are some gems of Viking metal, and I could imagine slipping a couple of these tracks into my lifting playlist, but there’s an awful lot of Not on here as well. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ You’re either already into Sunn O))), in which case nothing I say will matter, or you’re curious, in which case let me assure you: this is an isolated guitar riff reamplified, slowed down, and stretched to an hour… and almost nothing more. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ This is a very mixed bag for me. On the one hand, Allegaeon’s reputation for being an innovative and supertechnical prog death metal act continues with this album. On the other hand, it’s dogged by a persistent sense of detachment. I chalk it up to an underrepresentation of dynamics or variety, which is a weird thing to say in the middle of a super shreddy arpeggiostorm, but there it is. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Solid prog metal from the Cynic and Sadus school of neoclassical musicianship and sooooo much fretless bass (good to hear Hugo Doyon-Karout’s tireless perambulations all over the place). This is an interesting and promising debut; while it loses points for cookie monster vocals and overall anemic production values, it’s still an almost-great album. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ This is a more proggy kind of Floridian death metal (think old school Morbid Angel with just a hint of Pestilence or Malevolent Creation thrown in). Emphasis on Floridian: this band seem to have doubled down on a garage band ethic, albeit with some welcome bass in the mix; worse is the band’s disregard for the listener’s flow. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ There are a number of reasons to dislike this solo project from one of Lamb Of God’s guitarists. It’s fucking weird to start a 2019 album with a track sung by Chester Bennington (R.I.P.). It’s less weird to follow it up with vocalists from Papa Roach and Screaming Trees. But mostly, the album swings from metal to alt rock and back again, and the moves toward the latter rarely pay off for me. See the rest here
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