✦✦✧✧ This album starts in full-on “Dude, is this vintage Carcass or Morbid Angel? No? Eh, I don’t give a shit. BRÜTALITY IN TEN CITIES!!!” mode. But after three tracks, a more inventive and progressive underbelly is revealed. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ I’m always prepared for a metal supergroup to sound more or less like an amalgam of its constituent parts. What I wasn’t ready for is the idea of a supergroup sound like a blend of a bunch of other bands not at all related to its members. And yet what you get with Bad Wolves is an awkward fusion of Sepultura, The Acacia Strain, Vildhjarta, Tremonti, and Linkin Park. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ I don’t remember Dimmu ever being this polished and fangless. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ This time around, Ghost are emulating The Scorps more than anyone else, which fits I guess; I don’t fault them for emerging from their latest personnel changeup with a little less Satanism, and sounding a little more stadium rock instead. The tunes are still catchy, the guitars still polished and appropriate, but all of this is harder to care that much about. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ At long last, here is the first solo album from the loudest British metal band in history. TKTK See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ After years of defending Sevendust, this album from them is finally a little more Nickelbackish than I’d like to admit. The big change is the swapping out of actual riffs for DR5-crushed walls of tone, which lays bare some fairly pedestrian songwriting otherwise. At least Lajon Witherspoon continues to deliver world-class vocals. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Giving my beloved The Armed the benefit of the doubt, this is definitely some next-level noise art. However, the dearth of actual tunes here is notable, and a detriment to the album. I’ll listen to it again to see if it grabs me any more, but after my first listen, I’m not (yet?) See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ The good: delightfully meaty riffs, a tight runtime, and a punkish production sensibility. The bad: there’s really not much else to say about this album. It gets the job done, but doesn’t give much reason to give it another thought otherwise. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Muddy and meandering, this is a surprisingly limp effort from a band known for energetic excellence. The songs here feel underedited, in terms of musical refinement, emotional resonance, or even just plain length. And the shame of it is that, even with those knocks, you can still get a sense of what might have been: a unique, surefooted, melancholic masterwork. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ COOOOOOKIEEEEEEEEEEE! All kidding aside, it was perhaps a tactical mistake for Kalmah to start their latest melodeath album with such a seemingly stereotypical beerhall tune, as that obscures the vitality and innovation found throughout the subsequent tracks. That said, the hits are also surrounded by a few duds and headscratchers. See the rest here
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