✦✦✧✧ 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
✦✦✧✧ Oh, so wintry, blackest of metals, folksiest of dirges. Behold, the snow on the very cover. Observe, the hooting of a fucking owl.
This is not nearly as winsome as Panopticon’s previous album “Autumn Eternal.” At least it occasionally kinda shreds, but it wouldn’t kill Austin Lunn to use a tuner. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Absolutely no surprises here: this is textbook power metal, with standout vocals from Tommy Karevik, of course, but not much else to stick in one’s memory. There’s nothing here that I would remotely think of as “bad”… also but nothing here to really stir anyone’s blood. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Look, there’s no question that these guys shred. And you know how much I dig prominent fretless bass in metal. But aside from that, this is more or less a cautionary tale of post-Cynic metal musicianship gone entirely too far. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ This feels like a cross between vintage ATG and vintage The Haunted: speedy, deathy, high-energy, and a bit dated, more stubbornly old-school thrash than rethrash. The riffs are, on the whole, as solid as the playing but far from memorable. Still, this’ll likely lure a begrudging headbob out of you. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Meandering pacing and a suboptimal mix detract from an otherwise enjoyably inventive and compelling tech death experience. The songwriting has baroque and jazz elements to it at times, which I totally dig. Also, another metal album with saxophone? Love it! See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ This sounds a lot more like the Pestilence of my youth, and given what the band had been putting out lately, that’s a good thing. Twisted and unusual thrashy death metal was always their best sound, and that’s what you get here. (I could do without the vocoder, though.) See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ This is Turnstile’s most experimental album to date, for good and for ill. The band shines most winsomely when they’re most clearly emulating their punk and metal heroes (especially Quicksand and Sick Of It All). The less straightforward tracks, alas, are all over the place, in a way that works against the album’s pacing, momentum, and cohesion. See the rest here
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