First Listens With Two-Star Ratings
Orphaned Land — Unsung Prophets And Dead Messiahs
Portal — Ion
Corrosion Of Conformity — No Cross No Crown
✦✦✧✧ Not only does this album mark a return to COC’s classic lineup, featuring Pepper Keenan, but it also marks a return to a very old sound (albeit with new sludgey Down-ish qualities, not surprisingly). I’m not sure exactly who this album is for, but it’s kinda nice to know that the band is still doing what they do.
Watain — Trident Wolf Eclipse
✦✦✧✧ More engaging than your typical old-school Scandanavian black metal, but don’t worry: the shitty production values and Crypt Keeper vocal stylings are still in full effect. Not quite as experimental as past Watain albums, but the band strike a good balance here between unusual chord progressions and obligatory-screaming-in-the-cold-forest fundamentals.
Morbid Angel — Kingdoms Disdained
✦✦✧✧ Doggedly ferocious and unpristine, this is what you want a Morbid Angel to sound like. It’s also more interesting than I feared, with some clever and unusual riffs and moments buried under the bare brutality. And yet, this album often feels like a Frankenstein’s monster of death metal B-sides and bridges crammed together.
The Faceless — In Becoming A Ghost
✦✦✧✧ This is, at first, a somewhat frustrating album. It’s still recognizably The Faceless, but the music’s taken on a new inconsistency and weirdness (and Michael Keene is no stranger to weirdness). It starts very strongly (skipping the throwaway opener), with something akin to radio-friendliness without losing any of the technical bravado or progressive elements.
Enslaved — E
Toothgrinder — Phantom Amour
Cavalera Conspiracy — Psychosis
✦✦✧✧ If you can imagine the Brothers Cavalera being abducted in 1990, shoved into a time-traveling van, and driven to a modern recording studio while listening to Slayer’s “Undisputed Attitude”, you can imagine what this album sounds like. Certainly interesting from a sci-fi/ethnomusicological standpoint, but not as intriguing as a metal album.
