Visigoth — Conqueror’s Oath
✦✦✧✧ This is some old-fashioned Bronze Age metal, y’all. Lots people love this Manowar-sounding band. Feh. See the rest here
First Listens With Two-Star Ratings
Saxon — Thunderbolt
✦✦✧✧ Aside from updated production values (which sound great), this is pretty much exactly what you’d expect from a British heavy metal band formed before the advent of the Compact Disc. Jokes aside, if you’re in the mood for some NWOBHM with updated audio sensibilities, this album is for you. See the rest here
Tribulation — Down Below
✦✦✧✧ This album feels both novel and dated at the same time. Its production values and humble musical ambitions lend the proceedings a tiredness that’s hard to look past. But the album is also fresh in some of its riffs and chord progressions, as well as its interweaving of Swedish death metal, thrash, and black metal. See the rest here
Black Label Society — Grimmest Hits
✦✦✧✧ A syrupy, grungy hard rock album for a modern metalhead’s sensibilities. Zakk Wylde et al channel their inner Tommy Iommi and Jerry Cantrell, but put enough enough spit on it to make the album moderately smirk-inducing. See the rest here
Orphaned Land — Unsung Prophets And Dead Messiahs
✦✦✧✧ This album vacillates between routine prog metal (with light Israeli flavor) and straight up mizrahi rock with heavy metal adornments. This winds up sounding a lot like Serj Tankian singing along with a very good band overseas. Interesting. See the rest here
Portal — Ion
✦✦✧✧ This album is nuts. Lo-fi avant garde progressive black cvlt noise, like Boris played on vinyl that also happens to be a cat’s scratching post. Put another way, I imagine this must be what non-metalheads think all metal sounds like. See the rest here
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. See the rest here
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. See the rest here
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. See the rest here
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. See the rest here
