✦✦✧✧ After the full-throated “A World Lit Only By Fire,” this new album from Godflesh feels like a cruel hard turn of the steering wheel, off the familiar if potholed road the band helped pave. At least the album telegraphs the move into its new territory: more experimental, moodier, and absolutely industrial. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ After shocking us with the unreasonably good album “Inferno”, Marty returns to form and satisfies every preconception; this is about as good as it gets for self-indulgent lead guitarist wankery. Largely, this is a problem of balance (a tricky thing to nail). There are sporadic moments of red-blooded metal mayhem strewn about, but they’re tempered too often by cheese. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ If you’re already a fan of Cradle of Filth, this album will most certainly satisfy. It’s more of the same, only better. Full disclosure: I am not one of those fans. In particular, Dani Filth’s vocals have always gotten on my nerves. But everything else is very well done, and there’s enough meat on the bone that I don’t mind the gristle as much as I have in past albums. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ This is a weirdly uneven album, careening from rethrash to Megadeth at their cheesiest to… is that Jackyl? Steel Panther? Founder Jeff Waters has been fronting the band since the last album, as well as producing the album, which partially explains the unfortunate prevalence of questionable vocal choices high in the mix. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ It pains me to have to give this anything less than 4 stars at first blush. With that preface out of the way: this is very clearly the result of a band who have grown apart, evolved independently, and come back together to see how their disparate pieces might recombine anew. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Brutally heavy, thuggishly singleminded, and punishingly long. This is as much an Expressionist reinterpretation of blackened noise than it is an overt collection of songs, with the tracks vacillating between those two blueprints. As such, it’s extremely effective at setting its atmosphere of dark futility, but this is not the kind of album that imparts a sense of momentum or offers a glimpse of variety. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Here is an album that is trying its damnedest to get me to hate it immediately. The amateurish album art, the stubbornly raw production, the tired opening gambit… all of these are sure signs of tiredness, if not vacuity. But push past the first impressions, and you may be surprised by the latest from these Norwegian black metal legends. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Ah, Unsane. God bless ’em. They keep on dishing out the same nasty, corrosive brew; take The Jesus Lizard, replace bourbon with ketamine, and crank the volume. It’s still as compelling and effective as ever. And also as repetitive and self-referential as I remember. But you should listen to it. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Belphegor’s well-practiced style of blackened death metal finds a slightly clearer throat, thanks to Jason Suecof’s production values. That the album isn’t particularly varied could also be thanks to Suecof, but let’s be real: Belphegor ain’t the most subtle tool in the shed in any event. New drummer Bloodhammer does a great job pouring on the blast beats, which only undergirds the band’s efforts to sound like a steam locomotive about to blow up. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ A solidly consistent album that is more thrash than I would have expected from the band that brought us “Time And Trauma”; this one is more reminiscent of Prong or Nothingface than anything else. (The previous album’s CoC tendencies are in full control here.) The result is an album where every song feels like it should be an instant classic, a collection of emotionally raw songs… yet somehow isn’t. See the rest here
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