Enslaved — E
✦✦✧✧ A well-crafted, but ultimately too precious, collection of prog. Too much of the album feels like forced meditation, with a minimalistic reliance on droning repetition. See the rest here
First Listens With Two-Star Ratings
Toothgrinder — Phantom Amour
✦✦✧✧ Baroness meets Linkin Park meets Periphery? I’ll give them this: it’s a unique sounding album. It’s also wildly uneven. Worth a once-through, although I’m left with the nagging question: is this actually metal? See the rest here
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. See the rest here
Godflesh — Post Self
✦✦✧✧ 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
Marty Friedman — Wall Of Sound
✦✦✧✧ 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
Cradle Of Filth — Cryptoriana – The Seductiveness Of Decay
✦✦✧✧ 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
Annihilator — For The Demented
✦✦✧✧ 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
Quicksand — Interiors
✦✦✧✧ 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
Primitive Man — Caustic
✦✦✧✧ 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
Satyricon — Deep Calleth Upon Deep
✦✦✧✧ 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
