★★☆☆ This album comes from an alternate reality wherein 70s prog rock blossomed forty years later than it did here. The resulting hodgepodge has as much in common with Camel, Bill Laswell, and Barber’s Adagio For Strings as it does with Emperor. It’s a fascinating listen, marred by a difficult production aesthetic and an over-reliance on the glacial crescendo. See the rest here
★★☆☆ This is a meaty blend of Ballou-esque sludge and SOIA/Biohazard-inspired urban thug-gression. There is something inescapably retro about the whole album, but it’s interesting and evocative in spite of that flavor. Sometimes the groove of the band is a little too… groovy for my tastes. That, and a handful of awkward and sloppy moments, hamstring the whole effort just enough to rob the band of a three-star first rating. See the rest here
★★☆☆ It takes this album a few tracks to find its feet, by eventually finds its voice as a pounding screamfest, somewhere between Kyuss and Converge, yet somehow without the real moxie of either. See the rest here
★★☆☆ This is post-post-core, if that makes any sense… a savage screamfest deconstructed beyond all sense of flow, sense, or consideration of the listener. There’s a lot to admire here, but it’s also impossible to ignore that this hour of noise is as self-indulgent as it is cathartic. It’s worth a listen, but let’s never speak of this again. See the rest here
★★☆☆ This is frustrating: this album simultaneously boasts shredding scorchers and shamefully derivative snorers. And the title track has elements of both. So you’ve got half a three-star album comingled with half of a one-star album. Discovering which tracks go where, I leave as an exercise for the reader. See the rest here
★★☆☆ This is a hit-or-miss affair. When it hits, the blend between melody and metal is perfectly balanced, with strong emotion in the former and real balls in the latter. When it misses, neither feel compelling, giving you something that sounds like an impersonation of melodeath. See the rest here
★★☆☆ The final track on this album, “Mortui Mundi,” has some memorable songwriting… but otherwise, this is a solidly-not-bad black metal album by the numbers. Inoffensively, formulaicly correct. See the rest here
★★☆☆ This is sufficiently dark and angry sludgecore… and yet, at the same time, it doesn’t entirely grab my attention with a heartfelt grip. It’s good as it plays, but lacks staying power after the music dies down. See the rest here
★★☆☆ A meatily-produced album of post-metalcore (I just made that up) that nevertheless manages to feel both overlong and disposable. Good for a listen, but I’ve already forgotten it. See the rest here
★★☆☆ I’m going to throw out some names that crossed my mind as I listened to this prog metal epic, and you tell me if you can resist the siren call: Textures. Chimp Spanner. Allan Holdsworth. Fredrik Thordendal. Compelling, right? And yet, about halfway through, the album loses its footing and starts sounding like just another djent band. See the rest here
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