★★☆☆ As was the case with their previous album “Stalingrad,” Accept turn in a surprisingly potent and fresh collection of thrash tunes with their latest. At 58 minutes, however, the band do overstay their welcome a bit. See the rest here
★★☆☆ Opeth’s love affair with all-things-vintage-prog continues unabated, and de rigeur Leslie-rotor organ pads, Mellotron, and warbly monophonic keys are all accounted for, and there’s at least one section mid-album that evokes a 12-string guitar sound. So that’s all fun. But aside from the time warp, the compositions are all a bit ho-hum and unspecial. See the rest here
★★☆☆ This is very meat-and-potatoes detuned metalcore by the numbers. That said, rather than aiming for some kind of genre innovation, the band seem quite content to generally double down on pumping the album full of energy. It makes for an effective (if oddly adorable) half hour of moshery. One notable exception: the triumphant “Son Of God, Son Of Man” manages to lift the album around it with this memorable crescendo of rage. See the rest here
★★☆☆ An oddly compelling bit of beerhall folk metal, with a huge and awkwardly self-conscious emphasis on the band’s Helvetian roots. The Celtic fusion works pretty well, but overall the album still has a ho-hum pallor to it. See the rest here
★★☆☆ This album is a challenge to get into, largely because of the weird production values. Now, I’m real big on the idea of getting away from the Toontrackification of metal, but tell me it doesn’t sound like these guitars were recorded through Pignose amps, and with the internal microphone on a Macbook Pro. See the rest here
★★☆☆ The debut album from a group of very talented veterans, making very anonymous clean-vocaled metalcore. See the rest here
★★☆☆ This album is equal parts Isis and A Perfect Circle. It’s a lovely blend, but as one might imagine given that kind of formula, the final result suffers from a lack of energy. See the rest here
★★☆☆ The new supergroup featuring Doug Pinnick and George Lynch has got perhaps the most faultless production I’ve heard in months. Beyond that, there is no way that anyone unfamiliar with the album is going to hear this as anything other than an amazing new King’s X album. That of course is faint praise, as there’s no escaping a right-down-the-middle radio-friendly blandness that haunts the hard rock pretentions of the first half of the album. See the rest here
★★☆☆ This is some good old-fashioned power metal, so unabashedly playing to type that it’s difficult not to admire the band’s singlemindedness. But with the only innovation (arguably) being a more modern sound, it’s really difficult to hang on to any of the material, which comes across as forgettable, even as you listen to it. See the rest here
★★☆☆ A curious and good blend of power and thrash metal from Savage Messiah. There’s some tasty, tasty guitarwork on this album, strong enough to elicit a warm nodding of heads, but the rest of the performances do feel a bit phoned-in. See the rest here
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