✦✦✧✧ Did you know that, before he joined Periphery, Mark Holcomb had started a metalcore band named Haunted Shores? And that, rather than formally ending that group, it morphed into a side project between him and Misha Mansoor? Don’t be minimized by this instrumental shredfest’s small footprint; 37 minutes tends to stretch when it’s almost completely filled with 16th and 32nd notes. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Really good rethrash from Bay Area veterans. Five tracks, 25 minutes. Perfect. Who needs innovation when you’ve got this ferocious pit?! See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Solidly good Scorps here. Always great to hear Klaus Meine’s singing and Mssrs. Jab and Schenker shredding. I can imagine hearing this at a bar and subconsciously enjoying it, even if I can’t imagine ever putting this on the jukebox in the first place. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ This is a six-piece nu metal band from New Delhi. That is to say, it sounds a lot like Limp Bizkit learned what a sitar is. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Both Z&A and The Armed pull from the same fount when they’re at their best: an uncanny and narrow intersection of ear-candy accessibility and undiluted acrimony. Ironically, the more this music hews to sounding overtly spiritual, the more boring it sounds. Fortunately, there are plenty of more subtle and intriguing tracks on the album (“Erase,” “Feed The Machine”, “Götterdämmerung”). See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ It’s a bold choice to start your album with a pair of clean, not-well-tuned guitars. And yet, it’s just one of many examples on this album where these progenitors of the NY death metal scene expertly feed and feed off of your expectations. Even less modern-sounding than earlier albums, Acts Of God nevertheless deliver a potent, ineffable air of melancholic aggression, at times bordering on o.g. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Successfully moody, but fairly boring neo-industrial. It’s more Front Line Assembly than I remember A&P ever being in the past. A small step down from Tristan Shone’s recent work. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ This is quite literally a continuation of 2018’s The Wake, mostly for the good. The pacing is curious: it feels like a long album, but I’ll be damned if I wasn’t intrigued the whole time. Even the potential complaint of having heard this kind of thing from Voivod before isn’t much of a criticism here, as the songs are all such great exemplars of the Voivod sound. See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Three tracks; 62 minutes! But don’t let that scare you off: this is a compelling trip. It’s also totally stoney as fuck. But it works for me! Also, where are my pants? See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Look at this three-necked instrument! This guy is still a shredding maniac. The album is definitely worth checking out for its unpredictable creativity and alien imagination, even if it is hardly rock, let alone metal. I’d describe it as a modern instrumental Zappa-like exploration, and I mean that as nicely as I can. See the rest here
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