Category: Featured

Featured posts

  • Memory Driven: Relative Obscurity

    Barely squeaking into the realms of bona fide metal, Oklahoma City’s Memory Driven seem more intent on crossing over between the worlds of radio-friendly hard music and the more lenient metallions than dedicating themselves to something of true merit.

  • Dark Funeral: Angelus Exuro pro Eternus

    The latest effort from Swedish black metal veterans Dark Funeral continues the band’s tradition of brutal assaults on the ears of its listeners and fans. While Angelus Exuro pro Eternus has its strong points and memorable moments, it offers little to differentiate itself from the band’s back catalogue and never quite develops its own identity.

  • Converge: Axe to Fall

    Converge seem to be following a trend among veterans like Sacrifice, Suffocation, Asphyx and Brutal Truth who have released albums this year: offering music that despite the band’s longevity, are if not one, the best albums they have ever created, all while staying true to their original sound.

  • ZZ Top: The Most Unlikely Arena Rock Band

    Back before the “Steven Tyler falling off the stage” incident, ZZ Top and Aerosmith were scheduled to tour the football stadiums of the CFL’s Western Division. What with the pissing match that ensued, Aerosmith haven’t made up the dates yet, but ZZ Top came to Calgary for a headlining gig at the Pengrowth Saddledome, just…

  • Dark Tranquillity: Where Death is Most Alive

    Packed to the gills with live performances, archival clips and documentary footage, Where Death Is Most Alive is an immensely gratifying look back at one of the most consistent bands in all of metal.

  • Pulling Teeth: Paranoid Delusions/Paradise Illusions

    In the end, Paranoid Delusions/Paradise Illusions comes across as sort of extreme music opera where songs are movements and parts rather than isolated performances.

  • Between The Buried And Me: The Great Misdirect

    Like some terrifying amoeba, Between The Buried And Me has absorbed and incorporated a wild variety of sounds into themselves and spat back something that exhibits them all, but only uses them as ingredients to work toward their own ends.

  • Lacuna Coil @ Annex Wreckroom, Toronto, ON, November 20th 2009

    Lacuna Coil live photo courtesy of wikipedia, copyright creative commons By Melissa Andrews   Lacuna Coil, previously already in Toronto this year on tour with All That Remains, was back for a special show that was added last minute as an end to their current North American tour. The Good: it was a Friday; it…

  • The Atlas Moth: A Glorified Piece of Blue Sky

    Chicago’s The Atlas Moth emerge from the gate with a debut full-length album that is pretty entertaining at both it front and back end, but which has a more ambiguous middle that is much more tedious than it should be

  • Skinny Puppy/Vvervvolf Grehv @ The Phoenix, Toronto, ON, November 13, 2009

    By Melissa Andrews In the twenty plus years that Skinny Puppy have been around, their Friday the thirteenth show at Toronto’s Phoenix Concert Theatre was the first time I made it out to see them. Something always seemed to come up to prevent me from going. Even this time it was scheduled on the same…