Category: Reviews
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Black Wizard – New Waste
It’s not everyday you have the opportunity to listen to music that’s straight from the heart, fun and by musicians that wear their influences on their sleeves. But that’s just what this four piece from Vancouver are all about. The band includes Adam Grant (vocals/guitar), Eugene Parkomenko (drums), Evan Joel (bass) and Danny Stokes (guitar)…
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Dilly Dally – Sore
In this age of computer-generated musical perfection, it’s refreshing to hear Sore – Dilly Dally‘s debut album. For the first time in what feels like forever, listeners are confronted by a female-fronted (both on vocals and guitar) outfit who is unafraid to have (and bare) some teeth and anger without trying to be cute about…
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Eels – Shootenanny! LP
After Souljacker was released, nothing was ever quite the same again for the Eels. Part of it must have felt fantastic because the band really thrived; it was as though Souljacker blew open a floodgate which spontaneously made new sounds, experiments with different moods, vibes and ideas fair game to explore. Liberated, Mark Everett threw…
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Thy Worshiper – Ozimina
Arriving a year and a half after 2014’s triumphant comeback LP Czarna Dzika Czerwie?, Ozimina (Arachnophobia) offers undeniable sonic proof that reconstituted expat Polish pagan metal titans THY WORSHIPER have refined their spicy blend of Eastern European-flavoured folk and crisp blackened crunch to a majestic, mid-paced simmer. Craving unconventional rhythms, barren riffs, and trad-meets-contemporary instrumentation…
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Ecorche – Deep in the Ground
It seems like almost every time you turn around something is coming out of Philly. This time it’s blackened industrialists Écorché and their sophomore album Deep in the Ground. JGW (vocals, guitar, synths, programming) and Wolfman (bass, synths, samples) follow no formula on this experimental experience. The album itself and its tracks seem pieced together…
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Eels – Souljacker
…And then, for their fourth LP, Eels would offer their fans something completely different. Before this point in their catalogue, the band has remained fairly passive and artful in their compositions as well as in the presentations of them (it was all very alt-) but, on Souljacker, the band takes a much more forceful and…
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The Lumberjack Feedback – Blackened Visions
This French instrumental outfit first got my attention with their two-song Hand of Glory EP in 2013—mostly because of their bitchin’ band name. The Lumberhack Feedback have put out a couple more EPs since, which I haven’t heard, but Blackened Visions is their full-fledged debut album, with six tracks spanning 45 minutes and change. “No…
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Year-in-review 2015: Sean Palmerston
As another year draws to a close, we metalheads tend to take time to reflect on what the year in metal meant to us, and prepare our various lists of what was great, what sucked, and everything in between. This year we decided to get a little more up close and personal with Team Hellbound,…
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Eels – Daisies Of The Galaxy LP
It can sometimes be interesting to see what creative decisions and concessions get made after an album has been out for a while and a reissue option comes along. Take the vinyl reissue of the Eels‘ album Daisies of The Galaxy, for example; as was explained by Mark Everett himself in his memoir Things The…
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The Lion’s Daughter – Existence is Horror
I really dug this St. Louis outfit’s last record, A Black Sea, which came out late in 2013. But seeing as it was a collaborative effort with local folk band Indian Blanket, I’m definitely expecting some different sounds from The Lion’s Daughter this time around. What we get instead are 40 minutes of Midwest blackened…