Category: Reviews
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Rush – Signals LP
Just one year after they began to challenge both themselves and their audience with new songwriting ideas and compositional presentations on Moving Pictures, Rush elected to ride that wave of inspiration with Signals – their ninth LP and second of a new era. Right off, there’s no question that Signals takes its lead from Moving…
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Hound – Out of Space
This Philly power trio contains Ted Leo’s bass player and was once described as “neo-stoner.” Now, I’m not sure what that means, but if neo-stoner is to stoner rock what neo-conservatism is to right-wing politics, chances are Stephen Harper has a secret mancrush on these guys already. Or maybe neo-stoner has something to do with…
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Judas Priest – Painkiller 10” single
Hey – remember that period of time when the lights went out in Judas Priest? There have been a few reasons for the stall proposed over the years, but the truth is that it really needed to happen. Painkiller (the band’s twelfth studio album) was a portrait of a band running on creative fumes and on…
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El Caco – 7
Get yer mind outta the gutter—this band’s name is Spanish for thief. That said, El Caco ain’t from Mexico, Spain or some other Latin American outpost… but rather from Norway, where they’ve been a household name since 1998(!)—as its moniker would suggest, this is actually their seventh album. Mind you, there are eight songs on here,…
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Wailin Storms – One Foot in the Flesh Grave
“Holy Danzig Homage, Batman!” That was pretty much my first thought upon hearing the opening track of this Carolina quartet’s second record. “Don’t Forget the Sun” has plenty of that gloomy, gothic feel found on the few couple Danzig records—y’know, the good ones—with a pretty decent Evil Elvis impersonator, to boot! “Ribcage Fireplace” has more…
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Hooded Menace – Darkness Drips Forth
When they told me that Darkness Drips Forth was Hooded Menace’s “most gruesome work yet,” I knew I was gonna hafta give’r a listen. Don’t get me wrong, death/doom ain’t really my cuppa—but hey, gimme Autopsy, Coffins and Winter’s Into Darkness any day. (I’ll admit, the latter has grown on me a bit since I…
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Carved Up – Matador
Carved Up may or may not be named after a classic Hypocrisy cut, but make no mistake, this Philly post-sludge trio is all about the almighty riff, mixing math-rock guitars and caustic sludge screams all over this record. To wit, “We Built Riff City” starts off on a roll with some vicious stop-start riffage anchoring the…
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Adrenechrome – Tales from Adrenechrome
I quite liked the debut album from these Northern Ontario rockers, which reminded me of Mastodon and Baroness before both bands sold out. These guys are easily the heaviest thing to come out of Orillia since… OK, I got nothing on that one. Anyhoo, album number two starts off in somewhat unfamiliar fashion, with “A…
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Mountain of Wizard – Casting Rhythms and Disturbances
This NOLA quartet, Mountain of Wizard, is best known for having the drummer who replaced Joey LaCaze in Eyehategod. Unlike some other outfits from the area, they aren’t really known nationally… at least not yet. And they’re not really your standard sludge-metal outfit, either. For one thing, this album is entirely instrumental, featuring some up-tempo…
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Whore Paint – Ultra Sound
I can’t quite recall how the second album from this Rhode Island post-feminist, post-rock trio, Whore Paint, came to my attention, but colour me intrigued. Ultra Sound packs eight tracks into less than 38 minutes, and with over half of these songs bestowed with non-descript, one-word titles in true noise-rock fashion, it’s hard to detect…