Category: Reviews

  • Jon Oliva’s Pain – Festival

    Festival is not far removed from Savatage’s (likely) final album, Poets & Madmen. Inclined to a middling pace, the focus is on weighty, bludgeoning riffs wrapped in grandiosity and drama.

  • Maryland Deathfest 2010 Recap Part 1

    The great thing about fests like MDF is that the metal is simply overflowing. The bad thing about fests like MDF is that the metal is simply overflowing. If it’s sitting down to catch your breath, or grabbing a drink or a bite to eat, there are plenty of reasons causing one to miss one…

  • Avantasia – The Wicked Symphony

    The Wicked Symphony is exactly what you want from an Avantasia record. The production sounds huge, and clear, there isn’t a bum note in the playing, the songs are catchy as hell (I defy you to not sing along with “Dying For an Angel”) and the silly, tongue-in-cheekiness of the Edguy lyrics are left behind

  • Hypocrisy/ Scar Symmetry/ Blackguard @ The Wreckroom, Toronto ON, May 29 2010

    It was shortly after 8:00 pm when Hypocrisy made their significant entrance; the excitement in the room was palpable when they strode onto the stage, lit vaguely by dim blue light and partially obscured by theatrical smoke. I can only describe their set as an all-out assault. While the sun might have still been impudently…

  • Rush – Caravan / BU2B

    By Adrien Begrand It goes without saying that the summer of 2010 is going to be a big one for Rush. Not only are the Canadian greats hitting the road once again, playing corporate-sponsored sheds across North America, but they’ll be making the punters even happier by performing their 1981 masterpiece Moving Pictures in its…

  • Slough Feg/ Funeral Circle @ Red Room, Vancouver BC, May 29 2010

    The inveterate Slough Feg are one of those bands that pulls it off so well live that they’re able to sound identical to what they do on tape, which I found pretty impressive considering how ornate their songs can get. Personally, I was there to hear songs from their latest, Ape Uprising!, and they did…

  • Early Graves – Goner

    If you like it mean, fast, crusty and hammering, check out Goner, it’s a housewrecker of a disc.

  • Portal/ Krallice/ Bloody Panda @ Mohawk Place, Buffalo NY May 24, 2010

    The energy that Portal projected, both in their music and their sheer physical presence, was overwhelming. Every gesture that The Curator made was impossibly intense. I spent the entire set staring wildly up at the band, certain that any moment something Very Bad was going to happen. They’re masters at wielding this carefully managed sense…

  • Godsmack – The Oracle

    It has been a Godsmack trademark to toss out allusions to material that is more interesting and more ambitious than their commercial hits would seem to suggest. As The Oracle offers up its share of such material, it will be interesting to see where the band continues to take things from here.

  • Gamma Ray – To The Metal

    As this is essentially a workmanlike album from a workhorse band, it is hard to conjure much excitement for To The Metal. It commits few misdeeds. It offers even fewer triumphs.