FOR THE LOVE OF METAL
Epica’s fourth full-length Design Your Universe was the perfect opportunity for the Dutch band to make some serious artistic and commercial strides, but what we’re stuck with is a record that tries so hard to impress that its blind ambition completely gets in the way of tasteful songwriting.
Now on album number seven, this is their heaviest release to date by far. They still retain a bit of a prog vibe but the way the riffs are written they just reek of full on power metal.
Aealo is the best Rotting Christ album since Triarchy of the Lost Lovers. Dive deep, and discover for yourself.
It’s a given D.R.I. will draw a crowd in their adopted city. Add that this was D.R.I’s first show here in six years since guitarist Spike Cassidy was diagnosed and then beat colon cancer and you have a sold out crowd where getting to the bathroom was a 15-minute undertaking. The band’s performance was far from a history lesson; it was a bunch of grizzled veterans showing the kids how to take care of business.
Justin M. Norton recaps D.R.I.’s recent return to Slim’s in San Francisco, CA.
Forged from the combative live-in-the-studio atmosphere of Kreator’s Pleasure To Kill coupled with the soupy low end of Obituary yet new enough to elicit comparison to fellow evil-doers Behemoth, The Final Conflict is as furious as it is delightfully offensive.
Forever is the World is the latest offering from Norway’s Theatre of Tragedy.
From the bleak opening riffs to the lingering saxophone notes that close it, After is a fascinating listen that gets better every time it’s played.
With a sound rooted more in earlier bands like Bathory and Venom rather than later Norwegian cuts, both Nifelheim and Devil’s Force are blasts of thrashy black metal that stick to a plan and rarely deviate.
Despite Nazxul’s more arid southern hemisphere imagery, Iconoclast has a traditional but ferocious sound that is anything but dry.
Probably their best album since Mutter, these crazed Germans storm back with a riff-infested grinding metal attack.