Category: Reviews

  • 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…

  • Advance Screening: Disgorge, Mexico – The Movie

    I could simply describe Disgorge, Mexico – The Movie as visually stunning yet disturbing, as Hall definitely has an aesthetic and a well-formed point of view that matches the brutality and not-to-be dismissed splendor in the chaotic madness of Ottawa’s Fuck the Facts – and brilliant in not only the fact that similar to Hall…

  • 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…

  • Sonata Arctica: The Days of Grays

    This album has changed my entire perspective on power metal, as I have always viewed it as a cheesy and cliché attempt at applying emotion to music. If there are three things that Sonata Arctica have justified on The Days of Grays, it is that the genre is indeed epic, captivating and genuinely metal. And…

  • Dying Fetus/Beneath The Massacre/Suffokate @ Mod Club, Toronto, ON, November 24, 2009

    I have to admit that one of the reasons why I pitched Hellbound.ca a concert review of the Planetary Depravity Tour was because I wanted to see Dying Fetus guitarist John Gallagher and guitarist Michael Keene from The Faceless play live. Would they be able to pull their dexterous guitar feats off or were they…

  • Merrimack: Gray Rigorism

    Grey Rigorism is the third full-length album from French black metallers Merrimack. The record starts out strong, but over the course of the hour-long running time things become somewhat inconsistent at points.

  • Trivium/Chimaira/Whitechapel @ Odeon, Saskatoon, SK, November 20, 2009

    Trivium has talent up the wazoo. That’s never been in doubt. The problem with the Florida band is that Matt Heafy and his mates often try far too hard to impress, the perfect example being the bloated 2008 album Shogun, which threw everything at the wall, from thrash riffs, to hooky choruses, to tempo changes,…

  • Marduk/Nachtmystium @ Annex Wreckroom, Toronto, ON, November 22, 2009

    Late November seems as good a time as any to take in a performance by Swedish metal veterans Marduk. A concert centered around a black metal band known for its own distinct take on imagery and songs centering on everything from war machines to religious blasphemy to paganism seems strangely appropriate for a grey month…