Category: Reviews
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King Leg – Meet King Leg LP
The beauty of working in a pop culture-identified medium like pop music is that, while the music does initially have finite appeal as ‘new music,’ the basic structures and forms can easily be revisited, re-purposed and re-presented as often as new artists are willing to rediscover them. Any music can be reborn with the power…
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The Opium Cartel – “What’s It Gonna Be” (Ratt cover)
The Opium Cartel is the sister band of White Willow, whose last album, Future Hopes, we gushed over last year. The Opium Cartel seems to be a necessary outlet for bandleader Jacob Holm-Lupo, a way to explore a lighter, poppier style away from the weight-of-the-world concerns of White Willow. You’ll hear a similar palette of…
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Green Druid – Ashen Blood
In a scene full of witches and wizards, sometimes it’s good to be a druid. These Denver doomsters may not stray too far from the beaten path (they do have a song called “Nightfall,” after all), but their crunchy doom tones still satisfy on their 74-minute(!) Earache Records debut. “Pale Blood Sky” kicks things off…
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TLC – Ooooooohhh… On The TLC Tip (LP, reissue)
From a historical standpoint, it’s always remarkable to observe how and when a dynasty began. Take TLC, for example: to date, the group comes second only to The Supremes in regards to how far their influence reaches on both musical and cultural levels. That statement is made here with no hyperbole at all, it is…
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Black Wizard – Livin’ Oblivion
Black Wizard’s last album, 2016’s New Waste, just narrowly missed our Hellbound Top 10 Canadian albums… and it’s probably my fault. I think I had it at Number 11 or 12 on my own list—not that there was anything wrong with it, just that there were a lot of great Canadian records released in 2016.…
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Atala – Labyrinth of Ashmedai
I really dug the second album from this California desert sludge outfit, which was produced by none other than Billy Anderson—and he’s back behind the dials for this one. With six tracks spanning just less than 36 minutes, ’tis not a lengthy listen, although Atala do manage to squeeze in a couple eight-minute epics. “Grains…
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Lilly Hiatt – Trinity Lane LP
I must confess that I slept on Lilly Hiatt and her Trinity Lane LP when the album first arrived in my office. Regrettably, there was no good reason for it; given the timing of when it arrived, the album just kept getting shuffled under one thing after another. I did not give it the attention…
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Green Day – Revolution Radio (LP)
Some smart aleck is going to say that this review is a bit late in coming (yes, Revolution Radio was released fourteen months ago) but that’s part of the point here. Green Day‘s twelfth album was touted as a much-needed return to the band’s roots after almost a decade spent releasing concept albums and enormous album…
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Paradise Lost – Host
Paradise Lost really have mutated to survive over the years. With their debut Lost Paradise, they had a sound inspired by Autopsy, Celtic Frost and Black Sabbath, yet even there their own identity shone through. It was dark, and that would be the way for Paradise Lost to this day (a great name, all the great…
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Vulture Whale – Aluminium LP
Sometimes there’s just no way to mistake where a band comes from. In any given case, it might be the singer’s accent or tonality that does it or sometimes it’s just a particular vale or sound inserted somewhere among the instrumental performances, but it’s unmistakably there and listeners know it as soon as they hear…