Category: Reviews
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Burning Witches – Burning Witches
A band needs a good name, and Burning Witches is an excellent one. This group of five lady metallers truly are on fire! Musically, this is old school metal, à la Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, and especially the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Which is to say, your actual songs! There are enough contemporary influences…
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Year of the Cobra – Burn Your Dead
This husband/wife, bass/drums, stoner/doom duo is sorta like Seattle’s answer to Jucifer… only without quite as many amplifiers, I presume. After their debut album dropped last year, they’ve followed it up with this five-song, 25-minute, 12-inch EP on Magnetic Eye Records. “Cold” wastes little time in getting down to business, with a heavy, fuzzy bass…
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Elvis Presley – Boy From Tupelo (3CD box set)
It’s strange but, now forty years after his death, the image of Elvis Presley hasn’t faded but has become pretty two-dimensional. For many, the popular images of Elvis are basically that of the man who swivelled his hips and made women swoon as he sang “Heartbreak Hotel,” and that of the fat man who ate…
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Friendship – Hatred
Who says heavy music can’t have a sense of humour? Calling this Japanese outfit Friendship is a little on the nose, but the title of this none-more-black record is much more appropriate. These caustic Care Less Bears blast through 12 tracks of blackened, sludgy crust in a little over 25 minutes on this don’t-call-it-an-EP, with…
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Kobra and the Lotus – Prevail I
Three years on from the last Kobra and the Lotus album ‘High Priestess’, the band unleash their latest opus ‘Prevail I’, the title of which is a searing statement of intent. Kobra and the Lotus are here for the long haul, here to see trends come and go. They are all about a love for…
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Perturbator + Bulkhead @ The Velvet Underground, 1 October 2017
Time to turn back the clock. The Velvet Underground is alive with retrofuturists as French synthwave artist Perturbator, James Kent, hits Toronto for the second night in a row, following last night’s sold out performance. This hotly anticipated show was originally scheduled for the Saturday but was moved to Monday, which explains why the venue…
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Wo Fat – Live Juju (at Freak Valley and Beyond)
From Made in Japan to Double Live Gonzo, not to mention those supposed Knights in Satan’s Service, the double live album has historically been a heavy-rock staple, albeit one that’s seemingly gone extinct. But with vinyl’s resurgence combined with doom’s patience-testing album lengths, ’twas only a matter of time before we saw its return. And…
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Seven Sisters – Seven Sisters
During the summer I attended one of Bad Reputation’s tenth anniversary gigs at Dolan’s. Bad Reputation are Limerick-based promoters who do a sterling job of promoting metal. This Halloween Orange Goblin are headlining their bi-annual Siege of Limerick festival – well done lads, you really have come a long way. At that same gig, I…
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Exhumed – Death Revenge
Bay Area Death Metal veterans Exhumed have a new release coming out October 13th via Relapse Records. It’s entitled Death Revenge, and to put it in simplest terms, it’s brutal as fuck. What you know and appreciate (at least I have) is that Exhumed have always stayed pretty true to who they are, so you usually…
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Enslaved – E
Enslaved is back with another slab of weirdness that only they can conjure. The band has been at it for more than 25 years now; their name is etched on the black metal pantheon for eternity. But to just call a band like Enslaved ‘black metal’ is patently absurd in 2017. That’s fine – they…