Category: Reviews
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Expulsion – Nightmare Future
Do you like grindcore? How about fast and extreme? Well, take your blood pressure medication and hit play. Expulsion’s highly anticipated album Nightmare Future drops on July 10th via Relapse Records and it is brutal! The band consists of grind/metal veterans Matt Olivo (Repulsion), Matt Harvey (Exhumed, Gruesome), Danny Walker (Intronaut, Exhumed, Phobia), and Menno Verbaten…
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Shroud Eater – Strike the Sun
Strike the Sun is the second full-length from Miami trio Shroud Eater, although, like many sludge outfits, they’ve put out a handful of singles, splits and EPs in the interim. I had the chance, in theory, to catch them at Psycho Las Vegas last year… but it was a missed opportunity, since I didn’t see…
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Slow Death Lights – self-titled
Anything with Brant Bjork’s name on it has gotta be good, right? When I heard that this local Toronto outfit travelled all the way down to the California desert to record two tracks at Bjork’s own studio, I was certainly impressed. Can’t say I’ve heard of Slow Death Lights before, but with Brant’s endorsement they’ve…
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Cavernlight – As We Cup Our Hands and Drink From the Stream of Our Ache
Many of you know Adam Bartlett as the man behind Gilead Media. He also has a distro called Eroding Winds and a real-life, literally brick and mortar record shop in Oshkosh. Pretty crazy. But did you know he plays drums in Cavernlight, the depressive doom band he founded over 10 years ago with guitarist/vocalist Scott…
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Worthless – Life’s A Garden LP
The beauty of psychedelic rock in its purest state is that the music is about art and expression first, and then everything else (be it community, statement-making, even simple performance presentation) comes second. That can mean a psychedelic rock album takes an unwieldy form (check out The Flaming Lips’ album Zaireeka – which requires that…
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Poseidon – Prologue
It takes a few minutes for the riffs to kick in on Prologue, the debut album from British post-sludge outfit Poseidon, but once they do, they hit the mark. This four-track, 45-minute effort starts off fittingly enough with “The Beginning, The End, The Colony,” which may or may not be a three-parter, clocking in at…
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Pounder – Heavy Metal Disaster
What can you say: Matt Harvey is one busy artist. If trying to juggle his other bands Dekapitator, Exhumed, and Gruesome wasn’t enough, he goes and offers us this new project entitled Pounder. Pounder’s first EP release, Heavy Metal Disaster, is a refreshing throw back to the good old days of power metal, heavy metal…
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Venomous Maximus – No Warning
I had the chance to catch this Texas quartet at Milwaukee’s Days of the Doomed fest in 2013, where Venomous Maximus distinguished themselves as the most up-tempo outfit on the bill. Unfortunately, they got left behind at the border on the High on Fire/Pallbearer tour a couple years back, which was super-lame, cuz they probably…
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Faith No More – Angel Dust
Where would hard rock and heavy metal be today without Faith No More‘s 1992 classic Angel Dust? This question brings shivers to my fragile old soul and I prefer not to even think about the answer to that blasphemous query. Twenty-five years after its release, I don’t think any fan of Faith No More would argue…
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Ether – There is Nothing Left for Me Here
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Florida man gets divorced, writes sludge-metal record. OK, so maybe that headline didn’t make the news. While divorce and separation have inspired countless classic country cuts, I think this second effort from Florida outfit Ether might be a first—the only sludge album dealing with marital breakdown. And…