Category: Reviews – Audio
Glorious metal in all its earthly forms, compressed onto shiny plastic discs or into digital files. Which ones will become the soundtrack to your life?
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Goatsnake – Black Age Blues
While the Facebook group “1 MILLION GOATSNAKE FANS PLEADING FOR A NEW ALBUM/TOUR” never got much more than a thousand members… they did get their wish with this, the first Goatsnake full-length in 15 years. Some might know them mainly as the band with that guy from Sunn O)))) and Southern Lord, but back at…
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Connoisseur – Stoner Justice
Pretty sure I reviewed this when it was just an EP—but I can’t seem to find that write-up anywhere on the site. Anyhoo, Connoisseur is a marijuana-themed crust-punk outfit from Oakland—or Smokeland, as they call it, and with song titles like “Circle of Heads,” “I Am the Weed” and “Full Blown Marijuana Addict,” you can…
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Cusses – Here Comes The Rat EP
Before we attempt to pull Cusses‘ long-awaited new EP apart, I have two questions for listeners to consider: 1.) Do you like roller coasters and 2.) Why? For some, their love of rollercoasters springs from the rush of adrenaline which accompanies a fast ride; it’s a physical thing. For others though, the rush is far…
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Weedeater – Goliathan
I love seeing Weedeater live, but I wasn’t really a fan of their last album, which came out back in 2011. There were a couple too many goofy tracks on Jason… the Dragon, and other songs weren’t very long or particularly memorable. Put it this way, it was no God Luck and Good Speed. But…
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Wooden Stake – A Feast of Virgin Souls
I don’t often judge an album by its cover, but in the case of A Feast of Virgin Souls, I was more than a little put off by the artwork. It’s kinda like classic Cannibal Corpse, only slightly less gorey and much more misogynistic. And yet, one half of this female-fronted death/doom duo is… well,…
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Ghold – Of Ruin
So, I might be a little late on this self-proclaimed “Weight & Grunt” doom duo—which is just a nice way of saying they don’t have a guitarist. But hey, when it comes to this style of music, you’re better off with bass and no guitar than the other way around. From what I can ascertain,…
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Gruesome – Savage Land
How much do you love Chuck Schuldiner’s legendary band Death? How much do you love that primal, teeth-rattlin’, gut-churning death metal that Chuck helped wretch out of the Florida muck? If there is love, the actual, physical need to listen to Death’s first few albums routinely, then does that love extend to wishing that there…
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Venomous Maximus – Firewalker
Though I don’t consider Venomous Maximus to be doom—they’re a little too up-tempo, IMO—these guys definitely stole the show at the third installment of Days of the Doomed fest a couple years back. They sure sold a lotta copies of their first CD that night… I didn’t buy one myself, but I’m still looking forward to…
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Barren Earth – On Lonely Towers
Barren Earth is a six-piece progressive metal band from Finland. They play a style that some might say is akin to Opeth and their albums Still Life and Blackwater Park – this meaning that the music is epic in scope and shape and contains retro progressive rock elements. Most fans of this genre may remember…
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Valkyrie – Shadows
Been a while since we’ve heard from these Virginia doomsters—split 7” with Earthling aside, they haven’t released a record since 2008. And yet, their profile has grown somewhat in their absence, what with guitarist Pete Adams joining Baroness. Suffice to say, the Baroness connection secured their record deal with Relapse, providing the resources—recorded by Sanford…