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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Kosmograd – Orbiter
Kosmograd is a four-piece band from Toronto, Ontario. Their sound consists of a variety of elements and influences from all over the music board. Orbiter, an EP released late in 2014, follows up their self-titled album from 2011. Being from Toronto Kosmograd has had the opportunity to open up for bands like Intronaut, The Atlas Moth and Solstafir. Now they are…
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King Hitter – self-titled
Though it’s not unheard of for me to review a band that’s completely unheard of, this North Carolina outfit comes with a bit of history—namely, frontman Karl Agell sang on Corrosion of Conformity’s breakthrough Blind album. (He was also in Leadfoot, a late 90s stoner-rock outfit, alongside King Hitter guitarist Scott Little.) Do I expect…
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Cancer Bats – Searching For Zero
Two Hellbounders weigh in on the latest from Toronto’s Cancer Bats… I’ll freely admit that when I first started listening to Searching for Zero, the latest from the hard-touring Cancer Bats I was a little let down. Then again, anything they commit to tape will pale in comparison to their incendiary live performances. But as…
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Rwake – Xenoglossalgia (The Last Stage of Awareness)
I don’t deny that I dig Rwake’s later stuff—pretty sure Rest cracked my year-end Top 10 in 2011—but I must admit I’d never heard their ’98 debut before… which was, after all, an extremely limited, independent EP. They raised a few red flags in the liner notes when, by their own admission, they mention “This…
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Brothers of the Sonic Cloth – self-titled
One of the most highly hyped stoner/doom debuts of recent months, this Seattle trio features Tad Doyle, he of the second-tier grunge band bearing his first name, and have been kicking around their local scene for several years—their only previous recording is a split dating back to ’09. Suffice to say this project might not…
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FURIA – Nocel
Man, at times like this, I wish I had a hint of Polish vocabulary. Anyhow, hello, blackened thrash! Right away we get evil chanting. Vocals viciously spitting out over a crunchy riff. It’s a perfect delivery and then the beautiful riffage blossoms into a beautiful solo, coming into an expansive bridge. That’s just in the…
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Ramlord – Crippled Minds, Sundered Wisdom
Since unleashing the self-described “opus to [the] inherent filth of mankind,” Crippled Minds, Sundered Wisdom, blackened crust comrades RAMLORD have focused on fine tuning their attack. They’ve embarked on an ongoing series of split releases (including last summer’s crust-meets-USBM collision with Krieg), which have honed the trio into a truly formidable agent of sonic depravity.…
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From the vaults: Warhorse – As Heaven Turns To Ash…
I originally wrote this review for Exclaim! back in January of 2001 when this album was first released, but now that Southern Lord is reissuing it in a deluxe, remastered format with bonus tracks I thought it might be a good time to revisit this article. Fourteen years on (!) I still think this album…
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Marduk – Frontschwein
There’s such a thing as a regular Marduk album. Regular Marduk albums fit the template for the frosty second wave of black metal and are usually pretty good. There are twelve previous albums and, even if guitarist Morgan is the sole remaining original member, the band has a sound and a developed quality. They’ve remained…
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Desolate Shrine – The Heart of the Netherword
So apparently the folks at Dark Descent Records (home of THANTIFAXATH, HORRENDOUS, & LVCIFYRE, among others) don’t want to give hapless metal scribes even a brief respite. Feels like we’re barely out of year-end review season (and into the new year) and they’ve already dropped yet another hands-down triumph. Hailing from the Nordic climbs of…