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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Torche – Restarter
Haven’t seen or heard from Torche in a little while—their last album came out in 2012—but a new album means an excuse to tour, which makes Restarter a worthy release even without hearing a note. Few bands bring it live like these guys anymore, especially at the club level. No fancy pyros or elaborate stage props,…
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Witchrider – Unmountable Stairs
Not gonna lie, when I see a self-professed stoner/occult rock outfit with the word Witch in its name, I kinda cringe a little (notable exception: Witch Mountain). And if we’re judging an album by its cover, then I hope this trio doesn’t sound as tacky as their artwork looks. But hey, what with the dearth…
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Them County Bastardz – Sick Daze
Once upon a time, metal was actually fun, no really. And the splendidly named Them County Bastardz harken back to that era. What you got here are some seriously well-written riff-based tracks (crushing riffs, real’ wall of sound’ stuff) in the vein of Black Label Society and Pantera circa Cowboys From Hell. There’s also something…
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Arcania – Dreams are Dead
Hailing from France and charging out of the gate with a snazzily shot video, Arcania can easily fit in with the progressive death metal bigwigs of the day. The first comparison that came to my mind was the similarly melodic, yet undoubtedly heavy, Gojira. Their mammoth sound is also distinctive among the sea of melo-death drivel…
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Orange Goblin – Back From The Abyss
In an ever-changing world, one in which the foundations upon which our reality stands are constantly shifting, one thing you can be sure of is that the mighty Orange Goblin will release a superb album. Their music is always uplifting too. This doesn’t surprise me. I interviewed Orange Goblin’s vocalist Ben Ward for Zero Tolerance magazine,…
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Sangus – Saevitia EP
In ten minutes, Rhode Island’s five-piece Sangus accomplishes everything I could want from an unholy-blackened crust-core EP. Whirling poisonous clouds of tremolo guitars breaking out into screeching solos? Frantic, blasting drums? A vocalist hell-bent on spewing war-chants instead of words? Yeah, all there, and all tied to the mission statement of “get in, fuckin’ destroy,…
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Rise of Dissension – self-titled
Rise of Dissension, or R.O.D. as some call them, hail from Kingston ON and are composed of Doug Smith (lead vocals and rhythm guitar), Andrew Simmons (lead and rhythm guitars, vocals, percussion) and Landon Chatterton (drums and percussion); also, when they play live, Darren McLean plays bass. Each member is well known and respected in the local metal…
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Lord Dying – Poisoned Altars
Lord Dying’s 2013 debut, Summon the Faithless, kinda caught me by surprise. Hey, it’s not every day that a relatively unknown band outta Portland issues its debut album on Relapse. But it’s grown on me over time, and translated well to the live setting when I caught ‘em in a shitty Tex-Mex bar on tour…
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Clouds Taste Satanic – To Sleep Beyond The Earth
Take the minimalistic, defiantly monotonous widescreen dynamics of Dopesmoker era Sleep out of its vast desert backdrop and into the claustrophobic urban confines of contemporary Brooklyn. No, this isn’t the setup to a cruel Invisible Oranges joke. Glacially-paced NYC instrumental doom quartet Clouds Taste Satanic (nothing like a Flaming Lips reference to bolster yr tr00…
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Ruby the Hatchet – Valley of the Snake
Female-fronted Philly buzz band lands on Tee Pee for its first major release. By now, the whole female-fronted retro-rock genre has been done to death, though to their credit, this outfit, Ruby the Hatchet, didn’t just come together yesterday—their self-released debut album saw the light of day in 2012. Anyhoo, this second record offers six…