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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Nightingale – Retribution
When most music lovers who favour the heavier side of things think of Sweden the first genre reference that comes to mind is Swedish Death Metal, but over the past 20-plus years bands and people like Opeth, Katatonia and Dan Swanö having been trying to change that. Returning to the ranks of the progressive, classic, technical and…
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Black Sheep Wall – I’m Going to Kill Myself
Harsh. Caustic. Slower than molasses dripping off a tortoise’s nutsack. These are all terms to describe the new Black Sheep Wall album, which isn’t anywhere nearly as friendly as its cover might suggest…though tis certainly more befitting of its title. Lemme put it this way: there’s this one riff on “Metallica,” the cheekily named, 34-minute…
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Vintage Caravan – Voyage
I suppose it’s understandable that The Vintage Caravan‘s Voyage hasn’t garnered as much press as could be expected from a band on Nuclear Blast. The Swedish retro-rock movement continues to roll along, and beside releases from bands like Blues Pills and Spiders it’s easy to get overshadowed. But wait! The Vintage Caravan are from Iceland!…
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Dö – Den EP
You’d think that with a name like Dö, these guys would be completely unGoogleable, but in fact both the second and third search-engine results are related to this band. I guess the umlaut must be what does it. Anyhoo, this Finnish doom trio has just put out its second EP, a half-hour slab of blackened,…
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Monolord – Empress Rising
There are a number of things pulling me toward Sweden. Better government, a strong hockey program, blondes, Swedish death metal, the whole retro/stoner rock movement and more. But what has the greatest pull is the sheer sonic mass of Empress Rising, the debut from doom heavyweights Monolord. They’re so heavy they have a tidal influence.…
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NOFX – Punk In Drublic (vinyl reissue)
One look at the list of albums which came out in 1994 reveals that it was a red letter year for punk rock (Offspring’s Smash, Green Day released Dookie, Bad Religion released Stranger Than Fiction and NOFX released Punk In Drublic), but what’s even more impressive in NOFX’s case is that Punk In Drublic‘s success…
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Goya/Wounded Giant split
Less than a week into 2015 and what will likely be the year’s best – or at least heaviest – split has already sold out. The split LP from Goya and Wounded Giant sold out in less than eight hours upon its release January 3rd at noon. I had my eye on the Die Hard…
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Crypt Sermon – Out of the Garden
Everything about Crypt Sermon just screams power-metal (in a Dio-style falsetto) to me. The name, the font, the album cover of a knight riding up to a castle…and yet, I’m told they have more than a hint of the Candlemass, or even the Dio-era Sabbath, to them. Hey, if this album’s anything like Atlantean Kodex,…
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Bewitcher – Midnight Hunters
Unlike the vast number of their Pacific Northwest contemporaries, Portland, OR party kvlt BEWITCHER keep it simple, succinct and proudly Satanic. Eschewing lumbering, portentous doomdoomdoomDOOMYdoomdoomdoom in favour of a relentless, no nonsense speed metal attack, these lithe Bacchanal sonic sorcerers have conjured a confident, defiantly lo-fi sound. Over the course of their three demo EPs,…
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Karma to Burn – Arch Stanton
You always kinda know what you’re getting from Karma to Burn. Debut album aside, on which Roadrunner insisted they add vocals, they’ve always been an instrumental band, with song titles consisting simply of numbers—they’re up to 59 now. And while they took a seven-year break just past the turn of the century, they’ve been cranking…