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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The Lone Crows – Dark Clouds
This Minnesota-based outfit, The Lone Crows, is apparently pretty big in Germany. Big enough, anyways, that the German label World in Sound reissued their debut last year, which landed them on my radar. And hey, if there’s a retro-psych revival going on across the pond, then these guys would really fit right in… Sophomore effort…
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Lee Bains III and The Glory Fires – Dereconstructed
There’s an awesome sense of power and familiarity about Dereconstructed, and that’s only the first appealing thing about Lee Bains III and The Glory Fires‘ sophomore album (first for Sub Pop). It’s impossible to hear this album and not be reminded of the original stable of signings to Fat Possum; they were old blues players…
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Fu Manchu – Gigantoid
The Gigantoid is a very elusive creature. Out on the band’s own At the Dojo Records, it’s not available in stores, and can only be found at Fu Manchu concerts across the country… such as the one that recently took place in Toronto. And as far as new albums go, it’s the Fu’s first in…
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Big Wreck – Ghosts
Under most circumstances, hearing that a band has spontaneously slowed down on their newest album sends chills through fans. In rock, “slowing down” is usually synonymous with “getting old” or becoming “less energetic” and, when these phrases start flying around, it’s like a death knell for the band at which they’re aimed. No fan likes…
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Dwellers – Pagan Fruit
If we’re judging an album by its cover, the sophomore effort from this Utah-based trio, Dwellers, sure looks like a Baroness album. Hey, as long as we’re talking Red or Blue, and not Yellow & Green, that’s OK with me. Pagan Fruit paints with a similar palette to the Georgian no-longer-sludgesters. An amplified, mellow, country-blues-rock…
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Graves at Sea/Sourvein Split
The split EP is as essential to sludge metal as cough syrup and Southern Comfort. And for these two long-dormant acts—particularly the former—this concoction of an EP goes down like a mixture of those two elixirs. Like the syrup and the whiskey, Graves at Sea and Sourvein leave you raw and nauseous, but ultimately, cure…
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Godstopper – Children Are Our Future
A few months ago, a friend of mine told me that Godstopper was the best band going in Toronto. Now, I don’t know about that per se – I actually like my friend’s band (Harangue) better, but that’s a matter of taste. Maybe I’m too conventional. “Conventional” is something Godstopper certainly is not and neither…
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Satyress – Dark Fortunes
A female-fronted doom band from Portland… that’s not Witch Mountain? Do tell! The aforementioned set the bar pretty high pretty high with their comeback effort South of Salem, pushing the vocal stylings of Uta Plotkin to the forefront and putting Rip City on the map as a place whose doom scene had much more to…
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Emperors and Elephants – Devil in the Lake
Remember the last time metal and hard rock held a significant stake in popular music interest and appeal, reader? It was actually a very musically diverse period. Bands like Korn, Limp Bizkit and Disturbed were showing the world that metal and rap could occupy the same sonic palette in a band’s repertoire while bands like…
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Jeremy Irons & the Ratgang Malibus – Spirit Knife
Not gonna lie, these Swedes sucked me in with their bizarre band name. I’m not sure if there was actually a movie in which The Man in the Iron Mask leads a sedan-driving rat gang…but a quick Google search strictly points to Jeremy Irons & the Ratgang Malibus. I would not be surprised if they were…