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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Ancient VVisdom: A Godlike Inferno
A Godlike Inferno is a grand, cloven-footed romp. Having one foot in the metal camp, and one in the alt-folk and rock camp, gives the album wider crossover appeal—although potential listeners might struggle somewhat with Opposition’s satanic fervency
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Taurus – Life
Not a bad first impression from these ladies—and this is coming from someone who generally detests drone.
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Delain – We Are The Others
To start, some context: it’s rare when an album from within the amorphous power/gothic/symphonic/what-have-you metal category manages to keep my attention these days. I barely noticed Delain‘s first two full-lengths, Lucidity and April Rain. Tied to (or tied down) via their previous connection with sub-genre staple Within Temptation, and frequently featuring guest appearances from such…
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Harangue – Feeding The Wolf EP
As an introduction to the band, the two tracks are an intense six minutes. In that short time, Harangue demonstrate a multi-faceted approach to their songcraft. Abrupt yet timely transitions from hardcore chug to frenetic freakout riffs or absolute slamming breakdowns betrays any notions of this outfit being a one-trick pony.
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Cancer Bats – Dead Set On Living
While Cancer Bats have never released a record that anyone could call a failure, this album should be a widespread, runaway success – it deserves to be, it is absolutely their best, most accessible album to date.
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Threshold – March Of Progress
March Of Progress has much to offer and it’s a solid Threshold album by any standard. However, for me it simply lacks the punch and the energy of Critical Mass, Subsurface and Dead Reckoning. A little more spice wouldn’t hurt on the next Threshold album.
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Another viewpoint on Baroness’ Yellow and Green
I know that Baroness fanboys will hate me for this, but I think Yellow and Green is a failed concept and a disappointing listen—more Sandinista than London Calling, if you will.
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Katatonia – Dead End Kings
The melancholic musings of Renkse and Co aren’t as convincing as on the three previous albums I’m afraid. Dead End Kings certainly has its moments of greatness, but for some reason I expected a stronger and more consistent album.
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High on Fire – The Art of Self-Defense
Though the original contained just six tracks, Southern Lord has beefed this edition up with a trio of demos and a Celtic Frost cover. But really, that’s just the icing on the cake (if you’re into vanilla frosting). These tunes stand alone without the added filler.
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Titans Eve – Life Apocalypse
What Titans Eve has managed to do with an album based on hardship is inject an air of triumph into their catchy delivery. The uplifting nature that saturates the album brings hope that no matter what we face in our lives, all our life apocalypses, the strength to rise above them is within us all.