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?
-
Melvins – The Bulls & the Bees
This band just keeps on rolling, even if their former touring vehicle will remain parked for a while.
-
Orthrelm – 20012
Orthrelm appeal to that side of your nature that makes you recheck you’ve locked the door 10 times and pick at scabs best left alone. It’s obsessively intricate, maddeningly torturous, and absolutely brilliant. The very best thing about 20012 is that it’s just two bite-sized chunks of noise to digest
-
Soulfly – Enslaved
Soulfly may not be the cutting edge band it once was, but it’s still a relevant bulwark of power in today’s metal scene. Enslaved is a poignant celebration of Max Cavalera’s musical vision and his longevity.
-
Primal Rock Rebellion – Awoken Broken
Right off the top, before anything else is said here about Primal Rock Rebellion or their debut, Awoken Broken, it needs to be said that this record stands as proof that old dogs can indeed learn new tricks.
-
Desaster – The Arts of Destruction
With a few defeats and changes of members along the way, along with a fairly lengthy discography, Desaster are still campaigning like true survivors. Having never gained the sort of popularity or visibility of many of their German brethren, the band have remained a cult act, and their new album, The Arts of Destruction, isn’t…
-
Les Discrets – Ariettes Oubliées…
Without taking Les Discrets’ sound to a more adventurous place, Ariettes Oubliées… unfortunately ends up sounding like an adequate but less inspired version of the band’s debut.
-
Goatwhore – Blood For The Master
Blood For the Master isn’t a radical step forward, but nor, given its traditional metal underpinnings, is it a step back. It is exactly the album Goatwhore needed to make right now.
-
Spirit Descent – Seven Chapters in Minor
if this band’s MO is to copy Candlemass and Argus as closely as they can, they’ve hit the mark. I gotta dock ‘em a couple points for originality, but full marks for execution are well-deserved.
-
Van Halen – A Different Kind of Truth
Against all the odds, the band has managed to believably make twenty-seven years of chasing its tail melt away and re-present themselves in such a way that implies they were never actually gone.
-
Cannibal Corpse – Torture
This album fucking destroys and I wouldn’t have expected or accepted anything less from my favorite Death Metal band of all time.