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?

  • The Ocean – Anthropocentric

    I will say that while past albums from The Ocean excluding Heliocentric have had a lot of groove heavy riffs this album doesn’t really lock in a riff for too long. It is quite varied and I think that’s why it threw me at first. I was expecting the same type of formula as previous…

  • Forbidden – Omega Wave

    The great pacing throughout the album makes you wonder why we haven’t heard such glorious blistering thrash from the lads earlier. Forbidden abandons any past or modern pretense and makes thrash metal vital again by combining heaviness, speed, melody, and technicality into a marvelously accessible package.

  • Various Artists:Snakebites – The Music of Whitesnake

    Every cover is so irritatingly faithful to the original version it’s aping –right down to sounding overproduced- that it’s painful. But try as they might, none of the covering vocalists here appear to possess an nth of the swagger and soul that Mr. Coverdale conveyed in his prime (even if he did nick it from…

  • Bring Me The Horizon – There Is A Hell, Believe Me I’ve Seen It. There Is A Heaven, Let’s Keep It A Secret

    Ever been totally shocked by an album that you figured you had pegged on name recognition alone? It’s dangerous to make assumptions like that and the most recent proof of that fact is the coolest thing about Bring Me The Horizon’s third album.

  • Dawnbringer – Nucleus

    I feel this band always had this kind of album in them and now have fully realized their potential in Nucleus: a glorious heavy metal album that should put a shit-eating grin on every metal head’s face.

  • Murderdolls – Women And Children Last

    Women And Children Last isn’t a good “metal” album, it could at least be seen as a decent hard rock or hair metal record.

  • Zoroaster – Matador

    While this is a pretty decent record in its own right, I’m somewhat saddened that Zoroaster has moved away from its own unique take on southern sludge towards a sound that can be filed next to Farflung, The Atlas Moth, and countless other bands.

  • District 97 – Hybrid Child

    Hybrid Child is effervescent and fun, a mostly harmless romp through progressive rock territory. District 97’s edge can be found in the way vocalist Leslie Hunt carries the melodies and the staccato riffing that anchors most of the tracks—you can sorta tell that a drummer composed them.

  • Årabrot – Revenge

    Imagine, if you will – a raw distillation of the best of the Amphetamine Reptile catalogue in its heyday, veering past the outskirts of black metal territory, and fronted by Supergrover, if he had a severe antisocial personality disorder coupled with a propensity to sing through ground-down teeth, in phlegm-clearing snarls, growls and shrieks. Congratulations,…

  • Malevolent Creation – Invidious Dominion

    Rather than being labeled a horrible listen, this album is simply unsatisfying. After listening to tracks from Malevolent’s previous studio release, Doomsday X, it seems that something is missing. Depth is absent, vocals lack vigor and there is nothing audibly fresh in terms of musicality