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?

  • Orphaned Land – The Never Ending Way of ORwarriOR

    It has been a long six years since the release of Orphaned Land’s landmark album, Mabool, an album that continues to amaze me with its beautiful combination of Middle Eastern instrumentation combined with the familiarity of metal. Ever since word of their follow up album was out, I have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of…

  • Annotations Of An Autopsy – The Reign Of Darkness

    The Reign Of Darkness incorporates all of death metal’s signature and staple elements: pummeling drums, guttural vocals and riff mayhem. What it doesn’t have is emotion or feeling that sticks out like a sore thumb.

  • Fozzy – Chasing the Grail

    With Stuck Mojo still churning out the nu-metal and Chris Jericho enjoying a second wind with the wrestling gig, it took Fozzy five years to put a proper follow-up together, but the resulting Chasing the Grail doesn’t miss a beat whatsoever. In fact, it turns out to be a surprisingly good record that should prove…

  • KEVI METAL’S RIMSHOTS v.2 #2

    Welcome to the second installment of the snarky, irreverent world of Rimshots, reconstituted for the online world that is Hellbound.ca. Enjoy them, because I know I didn’t. After suffering through this crop of crap, all I have to ask is: Sean, dude, what did I ever do to you?!

  • Immolation – Majesty And Decay

    Absolutely one of the best death metal albums this year, Majesty and Decay has set the standard to beat.

  • Taking Dawn – Time to Burn

    Time to Burn is stuck shamelessly in 1984: it was a time when melodic heavy metal and hard rock boasted über-slick production and massive, massive hooks, but most importantly, the guitars still retained a metallic bite, unlike the gaudy, thinner sounds of the post-1986 glam metal era. More Spencer Proffer, less Bruce Fairbairn. Simply put,…

  • Headhunter D.C. – God’s Spreading Cancer

    This is the band’s fourth full length studio album, which is technically a three-year-old release that came out in Brazil in June, 2007, and it brings fifteen tracks packed with early Vader, Carcass and Possessed influences mixed with Dimmu Borgir style vocals (very throaty and rough aggressive roars). Headhunter D.C. is based on killer riffs,…

  • Siegfried – Nibelung

    On first listen, this album gave me visions of using it as a soundtrack to a documentary about people who are into epic fantasy role-playing. I can see the hordes of costumed Lord of the Rings fans clashing their replica swords on a battlefield to win the princesses hand

  • Trouble: Unplugged and Live in Los Angeles

    While instability is familiar territory for Trouble, the changes of the last few years are of an order of magnitude beyond anything it has experienced previously. The reissue of Unplugged, featuring outgoing vocalist Eric Wagner, and Live in Los Angeles, featuring the debut of replacement Kory Clarke (Warrior Soul), jointly symbolize the end of one…

  • Mnemic – Sons of the System

    The problems I have with this record can be summed up in a few simple words: I’ve heard this all before.