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?

  • Slayer: World Painted Blood

    All of a sudden Slayer’s new album trades the metal in their thrash for a heavy dose of hardcore, the infusion of which makes Slayer sound exactly like Black Flag did around 1985.

  • Priestess: Prior To The Fire

    Prior To The Fire sounds much more like Priestess does in a live setting, with songs like the sprawling “The Gem” showing them unafraid to stretch past the seven-minute mark while still retaining a strong pop hook in its chorus.

  • Kvist: For Kunsten Maa Vi Evig Vike

    For Kunsten Maa Vi Evig Vike is very much a product of its time, but it is a product that is not discoloured by the bitter taste of symphonic black metal’s subsequent indulgences. What Kvist brings to the table is quite simple: balance.

  • Deiphago: Filipino Antichrist

    Overall, this banshee-stabbing outfit are the Satanic missing link between John Zorn’s Painkiller and Portal, only with 137% more virgin violation to their theoretical credit. And hey, if you’re not feeling particularly like cuddling with hell’s servants, this can effectively be used to clear out any lingering party guests and family members who won’t take…

  • Morbid Saint: Spectrum Of Death

    Originally released in 1989 by a Mexican based label called Avenzada Metalica, this eight-song effort is an absolute face-ripper that will appeal greatly to fans of Dark Angel, Kreator and especially late 80s Razor. The songs are well written, the riffs are lightning fast and they possessed a vocalist in singer Pat Lind that could…

  • Children of Bodom: Skeletons In The Closet

    That lighter spirit is what makes Skeletons In The Closet worth listening to because they make the spirit in the rest most obvious; it’s all for fun. These seventeen covers showcase every side of the band, but the most recurring of the lot is that the band is obviously having fun as they pay tribute…

  • Porcupine Tree: The Incident

    Porcupine Tree’s tenth studio album, The Incident once again has proven to be another powerful performance by this veteran UK based quartet.

  • The Cleansing: Poisoned Legacy

    Poisoned Legacy is a fine addition to the Danish death metal corpus (mortale…apologies for the horrid pun). It is well-performed musically and quite enjoyable in short bursts, but it lacks the consistently dynamic songwriting required to hold the attention for its duration.

  • Gaza: He Is Never Coming Back

    Gaza’s He Is Never Coming Back is a tumultuous collection of powerful, almost too emotional songs that are heavy – not for simply being dudes from Salt Lake City who want to show who has the biggest balls on the block, but simply because they have something very powerful to day.

  • Skyfire: Esoteric

    Esoteric is a solid collection of melodic death metal tracks with just enough progressive and power metal aspects thrown in to keep things from being too predictable