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?

  • Scar Symmetry: Dark Matter Dimensions

    The main problem with this band is after their storming debut album, the last few albums (including this new one) sound like the album they made two albums ago. It is nowhere near being a bad album at all, it’s just I have heard this same CD like three times now.

  • Pistons: We’re Pistons

    Punk rock Italians Pistons recorded this ten-track album, which sounds like a cross between vintage Sex Pistols and the modern version of Motorhead, in nine hours but I wish they had spent more time, or recorded more songs.

  • Mondo Generator: Cocaine Rodeo (deluxe edition)

    Cocaine Rodeo is an offbeat mixture of plodding, bass-heavy alt rock, and sub- two-minute punk tunes.

  • Baroness: Blue Record

    Blue Record is a forward-thinking pastiche of all points of sludge/stoner/doom light as informed by a bunch of toothless, Smokey Mountain ban-jer pickers, the Thin Lizzy fanclub, the Melvins irreverence, Converge’s 21st Century output and Queen’s penchant for mini rock operas.

  • Count Raven: Mammons War

    Mammons War is kick-ass Doom metal offering, combining elements from several genres; Dan “Fodde” Fondelius has done a fine job creating that. A very respectable and a pretty cool album to check out.

  • 3: Revisions

    It’s hard to think of any other contemporary progressive rock band that combines complexity, discipline, and catchiness better than 3. The upstate New York band has been steadily improving with each record, but it was their fifth album, 2007’s The End is Begun, that established them as one of the more promising prog acts today,…

  • Vader: Necropolis

    Polska death metal masterminds Vader throw punches with absolutely no remorse on their latest release Necropolis; composing varied sounds and melodies to keep things fresh yet brutal.

  • The Red Chord: Fed Through The Teeth Machine

    From a musical standpoint, Fed Through The Teeth Machine is as strong as the Red Chord has ever sounded. Adrien Begrand reviews the new album by Boston-area metal quartet The Red Chord.

  • Marduk: Wormwood

    In the midst of harvest time, Swedish metal veterans Marduk have offered up Wormwood. It’s a grotesque feast of sonic gore, and as such brings to mind the best in bombastic and blasphemous splatter movies. Like a lot of its cinematic counterparts, however, the album is a mixed-bag.

  • Harvestman: In A Dark Tongue

    In A Dark Tongue is built on the foundations of folk, yet wanders all over the musical soundscape throughout the 12 tracks, ranging from blissful layered guitar, to pounding electronic overtones, to a Gaelic inspired John Martyn cover. However, the album flows completely naturally, so the disjointed styles don’t seem out of place.