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?
-
Greystone Canyon – While The Wheels Still Turn
Australia has a great track record for producing classic rock acts like Rose Tattoo and AC/DC, so it is no surprise that Greystone Canyon, hailing from Australia, have those bands in their musical DNA. The very name Greystone Canyon sums up images of cowboys on a vast empty landscape. It’s a very cool name for…
-
Shadygrove – In The Heart of the Scarlet Woods
As we see with the surprising and pleasing success of artists like Myrkur, our beloved metal genre is becoming ever more diverse. More and more artists are returning to the past, like aural archaeologists, to the primordial musical wellspring for inspiration. Shadygrove have an acoustic heaviness that can only come from the heart and soul:…
-
Unshine – Astrala
Epic is an understatement to describe this fine album. Imagine Ritchie Blackmoor’s Rainbow (Dio era) with a brilliant singer in the shape of Susanna Vesilahti, and you’re only halfway there. The melodies are reminiscent of Within Temptation or Nightwish but with a harder edge. The music courtesy of Harri Hautala is excellent, and again, epic! Another band…
-
Hoth – Astral Necromancy
Seattle’s Hoth released Oathbreaker back in 2014 and I was captivated. Extreme metal with a Star Wars angle? Sold. But on that album the concept was veiled and perhaps only people familiar with Star Wars would put the pieces in place. Fast forward to 2018 and the duo have outdone themselves with new album, Astral…
-
Lesser Glow – Ruined
This Boston post-sludge outfit allegedly tackles the perils of clickbait and social media on their debut, 25-minute EP. If Unsane and Neurosis came of age in the internet era, and subsequently joined forces, it might sound a little something like Lesser Glow. The title track kicks things off, six minutes of swirling feedback, slow, crunchy…
-
Orange Goblin – The Wolf Bites Back
It’s been about three and a half years since we last heard from Orange Goblin, but it’s good to have them back. Album number nine from the British stoner/doom vets contains some of the speedier, Motorhead influences heard on its outstanding predecessor, Back from the Abyss, but that’s not to say there’s any shortage of…
-
Grave Lines – Fed Into The Nihilist Engine
Like Mogwai meeting Black Sabbath, this is music that mines dark inner depths. The music is given a chance to breathe, to surge and fall, like a painting composed of monochrome darkness. I felt ‘the Nihilist Engine’ the album refers to could be the modern world we live in, a world that crushes hope if…
-
Age of Taurus – The Colony Slain
Age of Taurus, as I last remember them, were a doom band in the British tradition of the genre. Their debut album, 2013’s Desperate Souls of Tortured Times, was very much in the vein of Candlemass, Count Raven and Orodruin, and they sounded right at home on the bill of Days of the Doomed IV.…
-
High Priestess – self-titled
Although there are some outstanding female-fronted doom outfits that don’t dabble in witchcraft and wizardry (Witch Mountain and Windhand being two excellent examples), most of the ones that do aren’t taking things any further than what Jex Thoth and Blood Ceremony were playing 10 years ago. But once in a while, a band such as…
-
Fister – No Spirit Within
Anywhere there’s high levels of violence and poverty, sludge metal often isn’t far behind. Listed as the Number 4 Murder Capital of America, ahead of Baltimore, Detroit and Compton, St. Louis definitely fits the bill (the suburb of East St. Louis is actually Number 1), and its native sons Fister display plenty of downtrodden aggression…