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?
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Third Island – Dusk
Irish post-metal? Sign me up. The debut EP from Third Island takes listeners on a journey through the night of an insomniatic protagonist. Dusk is a wonderfully woeful concept album that uses sonic arrangements to portray the feelings and affects of the restless. Waking dreams, auditory hallucinations, and possible insanity come through as the album drives…
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Serpent Crown – Incantations of Vengeance
Oakland certainly has no shortage of blackened, thrashy sludge bands, from the likes of High on Fire and Black Cobra going back to some of the pioneers of sludge and doom—Noothgrush, Neurosis, Sleep et al. This particular outfit, Serpent Crown, has been around since ’08, but they’ve completely flown under my radar until now, as…
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Old Corpse Road – Of Campfires and Evening Mists
In the metal genre we all love, a band’s artwork speaks volumes as to their intentions. The splendidly named Old Corpse Road’s evocatively titled Of Campfires and Evening Mists features a fire-lit forest with their logo superimposed over it. The said logo features such symbols of nature as a wise owl and horns, and of…
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The Wounded Kings – Visions of Bone
Album number five from British doomsters The Wounded Kings is slated to be their last—the band announced they’d be breaking up a couple weeks before its release. While their two previous albums featured female vocals, they welcomed their original frontman back into the fold for this Candlelight Records swansong. Visions of Bone begins with 14-minute…
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Asphyx – Incoming Death
If you don’t think Martin van Drunen has one of the best voices in death metal then you either haven’t heard him or you have no idea what good is. If it is the latter then stop reading because you obviously couldn’t care less about punishingly good death metal. Asphyx‘s newest album Incoming Death starts off…
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Truckfighters – V
Album number five from these Swedish stoner-rock stalwarts comes out late September, with domestic distribution by Century Media. I actually didn’t own any of Truckfighters‘ previous albums until I saw them play this crazy gig at a battleaxe-throwing venue in Toronto a couple years back—so I’m pleased to see this record receive a proper domestic release.…
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The Great Sabatini/Godstopper split
Two of Eastern Canada’s preeminent noise-rock outfits collide as Montreal’s The Great Sabatini shares duties with Toronto’s Godstopper on this six-song, 17-and-a-half-minute split EP. The Quebeckers are up first with a fistful of tracks, ranging from the slow ‘n heavy instrumentals (“I’m Not the Man of the Hour”) to spoken-word/harsh-noise interlude (“Shortwave Radio”) to some…
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Olde – Shallow Graves EP
Last year Toronto’s Olde won the hearts of millions with debut LP, I. OK, that’s a lie. But their sludgy doom was nonetheless impressive to say the least, beating as many grooves into your cauliflower-ed ears as were pressed onto the wax. To keep concussed brains aware of their presence before a 2017 LP on…
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Wretch – self-titled
The Gates of Slumber’s ultimate album, Wretch, was definitely their most downtrodden affair, a slight departure from their early days of ice worms and dragons. In the five years since its release, two-thirds of that lineup has passed away, leaving frontman Karl Simon fronting a new band, fittingly titled Wretch. Suffice to say, this debut…
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Void King – There is Nothing
In recent years, Indianapolis, Indiana has earned a bit of a reputation as a Midwest doom-metal hub, due to quality outfits like Devil to Pay, Apostle of Solitude and the late, great Gates of Slumber. Void King also hails from Indy, and while I wasn’t too familiar with them beforehand (this is their first album),…