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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Periphery – Select Difficulty
Just short of a year after the release of the critically acclaimed double album Juggernaut:Alpha/Juggernaut:Omega, Periphery return with a new full length album, Select Difficulty. With high expectations and much anticipation, fans can stop holding their breath, because Select Difficulty is another high quality release from the Washington sextet. Select Difficulty is the natural progression…
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Misfits – Friday the 13th EP
While there’s no small part of this critic that wants to hand this band which calls itself The Misfits its lungs and dismiss them as heretics (I’ve done it continually for years), the truth is that I just can’t do it now. The truth is, the four songs which comprise the Friday the 13th EP…
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Beldam – Still the Wretched Linger
Richmond might have recently put Virginia on the map when it comes to downtuned doom, with outfits ranging from Cough to Inter Arma to Windhand, but the sludge seems to be seeping eastward to another college town an hour away. Beldam hails from Charlottesville, home of the Hoos, and their debut album is as gritty…
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Asphalt Graves – The New Primitive
Asphalt Graves, a new project boasting an impressive resume of talent with current and former members of bands like Dying Fetus, Black Dahlia Murder, and GWAR leaves something to be desired with their debut album out on Vitriol Records. Starting with a slow roll of a riff in terms of this death/grind/punk style hybrid it…
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Fistula – Longing for Infection
It might surprise you that Cleveland was recently named the most metal city in America, but it’s always had a pretty solid sludge/hardcore scene. This gritty, edgy style of music can often be found in rough ‘n tumble towns—and having seen everyone from St. Vitus to Accept to Pentagram play places like the now-closed Peabody’s…
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16 – The Lifespan of a Moth
Although sludge is usually seen as a southern staple, it also had a notable West Coast presence in its early years, with bands like Noothgrush outta Oakland and 16 from L.A., not LA. Like many early sludge outfits, 16’s discography is marked with a whole buncha splits and 7-inches, but The Lifespan of a Moth…
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Mos Generator – Abyssinia
I was a pretty big fan of Mos Generator’s last album, Electric Mountain Majesty, which was released in 2014. It was a solid blend of retro-rock and proto-doom that’s got me jonesing for the follow-up, Abyssinia. This one starts off nice ‘n heavy right outta the gate, with a great-big Swedish-style stoner rock riff in…
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Castle – Welcome to the Graveyard
As far as the female-fronted occult acts are concerned, I’ve always found Castle to be a cut above the fray. Granted, they’ve always had a bit of a harder edge, a more metallic sound than many of the Jex Ceremony clones—likely due to guitarist Mat Davis’ formative years in the Toronto thrash scene. Owing to…
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Nails – You Will Never Be One of Us
You Will Never Be One of Us is the latest album from power violence band Nails out on Nuclear Blast. The album title could have meant no other band will match the sheer ferocity that this album is soaked in. Vocalist Todd Jones and the band rage for 21 minutes almost non-stop. It reminds me…
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Foghound – The World Unseen
This Baltimore band can trace its lineage—and its rhythm section—back to stoner-rock outfit Sixty Watt Shaman, who put out a couple rippin’ records on Spitfire at the turn of the century. And like with most bands from Maryland, the riffs run deep on this, Foghound’s second record. “Above the Wake” starts things off in a more…