Tag: album review
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Rwake – Xenoglossalgia (The Last Stage of Awareness)
I don’t deny that I dig Rwake’s later stuff—pretty sure Rest cracked my year-end Top 10 in 2011—but I must admit I’d never heard their ’98 debut before… which was, after all, an extremely limited, independent EP. They raised a few red flags in the liner notes when, by their own admission, they mention “This…
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King Buzzo – This Machine Kills Artists (vinyl)
On the most superficial level, making an album like This Machine Kills Artists should be the definition of simplicity. How could it not be? The arrangements for the songs have already been written and the design has been set so, simply, stripping away the trappings installed by a record producer as well as the other…
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Brothers of the Sonic Cloth – self-titled
One of the most highly hyped stoner/doom debuts of recent months, this Seattle trio features Tad Doyle, he of the second-tier grunge band bearing his first name, and have been kicking around their local scene for several years—their only previous recording is a split dating back to ’09. Suffice to say this project might not…
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FURIA – Nocel
Man, at times like this, I wish I had a hint of Polish vocabulary. Anyhow, hello, blackened thrash! Right away we get evil chanting. Vocals viciously spitting out over a crunchy riff. It’s a perfect delivery and then the beautiful riffage blossoms into a beautiful solo, coming into an expansive bridge. That’s just in the…
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Ramlord – Crippled Minds, Sundered Wisdom
Since unleashing the self-described “opus to [the] inherent filth of mankind,” Crippled Minds, Sundered Wisdom, blackened crust comrades RAMLORD have focused on fine tuning their attack. They’ve embarked on an ongoing series of split releases (including last summer’s crust-meets-USBM collision with Krieg), which have honed the trio into a truly formidable agent of sonic depravity.…
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The Melvins – Hold It In (Vinyl Vlog)
It might sound a little deliberately contrary but, in the current “more is more” music industry landscape (where more variant releases of albums on more formats with different tracklists are the norm), the biggest, longest variant of an album isn’t always the best one. The vinyl incarnation of Hold It In – The Melvins’ twenty-fourth…
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Marduk – Frontschwein
There’s such a thing as a regular Marduk album. Regular Marduk albums fit the template for the frosty second wave of black metal and are usually pretty good. There are twelve previous albums and, even if guitarist Morgan is the sole remaining original member, the band has a sound and a developed quality. They’ve remained…
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Desolate Shrine – The Heart of the Netherword
So apparently the folks at Dark Descent Records (home of THANTIFAXATH, HORRENDOUS, & LVCIFYRE, among others) don’t want to give hapless metal scribes even a brief respite. Feels like we’re barely out of year-end review season (and into the new year) and they’ve already dropped yet another hands-down triumph. Hailing from the Nordic climbs of…
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ENSLAVED – In Times
First Impressions… Well, I couldn’t resist, I ate up the official stream made available by Nuclear Blast right away. As a longtime fan of Norway’s ENSLAVED I had been following the news of this release closely, so it was nice to get a reward immediately; the first track, “Thurisaz Dreaming,” had been partially released as…
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Callisto – Secret Youth
Sincere and heartfelt, this is not an album for the casual listener; rather it is for the music lover who is prepared to give the music time to plant roots in the mind and appreciate all its nuances. While Callisto are good song-writers, I found this album works best listened to as an organic whole. It…