Tag: album review
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Orange Goblin – Back From The Abyss
In an ever-changing world, one in which the foundations upon which our reality stands are constantly shifting, one thing you can be sure of is that the mighty Orange Goblin will release a superb album. Their music is always uplifting too. This doesn’t surprise me. I interviewed Orange Goblin’s vocalist Ben Ward for Zero Tolerance magazine,…
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Sangus – Saevitia EP
In ten minutes, Rhode Island’s five-piece Sangus accomplishes everything I could want from an unholy-blackened crust-core EP. Whirling poisonous clouds of tremolo guitars breaking out into screeching solos? Frantic, blasting drums? A vocalist hell-bent on spewing war-chants instead of words? Yeah, all there, and all tied to the mission statement of “get in, fuckin’ destroy,…
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Rise of Dissension – self-titled
Rise of Dissension, or R.O.D. as some call them, hail from Kingston ON and are composed of Doug Smith (lead vocals and rhythm guitar), Andrew Simmons (lead and rhythm guitars, vocals, percussion) and Landon Chatterton (drums and percussion); also, when they play live, Darren McLean plays bass. Each member is well known and respected in the local metal…
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Lord Dying – Poisoned Altars
Lord Dying’s 2013 debut, Summon the Faithless, kinda caught me by surprise. Hey, it’s not every day that a relatively unknown band outta Portland issues its debut album on Relapse. But it’s grown on me over time, and translated well to the live setting when I caught ‘em in a shitty Tex-Mex bar on tour…
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Clouds Taste Satanic – To Sleep Beyond The Earth
Take the minimalistic, defiantly monotonous widescreen dynamics of Dopesmoker era Sleep out of its vast desert backdrop and into the claustrophobic urban confines of contemporary Brooklyn. No, this isn’t the setup to a cruel Invisible Oranges joke. Glacially-paced NYC instrumental doom quartet Clouds Taste Satanic (nothing like a Flaming Lips reference to bolster yr tr00…
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Ruby the Hatchet – Valley of the Snake
Female-fronted Philly buzz band lands on Tee Pee for its first major release. By now, the whole female-fronted retro-rock genre has been done to death, though to their credit, this outfit, Ruby the Hatchet, didn’t just come together yesterday—their self-released debut album saw the light of day in 2012. Anyhoo, this second record offers six…
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Nightingale – Retribution
When most music lovers who favour the heavier side of things think of Sweden the first genre reference that comes to mind is Swedish Death Metal, but over the past 20-plus years bands and people like Opeth, Katatonia and Dan Swanö having been trying to change that. Returning to the ranks of the progressive, classic, technical and…
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Black Sheep Wall – I’m Going to Kill Myself
Harsh. Caustic. Slower than molasses dripping off a tortoise’s nutsack. These are all terms to describe the new Black Sheep Wall album, which isn’t anywhere nearly as friendly as its cover might suggest…though tis certainly more befitting of its title. Lemme put it this way: there’s this one riff on “Metallica,” the cheekily named, 34-minute…
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Vintage Caravan – Voyage
I suppose it’s understandable that The Vintage Caravan‘s Voyage hasn’t garnered as much press as could be expected from a band on Nuclear Blast. The Swedish retro-rock movement continues to roll along, and beside releases from bands like Blues Pills and Spiders it’s easy to get overshadowed. But wait! The Vintage Caravan are from Iceland!…
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Monolord – Empress Rising
There are a number of things pulling me toward Sweden. Better government, a strong hockey program, blondes, Swedish death metal, the whole retro/stoner rock movement and more. But what has the greatest pull is the sheer sonic mass of Empress Rising, the debut from doom heavyweights Monolord. They’re so heavy they have a tidal influence.…