Tag: album review

  • Temple of Baal – Mysterium

    Temple of Baal – Mysterium

    Temple of Baal is an impeccable four piece who seemingly rediscovered themselves. Their last effort Verses of Fire was a bit lacking in areas of raw power, emotion and execution. That isn’t to say it was terrible, but now the band has more than excelled on all those areas. Mysterium is a powerful and spiritual…

  • Crux of Aux – Mona

    Crux of Aux – Mona

    Despite the best efforts of No Why Records founder Mark McGee and his former bass playing cohort in I Hate Sally/The Chariot, Dan Vokey, I have never found the time to check out Shallow North Dakota. And my knowledge of Cursed is cursory at best. But it was that same rhythm section (I think) that…

  • Tau Cross – Tau Cross

    Tau Cross – Tau Cross

    Tau Cross features Rob Miller from Amebix and Away from Voivod and draws great strength from both bands. Amebix and Voivod are two of my favourite bans of all time. Moreover, they are two of most influential bands in the history of metal. And bear in mind that both bands expanded and moved beyond the…

  • Unleash the Archers – Time Stands Still

    Unleash the Archers – Time Stands Still

    Napalm made a very good decision in signing Unleash The Archers: they have all of metal’s strengths and none of it’s weaknesses. Time Stands Still is a very positive, very up album. In some respects, it is very traditional – great playing, great songwriting – but in other’s – production and influences – it is very…

  • Windhand – Grief’s Infernal Flower

    Windhand – Grief’s Infernal Flower

    I’m probably one of the few doom critics who didn’t put Windhand’s Relapse debut Soma in his year-end top 10 in 2013. Not that I really had anything against that album; I just thought it tested my patience a tad, what with its whopping 77-minute runtime. Since then, I’ve seen ’em live twice, and while…

  • The Meads of Asphodel / Tjolgtjar – Taste The Divine Wrath

    The Meads of Asphodel / Tjolgtjar – Taste The Divine Wrath

    It is releases like this that are the reason I’ve dedicated so much time to this genre. It comes as no surprise that the Meads of Asphodel would do yet another fine split release, as they were one of the first British black metal bands to do so, releasing for instance, the fine ‘English/Black Punk…

  • Motörhead – Bad Magic

    Motörhead – Bad Magic

    It’s hard to tell what happened to Motörhead between the release of Aftershock and the recording of Bad Magic, but there’s no missing the change in the band’s demeanour as this album plays. It’s possible that the new energy so apparent in Motörhead’s 22nd album comes from the new company that Motörhead majordomo Lemmy Kilmister has…

  • Crusty Culprits: CRUST PUNK FROM BANDCAMP, Part Two

    Crusty Culprits: CRUST PUNK FROM BANDCAMP, Part Two

    Welcome to part two of this Crusty Culprits feature. The point of the lengthy list below is to highlight a bunch of steel-edged punk rock that I’ve been enjoying in recent times. I stumbled on most of the bands featured here while exploring Bandcamp, and the majority of them are crust punk groups, because that’s…

  • Pyramids On Mars – Echo Cosmic

    Pyramids On Mars – Echo Cosmic

    When I went to see the film Jonah Hex in the cinema I was astonished by two things. One, how it was possible to take such a good character and make such an utter balls-up of a film. Seriously, all they had to do was adapt the graphic novel Riders of the Worm and Such…