Tag: Australia

  • Virgin Black – Requiem Pianissimo

    Virgin Black – Requiem Pianissimo

    Requiem – Pianissimo is both opening and resolution. This long-awaited release presents the first section of Virgin Black’s three-part requiem but it also brings the trilogy to a close, completing the two-hour and thirty-three-minute masterpiece more than a decade after it began. Although Pianissimo opens the requiem series, to me this album begins in what…

  • KING PARROT interview, September 2018

    KING PARROT interview, September 2018

    KING PARROT photo by Zo Damage Last month Hellbound’s Gene Gaona spent some time in Texas with Philip H. Anselmo and The Illegals along with the opening bands on the Choosing Mental Illness as a Virtue tour. We shared Gene’s interview with Anselmo and Mike De Leon already. Now we have another peak into those few…

  • Greystone Canyon – While The Wheels Still Turn

    Greystone Canyon – While The Wheels Still Turn

    Australia has a great track record for producing classic rock acts like Rose Tattoo and AC/DC, so it is no surprise that Greystone Canyon, hailing from Australia, have those bands in their musical DNA. The very name Greystone Canyon sums up images of cowboys on a vast empty landscape. It’s a very cool name for…

  • Dead – We Won’t Let You Sleep

    Dead – We Won’t Let You Sleep

    Aussie noise-rockers Dead first crossed the pond in 2013, when their Idiots album was picked up domestically by Portland’s Eolian Empire. They played a buncha dates in the States (albeit none in Canada) afterwards, and have since put out a few splits, EPs and such, as noise-rock bands tend to do. The duo recorded this…

  • Ne Obliviscaris – Portal of I

    Overall, this album is a triumph. Its complexity may make it a little hard for some people to swallow, but Portal of I is a hugely ambitious and multifaceted debut which is not only a great achievement for the band, but also sure to become a seminal album of the genre.

  • Parkway Drive – Deep Blue

    Fans of the hardcore spectrum yet consistently pegged as metalcore, Parkway Drive have never been considered an outright metal band. However, with latest endeavour Deep Blue, they just might be responsible for blurring that thin, thin line to an incredibly indiscernible extent.

  • Portal/ Krallice/ Bloody Panda @ Mohawk Place, Buffalo NY May 24, 2010

    The energy that Portal projected, both in their music and their sheer physical presence, was overwhelming. Every gesture that The Curator made was impossibly intense. I spent the entire set staring wildly up at the band, certain that any moment something Very Bad was going to happen. They’re masters at wielding this carefully managed sense…

  • Impetuous Ritual – Relentless Execution of Ceremonial Excrescence

    Despite the fact that the album title reads as if Impetuous Ritual chose it using Death Metal Mad Libs, this album is anything but random in concept and performance. No, this soul-rending slab of doom-laced death metal is a calculated carnage machine of the first order. Tate Bengston reviews the new album by Portal side-project…

  • Midnight Odyssey – Firmament

    Firmament’s sound places the album squarely within ambient black metal territory, more Drudkh than Darkthrone. As such it’s probably more likely to appeal to those looking for something like the former than the latter. Think Circle of Ghosts but with more thunderous kick.

  • Airbourne – No Guts, No Glory

    It has been a very long time since music like this sounded so energetic; on No Guts, No Glory, Airbourne rock out like true believers and they have the chops to back up their ambition.