Tag: groove
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Clutch – Book of Bad Decisions
One advantage of running your own label is that you don’t have anyone telling you what NOT to put on the album. Maybe that explains why Clutch’s 12th studio record ended up as a 15 track, 57-minute monstrosity. Not that there are any songs that really don’t belong on here… they just maybe could’ve trimmed…
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Earthless – Black Heaven
You know the world’s been twist-turned upside down when Fu Manchu is kicking out 18-minute jams and Earthless is singing—yes, actually singing—sub-10-minute numbers. That’s right, America’s pre-eminent jam band seems to be slowing down in their old age, as apparent on this latest release. Mind you, most of the songs here still exceed six minutes…
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Coffin Torture – Dismal Planet
This South Carolina sludge duo only had three indie EPs and a couple live-off-the-floor albums to their credit, but The Sludgelord liked them so much, they started a label just so they could sign ‘em. So that’s gotta count for something. Dismal Planet offers up seven tracks, most around the seven-minute range, on their full-length…
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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…
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Ol’ Time Moonshine – The Apocalypse Trilogies
Y’know, the first thing that struck me about this CD was the packaging. See, I’ve got a whole binder full of CDRs from a buncha local bands from back in my days at CKLN—including a few from Diablo Red, this outfit’s spiritual predecessor—so when I get something new from someone nearby, it’s usually not very…
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Freedom Hawk – Sunlight
Man, these guys have been kicking around for a while. I actually reviewed their self-titled debut on MeteorCity nearly seven years ago—at least, I thought it was their debut at the time. Turns out that Sunlight predates it by a year, but it was such a limited edition CDR release that next to nobody actually…
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Crobot – Welcome to Fat City
Does mainstream hard rock even still exist? It seems you hardly hear anything new on the radio nowadays—mind you, I stopped listening to radio back when the CRTC took my baby away. But I know that everyone from Staind’s Aaron Lewis to Default’s Dallas Smith is cutting country-music records now, and judging by the bill…
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Devil to Pay – A Bend in Space and Time
Album number five from these Indiana stalwarts sees the band keeping with the cosmic themes of its predecessor, Fate is Your Muse. But this time, the lyrics seem more grounded in reality, including the Lemmy tribute track “Your Inner Lemmy” where Devil to Pay certainly channel one Mr. Kilmeister. This record starts off on a faster…
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Buffalo Theory MTL – Skeptic Knight EP
When it comes to Montreal metal, you definitely think of death-metal blastbeats more often than stoner/doom grooves. In fact, this outfit includes guys from bands like Ghoulunatics, Les Ékorchés and Arseniq 33, but they’ve been united by their love of Kyuss. Skeptic Knight, the third recording from Buffalo Theory MTL, kicks off with a conspiracy; “Conspiracy…
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Twin Lords – Devastating Planetary Shift
Attention! Former Tombs drummer Andrew Hernandez is in this band! Ok now that I’ve given you a fickle reason to care, here’s a better one: Hernandez joined forces with bassist/vocalist (and voice actor) Dan Alex Rivera to form Twin Lords and unleash Devastating Planetary Shift: seven tracks of sludgy, insane progressive metal. The duo obliterate…