Tag: metal
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Hawk Eyes – Everything Is Fine
I’ve reviewed a lot of albums in my time, and inevitably so many of them have to include lines like ‘sounds like such and such a band’; it’s inevitable. But in the case of Hawk Eyes, I’m happy to report they sound like themselves, which is as it should be. Musically, the band are adroit,…
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Torche – Restarter
Haven’t seen or heard from Torche in a little while—their last album came out in 2012—but a new album means an excuse to tour, which makes Restarter a worthy release even without hearing a note. Few bands bring it live like these guys anymore, especially at the club level. No fancy pyros or elaborate stage props,…
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Arcania – Dreams are Dead
Hailing from France and charging out of the gate with a snazzily shot video, Arcania can easily fit in with the progressive death metal bigwigs of the day. The first comparison that came to my mind was the similarly melodic, yet undoubtedly heavy, Gojira. Their mammoth sound is also distinctive among the sea of melo-death drivel…
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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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Season of the Witch: How The Occult Saved Rock and Roll by Peter Bebergal
Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll is epic in every sense of the word. Author Peter Bebergal sees the influence of the occult in rock music from The Beatles to Black Sabbath and beyond. From Elvis to Led Zeppelin, he explains how the occult has not only provided fuel for rock music, but is an integral…
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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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Dö – Den EP
You’d think that with a name like Dö, these guys would be completely unGoogleable, but in fact both the second and third search-engine results are related to this band. I guess the umlaut must be what does it. Anyhoo, this Finnish doom trio has just put out its second EP, a half-hour slab of blackened,…
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Goya/Wounded Giant split
Less than a week into 2015 and what will likely be the year’s best – or at least heaviest – split has already sold out. The split LP from Goya and Wounded Giant sold out in less than eight hours upon its release January 3rd at noon. I had my eye on the Die Hard…
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my best of 2004 (aka, I keep getting older)
As some of you may know, well before I began my metal writing “career” (well, aside from a couple of regrettable, really badly written reviews for the excellent Chronicles of Chaos) I was spinning metal on campus radio. After a break of several years I returned to radio at CFMU 93.3 FM (the McMaster University…
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Sans Soleil – A Holy Land Beneath a Godless Sky
The band’s name, Sans Soleil, translates to Sunless, and they worked with a guy who produced Earthless on this EP, but their music actually sounds more like Earth. And no, not just because some of these songs are viola-driven, although that certainly helps. It’s the stringed instrument that rises right away on opening track “A…