Tag: prog
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Pallbearer – Heartless
The clean, retro-looking cover of this record, Pallbearer’s third full length, perhaps belies a softer, more psychedelic sound within. Some had complained that they pulled an Opeth on this album, moving more toward prog and away from metal. To wit, when they recently performed in Toronto, their bassist asked the crowd if there was anyone…
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Anathema @ The Opera House, Toronto, 21 August 2017
The last time England’s atmospheric progressive rockers Anathema came to Toronto in 2013, visa issues cruelly skimmed the line up to just frontman Vincent Cavanagh, guitarist Danny Cavanagh and vocalist Lee Douglas. Now live in Toronto tonight, the whole line up is present and it the audience’s anticipation marks this show as long overdue. Starting…
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Iron Mountain – Unum
Occasionally, when reviewing records, I receive one that really exceeds my expectations. Such an album is Iron Mountain’s Unum. To give a soundbite description, it is post-metal meets Irish folk, psychedelic and prog, but that only begins the first steps on the journey to describe a band that have a huge, expansive, truly original and…
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Anciients, Dead Quiet and Muffler Crunch @ Hard Luck Bar, Toronto, 18 August 2017
If you aren’t familiar with Anciients, you should be. The British Columbia-based band recently took a swing through southern Ontario as part of their Voice of the Void Canadian tour with Dead Quiet. Hellbound welcomed them to Hamilton for their performance at This Ain’t Hollywood – a night of top-notch live metal also featuring local openers…
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3rd Machine – Quantified Self
Heavy metal fans really are a spoiled bunch. The diversity of sound and styles underneath the metal umbrella is so vast that there seems to be an unlimited amount of possibilities. From the brutality of death metal, the eclecticness of prog, or the embarrassment of Nu-metal, heavy metal has your particular poison ready and waiting…
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AURAS – Heliospectrum
O’ Canada, who are you really? Are you a dualistic nation, because of your anglo/franco roots? The colonial settlers whose languages and cultures would permeate the land, intertwining two disparate homelands into one? Are you a romancing of the classic era, or are you an eclectic mix of all nations of the people your borders…
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From the archives: ZOMBI show preview from 2005
Reading Steve Earles’ awesome review of the John Carpenter film score retrospective has sent me on a musical journey this weekend, dealing primiarily with horror music soundtracks. I started out with some Carpenter scores, then listened to and watched some live Goblin – mostly the awesome Austinato live blu-ray that features Steve Moore as a…
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Periphery – Select Difficulty
Just short of a year after the release of the critically acclaimed double album Juggernaut:Alpha/Juggernaut:Omega, Periphery return with a new full length album, Select Difficulty. With high expectations and much anticipation, fans can stop holding their breath, because Select Difficulty is another high quality release from the Washington sextet. Select Difficulty is the natural progression…
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Barren Earth – On Lonely Towers
Barren Earth is a six-piece progressive metal band from Finland. They play a style that some might say is akin to Opeth and their albums Still Life and Blackwater Park – this meaning that the music is epic in scope and shape and contains retro progressive rock elements. Most fans of this genre may remember…
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Elderoth – Mystic
Elderoth are the brainchild of a certain Collin McGee, and his singular vision has produced a unique metal sound. Many years ago, the great Ritchie Blackmore said a wise thing (this was around the time of the release of the ground-breaking Rainbow Rising album): this was that so few guitarists had taken inspiration from Middle…