Tag: review
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No Quarter: The Three Lives of Jimmy Page by Martin Power
The word legend is overused in our media-saturated age of undeserved hype. But Jimmy Page truly is a legend; the proof of the pudding being the amount of people who know little of rock music but have heard of Jimmy. The beauty of No Quarter is that Martin Power has not taken the well-trodden path…
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Doom Side of the Moon – self-titled
Chris Barnes has been dead to me ever since Six Feet Under unleashed the abomination known as Graveyard Classics 2, aka Barnes in Black. Although their first album of death-metal covers was actually kinda fun, the world did NOT need a half-assed re-creation of AC/DC’s most iconic album with Cookie Monster vomiting all over it.…
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Bloodclot – Up In Arms
First and foremost I have to say, I’m not a hardcore guy, but I do enjoy some good punk from time to time. With that said, I wasn’t sure what to expect from the band Bloodclot and their upcoming release entitled Up In Arms, due out July 14th via Metal Blade Records. What I got was…
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Death From Above – Freeze Me (Flexi-Disc single)
It might not really need saying but, listening to the new flexi-disc from Death From Above really reiterates what a creatively fertile period the last few years have been for the group. The appearance of The Physical World in 2013 marked the beginning of a new era for the band; on that album, the group…
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Expulsion – Nightmare Future
Do you like grindcore? How about fast and extreme? Well, take your blood pressure medication and hit play. Expulsion’s highly anticipated album Nightmare Future drops on July 10th via Relapse Records and it is brutal! The band consists of grind/metal veterans Matt Olivo (Repulsion), Matt Harvey (Exhumed, Gruesome), Danny Walker (Intronaut, Exhumed, Phobia), and Menno Verbaten…
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Fates Warning + Infinite Spectrum @ Mod Club Theatre, Toronto on June 21, 2017
One of progressive metal’s earliest instigators, Fates Warning, returns to Toronto tonight. Being the vanguards of metal’s most skilled genre that ignited the enviable careers of Dream Theater, Opeth and Queensryche, it’s exceedingly criminal that Fates Warning remain so underrated. Recently, these Americans recruited a wave of younger supporters as the retro heavy/power metal trend…
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Shroud Eater – Strike the Sun
Strike the Sun is the second full-length from Miami trio Shroud Eater, although, like many sludge outfits, they’ve put out a handful of singles, splits and EPs in the interim. I had the chance, in theory, to catch them at Psycho Las Vegas last year… but it was a missed opportunity, since I didn’t see…
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Weedeater + Black Wizard, 21 June 2017 at Mavericks in Ottawa
Well, it was great a opportunity, and that doesn’t happen much anymore, for this contributor to go see a show on a Wednesday night. And it would not have been without friends in Black Wizard putting me on the guest list. I got to the show late because of traffic and deciding upon which pub…
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Slow Death Lights – self-titled
Anything with Brant Bjork’s name on it has gotta be good, right? When I heard that this local Toronto outfit travelled all the way down to the California desert to record two tracks at Bjork’s own studio, I was certainly impressed. Can’t say I’ve heard of Slow Death Lights before, but with Brant’s endorsement they’ve…
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Worthless – Life’s A Garden LP
The beauty of psychedelic rock in its purest state is that the music is about art and expression first, and then everything else (be it community, statement-making, even simple performance presentation) comes second. That can mean a psychedelic rock album takes an unwieldy form (check out The Flaming Lips’ album Zaireeka – which requires that…