Tag: USA

  • Clutch @ The Odeon, Saskatoon SK, August 2, 2009

    Clutch’s current musical incarnation, which dates from 2004’s Blast Tyrant to this year’s Strange Cousins From the West, has been a remarkable creative renaissance, with blues superseding stoner rock, and not surprisingly, when the final third of the show focused on the newer material, things truly took off. Adrien Begrand reviews Clutch’s most recent tour…

  • Municipal Waste: Massive Aggressive

    Delving even further into the apocalyptic fury of mid-’80s thrash coupled with DRI-esque hardcore, Massive Aggressive finds Municipal Waste’s raw power becoming even stronger and more refined.

  • Vinyl review: Agoraphobic Nosebleed/The Endless Blockade split 7″

    A tasty little 7″ slab o’ wax hot off the presses over at Chez Relapse, this split release features (what I assume to be) three new songs from Virginia grinders Agoraphobic Nosebleed and a handful of tracks from Toronto’s The Endless Blockade (perhaps that city’s best kept secret this side of Moe Panzer’s Deli up…

  • Killswitch Engage: Turning Liquid Sugar Into Gold

    Whether it’s because they have definite hardcore roots, forming as they did from the ashes of Overcast, Aftershock and, later, Blood Has Been Shed, or because they have choruses that sound more like globules of liquid sugar instead of caustic battery acid, Massachusetts’ Killswitch Engage has always had troubles being accepted by metalheads across the…

  • YOB: The Great Cessation

    The Great Cessation is well-deserving of the focus and effort it asks of its listeners.

  • Leeches Of Lore: s/t

    Fitting eleven tracks into 52 minutes, Leeches of Lore is quite the mixed bag. It goes from fast-paced neo-thrash/NWOBHM riffing to heavy rock a la Big Business to mellow proggy noodling and Johnny Cash-era country music—and that’s just within the first three songs!

  • Megadeth: Endgame

    While previous efforts have been mired in attempts at being grandiose, Endgame strips away pretense…for the most-part. Omitting a few questionable moments, it still rages closer to the band’s early-’90s output than they have in years. No, it’s not an outright thrash metal masterpiece but Endgame still assures us that the important aspects of Megadeth’s…

  • Howl: Howl

    At barely 15 minutes, it’s an all-too brief preview, but that’s all it takes to instantly establish Howl as a band to watch for in late-’09 and 2010.

  • Book Review: To Live Is To Die: The Life And Death Of Metallica’s Cliff Burton by Joel McIver

    To think that it took 23 years for someone to come up with this brilliant notion of paying respects to Cliff Burton, the true backbone of Metallica, by providing a biography of his life is quite shocking. Seeing as metallians around the world have been mourning his passing—and the requisite downward spiral of the quartet…

  • Oak: s/t LP

    Oak’s debut 12” rumbles and crumbles like Paul Bunyon piloting a city-sized backhoe. Vocalist Jo Gonzalez mixes and mashes his vocal chords to the tune of skidding tires and large men falling down jagged canyons while the humid oppression of the guitar, bass and drums acts like the soundtrack to slow suffocation and violent digestion.