Author Archive for Paige Camisasca
Review: Inter Arma – Sky Burial
Richmond genre-benders Inter Arma like to go long: Many of the tracks on their second full-length, Sky Burial, clock in at 10-plus minutes apiece. But instead of boring us to death with variations on a theme, they essentially cram three songs from different subgenres into each. Acoustic ballad into epic space-rock jam into full-bore black-metal [...]
Review: The Color Morale – Know Hope
Metalcore sextet The Color Morale never strays too far from the tried-and-true tropes of their subgenre on full-length No. 3, but still manages to craft tunes that are passionate and memorable, mixing breakdown-fuelled mosh, noisy dissonance, and catchy choruses on wide-ranging tracks like “Learned Behavior.” Frontman Garrett Rapp’s vocals run the gamut from hardcore bellows [...]
Review: Clutch – Earth Rocker
Ten studio albums in, Clutch deliver here pretty much everything you’ve come to expect from them: bluesy rock, blustery but impressively precise riffage, beards, and story songs about robots. On their first record in almost four years, the band vacillates between old-school ’70s balladry (“Gone Cold”), mock horror film boogie woogie (“The Wolfman Kindly Requests…”), [...]
Review: Shai Hulud – Reach Beyond The Sun
Old-schoolers Shai Hulud helped invent metalcore, combining jagged metallic riffing with emotive hardcore in a way that worked. And all these years later, they’re still mixing the more melodic sounds of Revelation Records’ roster (check out the powerful “Medicine to the Dead”) with the intense strains of the HC underground (think deep Unbroken tracks, then [...]
Review: Devourment – Conceived in Sewage
On their fourth full-length and Relapse Records debut, Dallas regurgitators Devourment do entirely what you expect them to, pumping out nine tracks of “slam,” the chuggy, breakdown-choked death-metal subgenre they’ve helped spearhead. While spirited in their performance, this brutal quartet lack the dynamism and versatility of label-mates Dying Fetus, resulting in a relatively entertaining record [...]
Review: Big Wreck – Albatross
This is not so much a Big Wreck reunion as it is guitarist Brian Doherty joining the self-titled band frontman Ian Thornley started after the two split up a decade ago. But we’re not quibbling. Albatross, which went Top 5 in the group’s native Canada last year, is an engagingly diverse set that’s a bit [...]
Review: Hate – Solarflesh
Among death metal’s unsung greats, these Polish Morbid Angel-lovers have, on their eighth album, nailed the best of modern no-frills death metal: full-speed blast beats, grimy sludge, and just enough experimentation to keep things interesting, from keyboard flourishes and a sense of drama that borders on ludicrous but still works to Spanish-style guitar intro to [...]
Review: Cult of Luna – Vertikal
Inspired by the classic Fritz Lang film Metropolis, the Swedish octet’s sixth album draws on a surprising range of influences—early synthpop, ’60s prog, classic krautrock—to find the right palette of instrumental colors for these brooding soundscapes. They take their time with them, too, teasing out the melodic power of each idea through steady, restrained repetition. [...]
Review: Nightfall – Cassiopeia
The long-running Greek outfit serve up a little bit of everything on their brutal, mostly solid new disc: symphonic metal, death metal, goth, prog. It’s all in service to Nightfall’s own peculiar set of lyrical preoccupations, which this time around seem to include Egyptian mythology, astronomy, free-floating mysticism, and something about reptiles. Past Nightfall albums [...]
Review: Rotten Sound – Species at War
With their follow-up to 2011’s Cursed full-length, Finnish grind demons Rotten Sound continue their long-running tradition of one- and two-word song titles while delivering six crushing tracks in an eight-minute blitzkrieg on your stereo and face. Fusing Napalm Death’s feral intensity with Entombed’s classic ’90s guitar tone, the band unfurls frantic, lockstep blasts (opener “Cause,” [...]
