Author Archive for Paige Camisasca
Review: Doro – Raise Your Fist
On her 12th solo album, German metal maiden Doro Pesch sounds more assured than ever, particularly as a songwriter on these 13 taut, Teutonic tunes. Doro and her band are particularly effective in thrash mode here, blazing through headbanging maelstroms such as “Rock Till Death,” “Take No Prisoners,” and “Revenge,” while Ozzy guitarist Gus G [...]
Review: Between the Buried and Me – The Parallax ll: Future Sequence
With this, the full-length follow-up to its 2011 EP, The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues, the North Carolina progressive-metal quintet crafts a 72-minute concept album that includes some of its freshest material yet, but also some of its dullest. “Lay Your Ghosts to Rest” is an epic piece that showcases the band’s trademark sonic diversity, and concludes [...]
Review: Enslaved – Riitiir
On their 12th full-length album, Norway’s favorite spacey black metallers bring plenty of strange pagan flavor to eight tracks of mid-paced dissonance, with electronic thumpings and eerie flute sections scattered throughout the howling guitars and snarled vocals. Unfortunately, every song ends up sounding too similar, even as the band breaks, as always, from black metal’s [...]
Review: Papa Roach – The Connection
Nu-metal survivors Papa Roach’s sixth full-length is an exhilarating return to form. The tracks are grittier and crunchier, akin to their breakout albums Infest and lovehatetragedy, while incorporating the more radio-friendly elements of their later records. Vocalist Jacoby Shaddix is ballsy enough to even resurrect rapping, and with surprisingly strong results on standout tracks “Not [...]
Review: Heart – Fanatic
The soft stuff is nice, but we like our Heart to be hard rockin’—more “Barracuda” than ballads. Fortunately, the Wilson sisters comes out swinging old-school style with a full-throttle title track that sets the tone for the bulk of their 14th studio album. “Dear Old America” matches its lyrical sentimentality with heavy guitars and a [...]
Review: Engel – Blood of Saints
With their masterful third album, Engel—the electronica-laced side project of In Flames’ guitarist Niclas Engelin—easily steps out of the considerable shadow their axman’s other band. The group’s discriminating use of electronic flourishes accent and elevate the powerful musicianship without ever coming across as gimmicky or forced. Meanwhile, vocalist Magnus Klavborn successfully channels the intensity and [...]
Review: This or the Apocalypse – Dead Years
This or The Apocalypse have finally snapped—you might, too, if you lived in as they do in bucolic Lancaster, Pennsylvania. On this third album, their atypical blasts of madness are more deranged than ever. But while delivering the kind of unpredictable polyrhythms that has defined their virtuosic metalcore, the guys also reveal some pretty solid [...]
Review: Serpentine Path – Serpentine Path
With a lineup consisting of all three members of New York sludge-doom trio Unearthly Trance alongside former Electric Wizard/current Ramesses bassist Tim Bagshaw, Serpentine Path were/are pretty much destined to deliver a respectable level of detuned satisfaction. While the band’s debut breaks pretty much zero new ground, Serpentine Path’s thudding death-doom will have genre enthusiasts [...]
Review: Blaqk Audio – Bright Black Heaven
Even at their punkiest AFI carried traces of ’80s goth-glam worship. Blaqk Audio, Davey Havok and Jade Puget’s electro-pop side project, allows the AFI vocalist and guitarist, respectively, to fully indulge in their mascara-and-eyeliner fantasies, reveling in dark, icy synthesizers. On the duo’s debut, 2007’s CexCells, their slavish devotion to ambient textures or danceable beats [...]
Review: Scum of the Earth – The Devil Made Me Do It
The third album by Scum of the Earth is loaded with stomping riffs, evil-disco beats, horror sound bites, and distorted vocals that reek of zombie–Rob Zombie, that is. As such, it will do little to move the band and its frontman, ex-Zombie guitarist Mike Riggs, out of the shadow of his former boss. Indeed, the [...]
