All Reviews Posts
Review: RED – Release the Panic
Formed in 2004 in Nashville, Tennessee, RED are a band that has really grown and come into its own over the years. It seems like each album they release garners more hype than the last and comes out stronger than the previous. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that their fourth record, the newly released [...]
Review: Funeral for a Friend – Conduit
It’s been almost 10 years since the Welsh post-hardore outfit released their beloved debut, Casually Dressed & Deep in Conversation, and they’ve been trying to live up to it ever since. Conduit, their sixth album and first since the departure of drummer and sometime vocalist Ryan Richards, is their best in years, hitting upon just [...]
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: Pissed Jeans – Honeys
The only sweet thing about these extreme noise terrorists’ fourth record is its title. From the get-go, the quartet serves up a splendidly nauseating concoction of staticky overdriven guitars and vomited vox that owe some debt to hardcore, sludge and the harsh, gross-out, pigfuck sounds of the Jesus Lizard and Big Black. Although they’ve employed [...]
Review: Philip H. Anselmo/Warbeast – War of the Gargantuas
There have been whisperings of a solo album from ex-Pantera/current Down vocalist Phil Anselmo for years, and this EP is proof that it wasn’t just aimless gossip. That solo full-length, Walk Through Exits Only, is due this summer, but it’s preceded by Anselmo’s two tracks, “Family, ‘Friends,’ and Associates” and “Conflict,” on this split 10″, which [...]
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: Tomahawk – Oddfellows
On “I.O.U.,” a smarmy-sounding soul-rock torch song on Tomahawk’s fourth LP, Oddfellows, frontman Mike Patton sings, “I owe you a love song for everything I’ve done wrong.” That’s likely about as close as we’re going to get to a mea culpa for the group’s disappointing, Native American-inflected 2007 art-rock eyebrow raiser Anonymous. This time, though, [...]
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. [...]
