ALBUM REVIEWS
If you’re looking for aggregated album reviews from our seasoned music specialists, including our own score offering at a glance how the album fared, this is the right destination for you. Album reviews certainly still matter to artists, writers, and publicists, as they are the ones dealing with them every day, but does the average listener still pay attention? Well, we sincerely hope you do... Dive in!
Jon Gomm – The Faintest Idea (Album Review)
The tunings and technique of Michael Hedges. The percussive attack of Preston Reed. And a voice approaching Eric Johnson. If you haven’t got The Faintest…
Lord Almighty – Wither (Album Review)
Nature is the ultimate killer. Contemplating the natural world, including in its most fearsome manifestations, is not a new thing within black metal circles, but…
Sevendust – Blood & Stone (Album Review)
Long popular for their consistency and quality approach to heavy music, Grammy-nominated Sevendust have steadily persisted for the better part of 25 years, accumulating twelve…
The Flower Kings – Islands (Album Review)
No band is an island. Especially when it comes to modern progressive rock, influences from the 60s and 70s are ubiquitous. In the case of…
Yatra – All Is Lost (Album Review)
Vikings rise from the sludgy depths. When musing over the happenings of the Viking Age or the broader realm of the fantastical, if images of…
Benediction – Scriptures (Album Review)
Returning to the olden creeds. Perhaps best known for its pioneering work in the grindcore field, the British extreme metal scene nevertheless fielded a small…
Ensiferum – Thalassic (Album Review)
They’ve become one with the waves and their past. All trends come and go like crashing waves upon the shore, but what separates a temporary…
Jakko Jakszyk – Secrets and Lies (Album Review)
In a world full of concept albums, overplayed musical workouts with shredding guitar, outrageous time signatures and more, sometimes it’s a welcome respite to enjoy…
Protokult – Transcending The Ruins (Album Review)
Transcending conventional practices. It might seem counterintuitive, but while folk music stands as one of the most straightforward and stylistically limited genres in existence, its…
Nightmare – Aeternam (Album Review)
Shaking the very pillars of eternity. The truism that times change and one would be wise to change with them is nothing to new to…
Isenmor – Shieldbrother (Album Review)
Dueling violins sing of Vinlandian lore. At this point in metal history, the quest for originality is usually a quest for a niche, though in…
Metalium – Tenebris (Album Review)
Darkness prevails by wing and spear. To the casual thrash metal consumer, nations such as Germany and Brazil are among the small number of places…
Wobbler – Dwellers of the Deep (Album Review)
Numerous are the modern progressive rock bands who emulate the classic sounds of the revered 70s era. Each one has their own spin, however, from…
Devin Townsend – Order of Magnitude: Empath Live, Volume 1 (Album Review)
Rarely does a live album actually reach me these days. It’s not by lack of skill or passion of performance that I am often left…
A Perfect Day – With Eyes Wide Open (Album Review)
When “With Eyes Wide Open” came across my desk for a review, the artwork instantly caught my eye with its layered abstract elements. Though unfamiliar…
Six Feet Under – Nightmares Of The Decomposed (Album Review)
Even corpses have bad dreams. Metal is something that few can walk away from, though departing from a particular band within said genre seems a…
Armored Saint – Punching the Sky (Album Review)
While the whole world is about to complete six months in lockdown and sees the days turning into nights and nights swallowing the days, here…
Ozric Tentacles – Space for the Earth (Album Review)
2020 brings, among other things, a new release from the UK based Ozric Tentacles. The Ozrics are an amalgam of multiple styles including progressive, pyschedelic,…
Necrophobic – Dawn of the Damned (Album Review)
The forsaken have taken the crown. Often overshadowed by their Norwegian counterparts, the early adherents of the second wave of black metal to come raging…
Hexx – Entangled In Sin (Album Review)
We are all creatures of sin. The famed rivalry between the L.A. Sunset Strip scene and its grimier, San Francisco rival is usually the prime…
Anaal Nathrakh – Endarkenment (Album Review)
Darkly breathes the cynical serpent. Originality is a scarce thing at present, though it isn’t an absolute necessity wherein creating a great work is concerned.…
DevilDriver – Dealing With Demons, Volume I (Album Review)
Grooving on through the gates of perdition. For those who remember the rise of nu-metal in the late 90s and its ascendant status shortly after,…
DGM – Tragic Separation (Album Review)
More often than not, we find ourselves naturally skeptical of any musical act where only one (or even zero) of the founding members remain in…
Harmonize – Warrior In The Night (Album Review)
Heroism arises from the Hellenic sphere. For a relatively small nation within the European Union, Cyprus has fielded a fairly impressive metal scene with a…
Circuline – CircuLive::NewView (Album Review)
Every music enthusiast around the world surely misses live concerts. It’s been 7 months since I last attended a show, and right now, it isn’t…
Corey Taylor – CMFT (Album Review)
There are few fans of rock and metal who would fail to recognize the name Corey Taylor on sight, this one artist’s legacy long-cemented in…
Kataklysm – Unconquered (Album Review)
Where chaos and order converge. Veteran status could be considered a relative concept in metal circles, but it’s a safe label to attribute to any…
Marche Funebre – Einderlicht (Album Review)
A funeral dirge for the dying light. The true test of any artist is patience, specifically the ability to take one’s time in honing an…
Tallah – Matriphagy (Album Review)
There hasn’t exactly been a clamoring for nu-metal’s revival, an eclectic style which has long been relegated to the list of sub-genres that people love…
Sacred Outcry – Damned For All Time (Album Review)
Epic heroism emerges in Attica. Fully quantifying the scope of the power metal explosion that took place in Europe towards the turn of the millennium…
Skeletoon – Nemesis (Album Review)
Nerds of the world, travel space! European power metal tends to fall into two categories; those who take their music seriously, and those who take…
Spellbook – Magick & Mischief (Album Review)
Of Deep Sabbaths and Black Purples. For those with any degree of familiarity with the Pennsylvania rock and metal scene, and specifically that of the…
Roy Ziv – Distant Visions (EP Review)
Better late than never. Roy Ziv’s career after his Berklee education took a different turn by being a ghost writer for EDM and pop artists,…
Enslaved – Utgard (Album Review)
Blackened progressive metal is all the rage these days: the metal scene boasts a growing hunger for ever-greater nuance while still craving the destitute abandon…
Amaranthe – Manifest (Album Review)
Sometimes in the convoluted metal world, a band emerges out of nowhere and starts to build something fresh and exciting upon the foundations of an…
Magnolia Bayou – Strange Place (Album Review)
We got those Mississippi blues. The rise and fall of musical trends could be likened to the tides of a mighty ocean, with certain ascendant…