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!
You thought you knew exactly what you’d get with an album that bears the Nightwish name. You were wrong. Shying away from their well-earned reputation…
Hypnotic, immersive, absorbing, enchanting, consuming. These are just a few of the adjectives we could use to describe “Chants From Another Place,” Jonathan Hultén’s first…
Were we to present you with a new album, and you were to only know that the band is a metal band active since 1972,…
Horror has always coexisted beautifully alongside extreme metal, sometimes melding to the point where they are grotesquely indistinguishable. French death-grind act Benighted have adopted horror…
Where contemplation and realization collide. The United States may well have been playing catch up for the better part of 20 years in relation to…
In an era where an entire symphony can be conjured by a single soul in the warmth of a quiet studio, there is an inescapable…
“Do you have any idea what it’s like to take a man’s life?” These words run like ice down one’s spine, their cold indifference instantly…
Music is not a destination, but a journey. Sometimes the boldest of expeditions are made in a tired wandering through the hazy humidity of summer,…
The last year has been a bountiful cornucopia for melodic rock and the AOR scene at large. Just a few highlights would include Revolution Saints,…
It’s easy enough to dream of being a star, but alternative metal band Sydney Fate bring forward a full-length debut that proves they’re more than…
Proving that guitars aren’t really necessary to make great rock music, the Italian project Master Boot Record has made waves in underground circles with Yngwie-inspired…
Grand anthems for the lupine spirit in us all. When a fairly young band makes an impressive splash into the scene, the force behind said…
With a fundamentally metal sound that reaches into genres as diverse as dubstep, baroque, funk, and Arabic folk, the elusive Parisian project known as Igorrr…
Although 2020 has been pretty chaotic generally speaking, when it comes to music it brought quite a few excellent releases so far. Vancouver prog death…
A titanic explosion to rock the pillars of creation. It would be quite a stretch to say that Testament, one of the premier thrash outfits…
“At twenty-three, am I too old?” While up and coming songwriter and guitar-slinger Joshua Batten muses about the impact of his ever-increasing age in “Falling…
“Shapeshifting” is an apt title for the newest release by Joe Satriani, who has somehow managed to carve out a surprisingly long-lasting career by recording…
As a genre, progressive rock provides one of the most broad and versatile canvases for artists to make a statement, free from a number of…
With 2019’s excellent “The Door to Doom,” Candlemass turned the clock back 23 years by bringing back original vocalist Johan Längqvist. Evidently, the seven-year gap…
When inspiration strikes, an artist follows the call. So when Jon Courtney started writing material that felt more akin to his old progressive rock unit…
Though some may regard the responsibility of bearing hope where there is none to be a burden, it is a weight that August Burns Red…
Having already turned heads with their all-star lineup and intense singles, Imonolith has generated a following eagerly awaiting their debut album “State of Being.” Drummer…
Where we’re going, we won’t need eyes. Sometimes the best way to get out of a rut is to forsake all the latest fads and…
History’s most memorable villains weren’t born in corpse paint and hellfire, but instead made their mark in a godless desert with wide-brimmed hats and silver…
The year 1932 saw a young and brilliant Texan by the name of Robert E. Howard, still a fledgling author in the budding world of…
What does space sound like? A voice of science and reason tells us that the abyss of space is silent to human ears, a vacuum…
David Reece, perhaps best known for lending his vocal talents to Accept’s 1989 “Eat the Heat” album, as well as more recently with Bonfire, continues…
The machine will never be satiated. Any artist that opts to buck an existing trend will tend to do so out of individual initiative, as…
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Once early heavy metal and hard rock hit their stride, those early sounds were forever immortalized in musical…
Sometimes a throwback can prove quite novel. In metal, as in most things, old tricks prove to be the best ones, hence the ongoing revival…
Five years can be a lifetime. Over their nearly (3 months shy as I write) 30-year career, My Dying Bride has never had such a…
It’s never too late for a debut solo album. Although Gabriel Agudo has been active as a vocalist in the progressive rock world for some…
Though the creative breadth metal has certainly matured in the fifty years since Black Sabbath first broke onto the scene, the hunger for constant evolution…
Frontiers Music continues to surprise us this year with interesting releases. After the recent arrival of hard rock gems like Dirty Shirley and Black Swan’s…
Like a pure metallic boot to the skull. The years may be taking their toll on America’s original heavy metal prognosticators of all things Conan…
It’s already been postulated that we long ago reached peak tech death, to the point that the only thing distinguishing bands is songwriting ability. Talent?…
