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!

HAKEN – Fauna (Album Review)
Ambitious, innovative, and genre-bending British progressive metalists Haken return to the scene with “Fauna”, the highly-anticipated followup to the 1-2 punch of “Vector” (2018) and…

HELLRIPPER – Warlocks Grim & Withered Hags (Album Review)
What mysteries and miracles await where indomitable darkness meets the unrelenting fury of galloping guitars? The answer may be found in the dark hymns offered…

AVATAR – Dance Devil Dance (Album Review)
The zany and ambitious metal quintet AVATAR is back with its 9th album, appropriately called “Dance Devil Dance”. This time, the AVATAR lore stops around a…

eMOLECULE – The Architect (Album Review)
Simon Collins and Kelly Nordstrom have worked together for nearly two decades but it wasn’t until 2020 that they decided to form a new band…

SOLSTICE – Light Up (Album Review)
What a wonderful surprise to discover this new album from Solstice, lighting up like a summer’s breeze even in the thick of winter. Before we…

KATATONIA – Sky Void of Stars (Album Review)
Shining in the Void: Katatonia returns with new album Katatonia, Sweden’s masters of melancholic metal return with their latest album, “Sky Void of Stars.” Never…

FROZEN DAWN – The Decline of Enlightened Gods (Album Review)
Occasionally, it feels like in black metal’s quest to evolve and incorporate new elements, some of the original rawness has been lost, the days of…

WE CAME FROM SPACE – Overlords (Album Review)
Progressive rock can be a serious place. For every whimsical prankster prog band out there, there’s at least five others who take their craft probably…

THE WINERY DOGS – III (Album Review)
Just over seven years since their previous album – in other words, a dog’s year – the wait is over and we have a new…

TWILIGHT FORCE – At The Heart Of Wintervale (Album Review)
Into a world of magic, we fly. Ever since metal music’s conception amid a sea of heavy rocking and mystical pursuits courtesy of the late…

CIVIL WAR – Invaders (Album Review)
Setting sails with a new captain at the helm. Originally conceived by four former members of Sabaton as a proper continuation of said band’s musical…

LEPER COLONY – Leper Colony (Album Review)
Death metal has in its just under 40 years as a genre, given birth to some of the most diverse and genre-bending expressions of rage…

BEYOND THE BLACK – Beyond The Black (Album Review)
Primed and polished to a lustrous shine. Despite the explosion of female-fronted symphonic metal acts that coincided with the mid-2010s being a major topic in…

MITHRIDATUM – Harrowing (Album Review)
To blend active, engaging music with a sense of space and isolation is a task so seemingly oxymoronic that many bands never attempt to do…

DAMANEK – Making Shore (Album Review)
For whatever reason, the first two records by Damanek more or less flew under the radar. And that’s a shame, for they are well-worth the…

RONNIE ROMERO – Raised on Heavy Radio (Album Review)
It was almost one year ago that we had the opportunity to have a listen with Ronnie Romero and his covers album called “Raised on…

RIVERSIDE – ID.Entity (Album Review)
Welcome back, Riverside. You have been through the wringer this past decade with the loss of cornerstone Piotr Grudziński on guitar in 2016, yet you…

OBITUARY – Dying of Everything (Album Review)
A new laboratory of lethal germs has been opened. Opinions may vary as to which subset of American death metal is the sickest, with a…

CEASELESS TORMENT – Victory Or Death (Album Review)
Northern European thrash served up extra nasty. Thrash metal can work a few different ways, but it is generally stipulated that subtlety is its antithesis,…

LORD OF THE LOST – Blood & Glitter (Album Review)
German gothic metallers Lord of the Lost topped charts and wowed audiences across the world in 2021 upon release of the stunning double-album “Judas.” Here…

THEM – Fear City (Album Review)
Terror strikes at the dawn of the 80s. Former King Diamond/Mercyful Fate tribute band turned spinoff homage band Them has been a fairly steady presence…

ANOMALY – Somewhere Within The Pines (Album Review)
In the minds of the deranged and twisted lies a medley of sickness. Narcissism, paranoia, sadism and rage. In “Somewhere Within the Pines” these dastardly…

THRESHOLD – Dividing Lines (Album Review)
What did you do during the pandemic? If you’re the English prog-metal group Threshold, you plow right ahead with the next project. It turns out…

ABOUT US – About Us (Album Review)
It is refreshing when quality rock and metal spread to all the corners of the globe. We were excited when Girish and the Chronicles came…

BINARY ORDER – Messages From the Deep (Album Review)
What exactly makes science fiction so alluring? Is it the flashing neon lights of a dystopia’s rainy city, or is it the sprawling expanse of…

CANDLEMASS – Sweet Evil Sun (Album Review)
Can you think of a band more renown for the innovation, quality and longevity in the doom metal universe than Candlemass? No doubt “Solitude” as…

LA MUERTE – Sortilegia (Album Review)
Straggling the border between rock and metal is always a dangerous game for a band, but gothic metal has long found success in the every…

AS PARADISE FALLS – Medicine/Madness (EP Review)
15-minute EPs aren’t often the highlight of many peoples listening palettes, often they’re hype builders, or perhaps a sort of proof of concept for a…

SOEN – Atlantis (Album Review)
Soen have long been heralded as brilliant musicians, and they are often considered masters of heavy, yet soulful progressive music. They have drifted comfortably across…

ABDUCTION – Black Blood (Album Review)
It is often easy to forget against images of lush Nordic forests and twisted stories of betrayal and murder that Scandinavia is not actually the…

LEATHER – We Are The Chosen (Album Review)
The chosen metallic odes arise! The horizons of heavy metal have broadened quite substantially in the past four decades, but there is definitely something to…

INVICTUS – Unstoppable (Album Review)
For ages, debut albums have often been regarded as the purest form of a band’s sound, before they seek a broader appeal, or perhaps a…

CHELSEA GRIN – Suffer In Hell (Album Review)
“Four years, four f**king years,” vocalist Tom Barber exclaimed to me during my almost 2-hour interview with him. This passionate outburst was related to the…

XAON – The Lethean (Album Review)
As December looms near and “Album of the Year” lists begin to come together, there is one 2022 release that should not be missed: Xaon’s…

ALTER BRIDGE – Pawns And Kings (Album Review)
Alter Bridge sit quite comfortably as the cream of the crop of the modern hard rock scene, staking their claim to fame with unparalleled polish…

ERIC GILLETTE – Covers Vol. 1 (Album Review)
A lot can be said about the last few Neal Morse releases, but perhaps the most eye opening was the addition of multi instrumentalist Eric…