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!
Celtic lore and mighty mountain heights. Over the past couple decades there has been a fair degree of tribute paid to Celtic culture among various…
If you were born no later than 1985, you might remember a time when there was still intelligent life in rock-pop music. Bands like The…
Once more down the yellow brick road. There is a fine line between genius and insanity, or so the old adage goes, and few names…
To anyone in the progressive music community, Jordan Rudess needs no introduction. Having joined Dream Theater as a full-time keyboard player in 1999, he’s spent…
Jon Anderson’s solo career has been reborn and reborn again throughout his career. From mystic prog to folk to rock to pop to new age…
Nola comes to Maryland. The outer fringes of metal’s extremities are noted for their pungent aroma of mental and physical decay, like a marshy moat…
Holy war for the modern age. Though the metal world has been an ever-expanding one since the year of its inception, in recent years it…
From rivalry, improvement is born. Music is not something that you can just quit, according to the 1992 Beethoven Lives Upstairs depiction of said legendary…
When a musician likens their spiritual beliefs and world outlook to “Jedi,” they are welcome to my attention straightaway. Prog and power metal vocalist extraordinaire…
A dragon’s evolution is a gradual one. Undaunted by changing lineups and grand strides of stylistic evolution that border on subgenre-hopping at times, the Swedish…
Schuldiner’s dragon still lives. When the topic of the good old days is brought up, the question that naturally arises is “which good old days”?…
Founded in 2016 with the goal of “unleash[ing] feelings and experiences by telling stories and drawing symbols,” progressive folk trio Cellar Darling quickly became one…
Upon the dissolution of his eponymous Project, Devin Townsend openly stated that he’d been considering using his considerable skills to make something more marketable. While…
If college taught me one thing (it didn’t,) it’s to not bury the lead (and not split infinitives). So, I’ll spare you from beating around…
The worst part about being late to a party, at least if you’re a non-social eremite like I am, is having to gauge the vibe,…
Staring into its deadlights… The story of Iron Fire is one of perseverance, as one of Denmark’s two premier millennial power metal exports (the other…
The underworld rarely sounds so triumphant. The exploits, or sagas of the Viking age have been a fairly frequent topic of lyrical emulation in the…
The fall of mankind’s soundtrack. For those uninitiated into the world of the more extreme fringes of 80s thrash metal, where the early signs of…
The end finds a new beginning. Though many have come forth to construct their version of the colossal structure of impending woe that is epic…
A common concept between seasoned mountaineers is that the Seven Second Summits – the second-highest mountains of each of the seven continents – are a…
There are few challenges like coming out with a debut solo album when your day job is widely known and much loved. There’s really no…
Not every bassist has ambitions to forge their own songwriting vehicle, much less form a band and release a trio of engaging and challenging albums.…
The hero’s eye still beholds the distant horizon. The test of time has generally proven to be an easy pass for the high-impact, fantasy obsessed…
For many music fans, or pop culture in general, 2016 has sort of gone down as the year [a lot of] the music died. David…
We all have that relative or close friend we want to see succeeding and finding their place in life. For the longest time, Queensrÿche seemed…
The black-clad beast gets a sexier upgrade. The musical journey of Finnish songwriter and arguably ironic innovator Anton Kabanen has been, if nothing else, impossible…
Friends and fans of the progressive rock community might have gotten to know Casey McPherson as the front-man for the art-pop/retro-prog band Flying Colors. This…
Go on a cruise, form a band. Yes, it can happen to you, it can happen to me. And it happened to UMÆ. The annual…
This old raven still cries the loudest. Heavy metal, like a fine wine, tends to get better with age, or at least that’s what the…
If there is one artist near to the Sonic Perspectives readership wheelhouse, requiring little if any introduction, it would be prog-metal reigning monarchs Dream Theater,…
It’s kind of unbelievable, but it dawned on me recently that The Dillinger Escape Plan’s monumental mission statement Calculating Infinity will turn 20 in the…
Macbeth’s downfall dons the black crown again. It is both a blessing and a curse to be relegated to the shadow of another, but that…
Since their inception in 2014, British classic hard rockers Inglorious have seen almost as many lineup changes as role-model Whitesnake in its first ten years.…
Beer is a crazy uncle’s best friend. To the uninitiated into the world of Germany’s grand thrash metal tradition, ergo anyone who has been living…
There are a handful of bands, such as AC/DC, who have successfully built a lengthy career making the same record over and over again. Sometimes…
While the world loves to compartmentalize and genrefy, there’s something gleeful about finding a musical experience that makes one scratch one’s head and wonder where…
