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!
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…
DEAD CROSS – II (Album Review)
Scatterbrained antics beget unconventional heaviness. Life is like a box of chocolates and you never know what you’ll get according to Forrest Gump, and if…
DEVIN TOWNSEND – Lightwork (Album Review)
The curse of crafting monuments is having to outdo them. I suppose we can’t blame Devin Townsend for following the career-defining “Empath” (and let’s be…
DRAGONLAND – The Power of the Nighstar (Album Review)
It has been more than two decades since listeners first basked in the unrivaled glory of a battle on the Ivory Plains. In the ten…
LAMB OF GOD – Omens (Album Review)
A prophecy of impending heaviness is proclaimed. Since the early 90s the American metal scene has been on a perennial quest for the ultimate expression…
STRIGOI – Viscera (Album Review)
In the 90’s and early 2000’s, one of the most profoundly important heavy music scenes was pumping out masterpiece after masterpiece over at Peaceville Records,…
FALLUJAH – Empyrean (Album Review)
It is often said that in life, there are but two certainties, death and taxes. However, I would argue that there is a third constant,…
GET THE SHOT – Merciless Destruction (Album Review)
Relentless fury; that’s the best way to describe the latest assault on ears from Get The Shot. The 5-piece hardcore group from Quebec have just…
QUEENSRŸCHE – Digital Noise Alliance (Album Review)
I guess the old adage is true: What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. Such appears to be the case with Queensrÿche, who have…
JOSHUA BATTEN – Learn to Live Again (Album Review)
“If I hear everybody’s story, I’ll forget to write a story of my own”. This final line to the chorus of “Everybody’s Story” is well-heeded…
SLIPKNOT – The End, So Far (Album Review)
Few bands have left an imprint on the world in the way that Slipknot has. Since 1999, Slipknot’s music has been violently grabbing the throat…
Stratovarius – Survive (Album Review)
I had a torrid but brief love affair with power metal in the late 90s. Like most flings one has in their late teens and…
Counterparts – A Eulogy For Those Still Here (Album Review)
7 albums in, and lack of energy is most certainly not a problem for Counterparts. The Canadian quintet have knuckled down and dropped a huge…