Spotlights are part of a legion of bands (see also: Holy Fawn, Niights) who take their shoegaze and post-metal influences beyond the My Bloody Valentine and Deftones aping of their peers to create something they can truly call their own. Their last album Love & Decay made my Top 20 list last year, so naturally … Continue reading Spotlights – We Are All Atomic EP Review
Several years ago I had the pleasure of seeing Crowbar open for Carcass. While I was a much bigger Carcass fan at the time, I was floored by both bands' performances. They're on different ends of the subgenre spectrum, but in the moment the booking made sense. However, the thought didn't occur to me until … Continue reading Beggar – Compelled To Repeat Review
Katie Crutchfield, a.k.a Waxahatchee, brings us a serious Album of the Year contender with her latest project, Saint Cloud. In her most stripped-down work to date, Crutchfield takes influences from folk, country, and Americana to create a refreshing expansion to her sound. The lyrics throughout Saint Cloud offer vivid imagery of open fields, big sky, … Continue reading Waxahatchee – Saint Cloud Review
Nu metal is making a comeback whether I like it or not. This can be a good thing in the hands of an eclectic band like Code Orange, but it gets real bleak when major metal publications write a million articles titled something like "23.1416 Nu Metal Albums that Turn 23.1416 Today". On their debut … Continue reading Imonolith – State of Being Review
Hyborian are cursed in the sense that every review of them mentions Mastodon and Baroness. But it's hard not to - Hyborian takes cues from those bands' riff-driven Leviathan and Blue Record periods respectively, but with vocal heights that neither band could reach at the time. Their 2017 debut album Volume I was top notch. … Continue reading Hyborian – Volume II Review
"Progressive metal" can be a loaded term. On one end, you could be in for some engaging, envelope-pushing music. On the other, you'd be hearing dudes with gauged ears ripping off Meshuggah and Tesseract. While I can't speak to the state of Vancouver band Neck of the Woods' ear piercings, I can say their new … Continue reading Neck of the Woods – The Annex of Ire Review
Huntsmen are a band that describes themselves as "Americana metal". Or at least they were - their latest album Mandala of Fear sounds much more post-metal, with sludge, doom, and prog blended in as well. Don't get me wrong, there's still a good amount of their folk and country influences present too. Maybe think Americana … Continue reading Huntsmen – Mandala of Fear Review
