Album Reviews

The greatest selection of albums, reviewed and rated

The First – Take Courage

Join the new wave of British Rock. The First, a band from Cambridgeshire, have released Take Courage, their 11-track second album. This is a melodic, hook-laden disc, rich with anthemic, catchy rock tunes. Widely compared to You Me At Six, the band channels influence from classic rock to power pop-punk, …

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Ferocity – The Sovereign

Ferocity, a Danish death metal band, focuses on truly ferocious vocals, thick buzzsaw stringwork, and solid percussion in a variety of tempos on their second and latest release, The Sovereign. Deep, guttural vocals are “mixed high”, tending to blot out what’s happening underneath. That said, the band seems to have …

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Superfecta – The EP

London’s Superfecta, formed in 2011, have released their debut EP, a four-song effort titled simply The EP. Drawing influence or ‘mojo’ from bands such as Soundgarden, Alter Bridge, Stone Temple Pilots, or Alice In Chains, the modern rock or nu-grunge band focuses each song on a different classic hook of …

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Down The Machine – Everything I Am Not

Caveat: don’t judge a band’s entire output based on one “free” song. This tune, “Everything I Am Not”, by West Yorkshire UK’s Down The Machine, sounds like a cross between industrial bands like Nine Inch Nails, grunge type outfits like Alice In Chains, and modern rock outfits like Audioslave. The …

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Kataklysm – Waiting For The End To Come

A real monster of an album, from one of Death Metal’s all time greats.     When your record label quotes your new album as your finest work to date you know you’re on to a winner. Furthermore, when you realise that Kataklysm have over 20 years of back catalogue …

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The Mission – The Brightest Light

The Mission return with their first album of new songs since 2007's 'Gods Own Bullet', featuring 3/4 of the original classic line up of the band namely Wayne Hussy, Simon Hinkler and Craig Adams with Mike Kelly on drums filling in for missing original member Mick Brown.

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Beissert – ‘Darkness Devil Death’

Dresden’s Beissert may be deeply steeped in Satanism but they have the ballsy bravura needed to take their belief system out of what would many would regard as the traditional format for ‘black metal’ and take it to a new dimension, combining groove metal, industrial and thrash in a way …

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Attacker – Giants Of Canaan

Attacker - Giants Of Canaan Artwork

Even given the huge amount of releases which a website such as ours gets sent on a daily, never mind weekly or even monthly, basis, it’s hard to imagine that this fifth album by US power metal innovators Attacker fell through our net when it first surfaced earlier this year.  …

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Waves Like Walls – ‘Brain As A Weapon’

Waves Like Walls Artwork

What is it with fucking metalcore bands and references to water in their name?  It seems to be that one band picks a theme and every other mutha on the scene tries to come up with the least imaginative variation thereupon… While this German five piece may wish their name …

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Beretta Suicide – ‘Beretta Suicide’

Beretta Suicide Cover Art

Apparently brought together by their mutual love of “tattoos and low slung guitars”, Leeds trio Beretta Suicide play good old-fashioned street punk mixed with rock ‘n’ roll and a not inconsiderable dose of backstreet glam, combining the carefree spirit of the likes of The Babysitters and Last Of The Teenage …

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Claim The Throne – ‘Forged In Flame’

This third album from Australia’s Claim The Throne is very much in the blackened, melodic death metal meets folk vein of Amon Amarth, and most definitely will appeal to fans of the Swedish overlords. While Australia itself may not have a long folk tradition of its own – drawing as …

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Aosoth – IV

Aosoth Cover Art

This fourth album from French blackened death metallers Aosoth is suitably dark, punishingly brutal and apocalyptically nihilistic. Built on barbaric rhythms and crushing riffs, topped with the sort of evil vocal that the Lord of Hades himself would struggle to imitate, it’s by turns depressively dirge-like and neck-snappingly fast, but …

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letlive. – ‘The Blackest Beautiful’

letlive - The Blackest Beautiful Artwork

The word emotional has been denigrated in recent years by it’s association with the dreaded ‘core scene, and its attribution to a raft of bands who have used the pretence of caring what goes on in the world about them to worm their way into the hearts, and souls, of …

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Masterly – ‘Sin Identidad’

Masterly - Sin Identidad Artwork

This Barcelona mob get off to a less than masterly start by failing the first test of any band, never mind one from an overseas country submitting their material to an English language website:  not only do they provide very little supporting material – no biog, no background information, not …

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