Album Reviews

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 …

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 …

Stone Temple Pilots pull in Linkin Park's very own Chester Bennington on vocals to release five track EP High Rise that shows STP to be very much alive and kicking.

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.

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 …

Bastions are a four-piece band who play unmerciless, in-your-face, hardcore which pulls very few punches and has even less pretensions in its ambition – which is to drive a hole straight through your chest, up through your neck (with the objective of getting this particular part of your anatomy snapping …

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.  …

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 …

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 …

Looking from the outside in, or from west to east if you want to be geographic, it would appear that the Indian death metal scene is very much dominated by one person:  we could be (and probably are) very much mistaken in this assumption, but given that a certain Demonstealer …

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 …

Each memory evoking disc is well thought out. Treating the listener to some of the mainstay classics that everyone has and plays, along with tracks that you may have forgotten about or not just heard in years!

...this is a full on metal album, full of huge chugging guitars, great vocals and one which seems to embrace the anarchic spirit of punk...

...there are no fillers on this album; the song-craft, musicianship and intensity have all combined perfectly to make a record in which all involved should be incredibly proud.

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 …

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 …

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 …

Oxford trio Headcount’s sound has previously been described, elsewhere I hasten to add, as “Adam And The Ants being sodomized by Therapy?”. Certainly, on the basis of this new album, I can see the former comparison, as well as to the likes of Teardrop Explodes and maybe early, commercialized, stoner, …

Die No More are a British Metal band from Penrith, Cumbria. Formed in 2011 they started out playing under the name of Dynamo but changed their name to Die No More earlier this year, due to foreseeable issues with magician Dynamo, before announcing the release of their début album Blueprint. …

Chapter Zero is the latest album from Blackpool Punk/Rock Band The Senton Bombs. Formed in 2004 as The Terrorists they have already released four Demos and two studio albums, ‘Sweet Chin Music’ and’ Gambit’. Signed to STP Records in March 2013, Chapter Zero is their first label released album. With …