Tag Archives: cd reviews

Folky acoustic guitar and fiddle introduce listeners to the eponymous 2015 release by Sweden’s metallic and mighty Manegarm. A definite change of pace from 2013’s Legions of the North, featuring many more quiet, acoustic, moody moments, the new disc brings a welcome dynamic back into metal. As with Manegarm’s previous …

Baltimore’s long-disbanded Pessimist reunited in 2014. As a celebration of the re-grouping, the band has decided to re-release three albums. The first reissue, Slaughtering The Faithful, was re-mastered, then released on Halloween, 2015, by Obscure Records. Pessimist was a premier blackened death metal band on the East Coast late last …

Sweden’s long-running death metal stalwart act, Grave, has returned with an aggressive, pummeling new album, titled Out of Respect for the Dead. The disc is a blistering marathon through nine tunes, ranging from mid-length to a nine-plus minute epic. Recorded, mixed, and mastered at the modern, digital Studio Soulless, Out …

Daylight, a self-proclaimed hard working pop-punk band from Barcelona, Spain, has released it’s latest offering, an album called One More Fight. One More Fight contains ten songs of pop-meets-rock-meets the melodic sensibility of punk, delivered on the gentler side. The album’s mix is contemporary, crisp, loud, and clear. The sound …

Welsh alt rock band Dream State have their debut, 5 song EP out, titled Conssquences. The band states that they draw inspiration from melodic hardcore, and the EP seems to back this up, with melodic arrangements, well-sung female vocals by Charlotte-Jayne Gilpin, and interesting instrumental breaks and tones. The band …

Munster, Germany is the hometown of modern melodic metalcore act Idle Class. The band’s newest album, Of Glass and Paper, contains eleven tracks of melodic, fairly fizzy music. This particular breed of music is oft panned as “the screamo stuff”. Wildly popular for heavy music, metalcore enjoys working with a …

Portland, Oregon’s Cemetery Lust are very sincere flatterers of the early extreme thrash metal invasion’s pillars: Slayer, Kreator, and a few others. On Screams Of The Violated, the revivalists’s eight song re-release, it pays homage to these forerunner bands in spades. To state this more plainly, these guys sound like …

A posthumous release for bassist Bones, Evil Army‘s Violence and War is a five track blast through death-thrash. These three Memphis denizens kick things off with a killer divebomb, letting listeners know they mean business. They’ve got a maniacal, rip your head off direction established right away. Songs range from …

A certain faction of the black metal fandom prefers raw, unpolished music, because it sounds more true or authentic to them. Ruach Raah, from Portugal, has arrived to add its spin on metal music to the genre’s already immense ranks. Hate Fanaticism, the band’s ten song album, is a mid-paced, …

A relic from extreme metal’s distant past, Monastery‘s Ripping Terror 91 demo seems to be part historical documentation and part nostalgia release. This trio of acclaimed musicians (Sinister‘s Aad Kloosterwaard and Ron van de Polder, plus Entombed‘s Lars Rosenberg) were still fresh faces in the death metal scene in 1991, …

“Mr. Falwell, you are not my god.” bluntly states Paolo Rossi, at the end of Wasted Youth‘s 1986 release, a six song EP titled Get Out Of My Yard!. Channeling classic punk rock in every sense of the phrase, this disc scratches an itch to hear genuine, vintage high-energy music, …

  Guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani has released his latest studio album, titled Shockwave Supernova. The California native’s all-instrumental record explores a fairly loose, abstract concept of an alter ego, named Shockwave Supernova. The songs outline and follow this superhuman persona through journeys across stages both worldwide and intragalactically. This 15th …

Veteran German and Dutch extreme thrash-death act Dew-Scented has released its tenth and latest studio effort, titled Intermination, on Metal Blade Records. The digital edition of Intermination contains 15 tracks of high speed malevolence that promises to sweep rage and fury across the airwaves. The band seeks to build inter-album …

Fans of the original wave of Swedish death metal are in for a treat, from Entrails‘s latest release, Obliteration. As the band says, it’s ten tracks of “death metal and nothing else.” Entrails formed around the same time that bands like Entombed and Grave were just beginning to garner some …

After selling upwards of 80 million albums as a part of rock titan Journey, guitarist Neal Schon has released his latest solo offering, Vortex. For Vortex, a two disc set, Schon was joined in the studio by keyboardist Igor Len, and fellow Journeyman, drummer Steve Smith. Schon has the freedom and the space to explore …

Melbourne, Australia’s Deez Nuts brought forth their fourth studio album, Word Is Bond, in the spring of 2015. Word Is Bond is a 14 track disc filled with monolithic, aggressive hardcore crossover thrash metal that will sear your feet to the floor and melt your face simultaneously. The overall sonic …

SixStringNoise, from Greece, has independently released Snake Side Brotherhood, a ten song album. This offering, the band’s third, shows a natural progression in musicianship, songwriting, and technical mastery. As a duo, Markos and Alex have come up with a cohesive batch of songs which run a gamut from grunge or …

Bringing forth their 12th studio album, Sweden’s Unleashed has, with Dawn of the Nine, successfully continued an aggressive, fairly melodic saga. Their previous release, Odalheim, released in 2012, began this journey. Let’s pretend you’re a new fan, perhaps just introduced to death metal a little while ago, and your virgin …

Quasi-witty or ‘cheesy’ title aside, Terror Empire‘s second full-length release, The Empire Strikes Black, is one pummeling slab of old-school cool death metal. A young Portugese band, founded in 2009, Terror Empire sound a bit like they’re part of the “revivalist” faction discussed previously on PlanetMosh. The concept is simple: …

Italy’s Game Over, founded in 2008, has presented fans with a crisp, 13-track re-release of their 2012 debut disc, For Humanity. A word being thrown around these days in some metal circles is “revival”, with practitioners labeled “revivalists”. Thrash and speed metal arguably had their heyday around the same time …