Tag Archives: cd reviews

Staten Island, New York’s Four Nights Gone recently released Resilience, a 5-song EP. This is the band’s second studio effort, professionally recorded at Vudu Studios with producer Mike Watts. Nicely mixed, clear and crisp, Resilience seems to be fairly straightforward, vanilla modern melodic rock: like fellow bands you’d hear on …

Most fans of rock and roll have heard of arena-rock sensation Journey, and this is where they’ll realize they’re familiar with guitarist Neal Schon already. What they may not be aware of is that Schon has a vibrant career as a solo artist as well. So U is Schon’s latest …

Tom G. Warrior (of Hellhammer and Celtic Frost fame) and his newer incarnation, Triptykon, will be performing at select festival dates in 2014 and will be embarking on a full European tour with reunited extreme metallers At The Gates in December 2014. The band has a new platter on offer: 2014’s Melana …

Hampshire, UK rockers Western Sand released a four-song, eponymous EP in 2013. Well-written and well-mixed, the EP is surprisingly polished for a debut. Songs have a nice, smooth idea flow. Tunes are mid-tempo, with chunky rock licks and a big backbeat; just the right amount of dirt for the grab …

British “roots” rockers Wille and the Bandits released their full-length album, Grow, in 2013. This is an 11 track opus, consisting of varied tunes, with a sound fairly far from singer-songwriter folk and Americana that’s conjured up with usual thoughts of ‘roots’. The band has two secrets to their punchy …

Famous Underground‘s vocalist, Nick Walsh, has seen a lot of music come and go during the past 30-odd years. Traditional heavy metal and punk rock gave way to everything from glam to death metal. Right in the middle of heavy metal’s evolution, there were the industrial, power-pop, and grunge trends. …

Gothenburg, Sweden’s Vampire have presented listeners with an eponymous, ten track tour-de-force of intense, dark metal. Combining elements of traditional heavy metal with more extreme subgenres like death and black metal, this foursome has found a time-tested, battle-ready, winning formula. Vampire seems to take some of the best elements from …

Montreal, Canada’s Your Last Wish is a melodic extreme metal outfit featuring founding member Dave Gagne alongside a fresh crop of talented metalhead musicians. The band released 2013’s Desolation through Maple Metal Records. Desolation features 11 tracks of fairly intricately produced “melodeath”, showcasing the vocals of Roxana Bouchard. Tunes feature …

Check this out. The new American band, Conquering Dystopia, has their eponymous instrumental debut album on sale for about $10. Fans and listeners can legally stream the album from the band’s official website for the huge price of FREE though. Yes, in our time of “no free lunch”, this professionally …

Ginger Wildheart, one of the UK’s cult heroes of rock and roll, has completed yet another album, his seventh in just two years. This platter is titled Albion, and is released through Round Records. The number of songs on the disc varies: if you contributed to his PledgeMusic campaign for …

Emerging from a bout with depression, Josh Homme and his Queens Of The Stone Age released their latest, …Like Clockwork, in the summer of 2013. A hungry, eager audience snapped the ten-song disc up, for good reason: it’s catchy, it’s moving, it’s impulsive, it’s sensual, and it’s production is flawless. …

German guitarist Raimund Burke‘s latest full-length effort, Get It 2.0, mixes a keyboard-rich AOR type feel with progressive instrumental rock. The lead guitar parts do seem lyrical in spots, but the album doesn’t seem to jump magically from ‘instrumental rock’ to ‘rock and roll that just happens to be without …

Michigan’s General Bastard (a.k.a Dean Carls) released an 11-song album, Revolution Rock, chock full of old-school punk rock attitude. This full-band effort was recorded at a professional sound studio in Michigan and sounds like it, with clear attack, good balance, and good definition between instruments. Songs have that catchy, simplified …

Absolva have unleashed a “Fan Pack” containing a live cd and dvd, ( though these can be ordered separately ) recorded at the band’s sell-out headline show at Wizzfest, Belgium earlier this year. On the strength of this dvd alone, this british metal trio comprising of Chris Appleton – lead vocals & lead guitar, …

Emperor Chung‘s eponymous debut, released in 2013, establishes the young British band as a promising, multi-talented act to follow. Musically, the 11-track album spans a variety of influences, from classic rock and elements of jazz fusion, to pop-punk and nu-metal. For a debut, it’s heavy on flash, but none of …

True underground black metal bands used to pride themselves on a few things: sparse instrumentation, evil vocals, and what used to be termed “basement production”. True to form, but from 2013, we’re introduced to War Iron, a band from Ireland. Their EP, Of Prophecy And Alchemy, plods along in a …

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, …

Mordecai, a band from London, bring listeners 11 tunes showcased on their debut Undaunted. The band mixes two styles of rock in to their signature: a slower, melodic balladry and a fairly modern rock swagger. They sound vaguely American, but not so ‘in-your-face’. The songs follow, for the most part, …

Badmotorfinger, an Italian hard rock band, released It’s Not The End, a brazen 13-track disc. It’s straight-ahead, catchy, anthemic, guitar-driven hard rock. Modern, confident, and in-your-face music. With no frills, keyboards, or ‘studio effects’, it’s loud, crisp, flashy music for the guitar-friendly audience. With gruff, gritty, lower-register vocals strongly reminiscent …

“Metal is the way… Devil Metal!” The prolific Nunslaughter, a pride and joy of Cleveland Ohio’s live underground metal scene, have birthed a double CD compilation record. Out on the Hell’s Headbangers imprint, The Devil’s Congeries, Vol. I features highlight tracks from some of their collector-grade past 7″ vinyl releases. Channeling …