LAST WEEK TODAY: DEATH BY STEREO / FACELESS BURIAL / IMHA TARIKAT / KRALLICE

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Aug 132020
 


Krallice

 

(Andy Synn wrote the following compilation of reviews.)

It seems to me that, over the years, the constant cascade of new albums has swollen into a never-ending, unrelenting, flood, to the point where it often feels like we’re almost drowning in new releases.

The only way to cope, I’ve found, is to simply accept that you’re not going to be able to cover everything. There’s just not enough hours in the day to properly preview, review, analyse, and criticise, all of it, especially if you also want to try and maintain some general standards of quality and insight (which, let’s be honest, isn’t necessarily a concern for everyone…).

That being said, a bit of catch-up coverage never goes amiss, which is why I’m dedicating today’s article to four artists who each dropped their newest record – in one case with little prior warning – last Friday. Continue reading »

FIVE OF MY FAVOURITE . . . BANDS YOU WOULDN’T EXPECT ME TO LIKE

 Off Topic  38 Responses »
Aug 022012
 

(Here we have another of our UK scribe Andy Synn’s collections of five favorite things. The last such post was about five of his favorite guitar solos. This one is going to take us outside our usual stomping grounds.)

Ok, so if you follow the site at all closely, I’m sure you’ve got at least a vague idea of the areas each of the regular writers tends to specialise in. You might even be able to make reasonable predictions about what bands we listen to, and what bands/albums coming up we’d be expected to like and give coverage to.

You’d know, for example, that my bread and butter these days is black metal, the more interesting the better, with a side helping of more melodically inclined (but still heavy as hell) death metal. I’m not so much of a thrash or hardcore guy as I was when I first started my metal journey, and while I still have a soft spot for some metalcore (and its ilk), that’s very much on a band-by-band basis. Overall though, I like metal for its variety, for its honesty and integrity, and for the skill and effort it takes to compose.

So what I’m thinking is that I’ll throw away any remaining kvlt or tr00 cred I have left, and namecheck 5 bands – all peripherally related to rock/metal – who I absolutely love, but who I don’t think any of you would guess at in a million years. Continue reading »

GUILTY PLEASURES NO. 1

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  27 Responses »
Oct 012011
 

(TheMadIsraeli confesses to a guilty pleasure.  The jury is deliberating his sentence.)

Ok… we all have guilty pleasures, right?  I’m not the only one, right?  Inside all of us is that total douche who listens to Circa Survive and masturbates to his poster of “The Rev” directly across from his bed TO SOME DEGREE OR ANOTHER.  Right?  You do that, don’t you?

So at the risk of losing all respect and reverence (begging the question how much I had to begin with), I present to you: Guilty pleasures.  So who is my band of choice for this first installment?

Death By Stereo.

So, who is Death By Stereo?  Well, the band started out as a hardcore punk outfit, but guitarist Dan Palmer joined them, and after 2 albums they apparently decided that the hardcore punk sound sucked on its own and decided they needed to re-vamp themselves.  After the band decided to take a small break and regroup, they unleashed their third album, Into The Valley Of Death.  Suddenly, they were taking the sounds of punk, thrash, hardcore, melodeath, metalcore, and pop and mixing them together into one cohesive sound.  I mean, just look at their list of primary influences. (after the jump . . .) Continue reading »