Forrest Gump famously said that “life is like a box of chocolates — you never know what you’re gonna get.” There’s some truth to that. There’s also some truth to this:

Life is like a box of hand grenades with a few of the pins pulled, and you don’t know if you’ve lifted out a live one until it goes off and leaves a bloody stump in place of your arm.

Fortunately, Widow Sunday‘s 2010 album In These Rusted Veins is more like a box of chocolates. From song to song, you don’t know what you’re gonna get, but it’s all sweet. Every now and then, it also blows your arm off.

Sometimes we read album reviews that criticize bands for playing too many different styles of metal on the same album. Sometimes, the criticism is that the band isn’t good enough to pull off all the genre-jumping. Sometimes, it just seems the reviewer thinks a band ought to define its sound and stick to it — apparently for no good reason.

Widow Sunday apparently sees no good reason to be defined by one style or another. They’re also talented enough to pull of a mix of styles without falling flat on any one of them. In These Rusted Veins is almost like a mixtape or a playlist of different bands, except it’s the same band. And they go far beyond simply not falling flat — they crush everything.

In fact, the one constant on the album, despite an impressive range of musical flavors, is that all the songs make you wanna jump up and start bouncing — or slamming into things.  (more after the jump, including a track to hear . . .) Continue reading »