Album Reviews

@planetmosh reviews Cobras and Fire (The Mastermind Redux) by .@monstermagnetnj on .@NapalmRecords Almost a year ago I reviewed Milking the Stars: A Re-imagining of Last Patrol.  Around the same time I had the privilege of interviewing singer and the creative force behind Monster Magnet, Dave Wyndorf.  It was twenty minutes …

Slovenian melodic black-death metal act Dalkhu has released its latest opus, Descend… Into Nothingness. The album contains seven songs, which are an intense mixture of death, black, and even folk metal elements. Guttural, brutal death metal vocals permeate “Pitch Black Cave”, and the other tunes. Like Jeff Walker‘s famed vocal …

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, …

Rough, raw, and reckless, Playfastordie by America’s Bandit is a crazy run through basement-ethic punk, powerviolence, grindcore, and hardcore. The entire presentation is ‘underground’, with a B level mix coupled to new-level punk musicianship. They’ve got the basic beats, chords, and screams down, but need a lot of work on …

This albums biggest stumbling block to the casual listener,  is also the albums biggest asset, and that is Violin player Jean Luc Ponty. Once you accept that there is no lead guitar on this album, just Jon’s exquisite singing and Jean virtuoso violin playing, then you are in for an …

To say that the guys from the “Christian Metal” group Styrper have been busy since the release of ‘No More Hell To Pay‘ nearly two years ago is an understatement.  With most of the members participating in a variety of side projects.rom – Oz Fox working on Bloodgood’s ‘Dangerously Close‘ …

The Hollywood Vampires were born in 1972, in the upstairs bar of the Rainbow Bar & Grill on Los Angeles’ notorious Sunset Strip.  The bar infamously was a gathering place for the rock stars living in or passing through (or even passing out in) LA during the heady days of the Seventies …

If you like your thrash metal fast, then look no further – Harlott have that covered, with their brand-spanking new release called Proliferation. The Aussies hailing from Melbourne have all the brutal assault of Slayer or Exodus with melodies not dissimilar to Annihilator. These young lads could be the answer to every old …

British Blues-rock guitarist Chantel McGregor released her debut album in 2011, and since then has been busy touring.  Last year she started work on her second album, and it will be released on 9th October this year.  Although she’s normally described as a Blues or Blues-Rock guitarist, this new album …

@planetmosh reviews Across the Divide by .@FederalCharm Federal Charm are a four piece blues rock band from Manchester, who released their self titled debut album back in 2013.  Their new album Across the Divide will be released on October 2nd, and the band is currently promoting it on tour across the …

Emerging from the shadows to release a full-length record for the first time in five years, America’s The Dead Weather has returned. The group’s third album, Dodge and Burn, finds a reinvigorated band which has embraced its scruffy rocker identity and strength. The quartet maintains a stellar connection, which is …

  Things move incredibly fast in the music world these days, fashions and attitudes change almost on a monthly basis but on the whole, the core values and building blocks of a sub genre in the world of Metal remain, almost, the same. The Symphonic Metal genre being a case …

A creeping melody creeps from the speakers as Undersmile unleash their second full length record with the track “Labyrinths” which has an uneasy atmosphere and has you expecting the worst. No jolt to the system, no hammer to the skull just yet. The cello joins the melancholy after the first …

Michigan melocore monsters The Black Dahlia Murder are one of those bands who, over the past decade or so, have slowly crept up on fans and critics alike, spending their time building a critical mass of both acclaim and success which has resulted in them also becoming regarded as one …