Album Reviews

I suspect many of the people reading this review weren’t even born when Leslie West played one of the biggest shows of his career, when in 1969 he played the legendary Woodstock festival as part of the band Mountain.  So he’s been around for a long time, but he’s not …

Having released their excellent debut album in May – and despite vocalist Lyla D’Souza expecting her first child around the time of release – London quintet Kill For Eden aren’t hanging around with this hard-hitting triptych of an EP. The three songs are fiery and intense, filled with true rock …

In the 1990’s, if you were in a death metal band, you were well-off if you could claim Florida, New York, or Chicago as your hometown. Each locale had something distinct to offer – NY had it’s slam “NYDM”, Florida had bands who pushed the genre to greater extremes like …

Jesse Damon is a renowned artist as a solo singer, songwriter, and guitarist foremost, but has also been the front man for the hugely popular melodic hard rock act Silent Rage since the band’s inception back in the mid 80’s. Silent Rage had four critically acclaimed albums released, including the …

Yet another all-star project by Italian brothers Amos and Pierpaulo Monti, this time recruiting Wheels Of Fire vocalist Davide Barbieri to their ranks, along with a veritable who’s who of guests from the entire spectrum of the European AOR scene, this eponymous debut album is nothing more and nothing less …

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, …

Ferocity, a Danish death metal band, focuses on truly ferocious vocals, thick buzzsaw stringwork, and solid percussion in a variety of tempos on their second and latest release, The Sovereign. Deep, guttural vocals are “mixed high”, tending to blot out what’s happening underneath. That said, the band seems to have …

London’s Superfecta, formed in 2011, have released their debut EP, a four-song effort titled simply The EP. Drawing influence or ‘mojo’ from bands such as Soundgarden, Alter Bridge, Stone Temple Pilots, or Alice In Chains, the modern rock or nu-grunge band focuses each song on a different classic hook of …

Caveat: don’t judge a band’s entire output based on one “free” song. This tune, “Everything I Am Not”, by West Yorkshire UK’s Down The Machine, sounds like a cross between industrial bands like Nine Inch Nails, grunge type outfits like Alice In Chains, and modern rock outfits like Audioslave. The …

A real monster of an album, from one of Death Metal’s all time greats.     When your record label quotes your new album as your finest work to date you know you’re on to a winner. Furthermore, when you realise that Kataklysm have over 20 years of back catalogue …

Stone Temple Pilots pull in Linkin Park's very own Chester Bennington on vocals to release five track EP High Rise that shows STP to be very much alive and kicking.

The Mission return with their first album of new songs since 2007's 'Gods Own Bullet', featuring 3/4 of the original classic line up of the band namely Wayne Hussy, Simon Hinkler and Craig Adams with Mike Kelly on drums filling in for missing original member Mick Brown.

Dresden’s Beissert may be deeply steeped in Satanism but they have the ballsy bravura needed to take their belief system out of what would many would regard as the traditional format for ‘black metal’ and take it to a new dimension, combining groove metal, industrial and thrash in a way …

Bastions are a four-piece band who play unmerciless, in-your-face, hardcore which pulls very few punches and has even less pretensions in its ambition – which is to drive a hole straight through your chest, up through your neck (with the objective of getting this particular part of your anatomy snapping …

Even given the huge amount of releases which a website such as ours gets sent on a daily, never mind weekly or even monthly, basis, it’s hard to imagine that this fifth album by US power metal innovators Attacker fell through our net when it first surfaced earlier this year.  …

What is it with fucking metalcore bands and references to water in their name?  It seems to be that one band picks a theme and every other mutha on the scene tries to come up with the least imaginative variation thereupon… While this German five piece may wish their name …

Apparently brought together by their mutual love of “tattoos and low slung guitars”, Leeds trio Beretta Suicide play good old-fashioned street punk mixed with rock ‘n’ roll and a not inconsiderable dose of backstreet glam, combining the carefree spirit of the likes of The Babysitters and Last Of The Teenage …

Looking from the outside in, or from west to east if you want to be geographic, it would appear that the Indian death metal scene is very much dominated by one person:  we could be (and probably are) very much mistaken in this assumption, but given that a certain Demonstealer …

This third album from Australia’s Claim The Throne is very much in the blackened, melodic death metal meets folk vein of Amon Amarth, and most definitely will appeal to fans of the Swedish overlords. While Australia itself may not have a long folk tradition of its own – drawing as …