Album Reviews

‘High Country’ could, quite possibly, be described as The Sword‘s “happy album”.  And that’s no mere throwaway descriptive on our part, but a summarization of frontman John Cronise’s take on the opus:  as he explains, when he started to write the songs for ‘High Country’, he found himself at something of …

Oncology is the branch of medicine that deals with the treatment of tumours – and particularly cancerous ones – while a metastasis is a secondary growth of a malignant tumour, separate from the primary one.  However, PM is a music website not a medical one, and therefore the particular branch …

The Burning Crows released their first album “Behind the Veil” back in 2013, and immediately set itself up as one of my albums of the year, now two years later, the boys are back with album number two “Murder at the Gin House”, can they repeat the success that “Behind …

Thrash metal classics should be short, sharp and straight to the point. Slayer proved this with the 1986 release of Reign In Blood at just under the half an hour mark but Los Angeles based did it a year earlier with their debut Vicious Attack. The album has been re-issued …

Some bands treat their debut studio albums as a tentative step in their recording career whilst others go for the throat. Thankfully, County Kildare based quartet Stereo Nasty have taken the latter option with Nasty By Nature.  Early promise was shown by a three track EP just over a year …

Fast and furious. Straight from sunny California to your ears with deep dark apocalyptic sound and brilliant atmosphere. That’s right, it is Cattle Decapitation with their upcoming 7th studio album, called The Anthropocene Extinction. The Anthropocene Extinction is a fine set of 12 fierce and simultaneously depressive tracks with the total …

Another treat for me to review this week, this time from Tennessee based Heavy-Metallers Straight Line Stitch, Transparency is the follow up to their self-titled EP release in 2014.  Instantly I was captivated on my first listen to the truly beautiful intro track ‘Out of the Shadows’ even after a …

Corrosion of Conformity‘s Reed Mullin and My Ruin‘s Mick Murphy decided, along with Jon Lousteau as producer, to create a star-studded, ever-changing group of guests that would convene, as Teenage Time Killers, and create an album. Given the celebrity status for about half of the guests, at first glance this …

I first heard soon to be released single ‘Justice Injustice’ when I was reviewing the Wildfire Festival in Lanark, Scotland in June. The song was that good I made it my highlight of Kaine’s  set and the recorded version certainly hits the mark. Lead vocalist Rage Sadler angrily barks like …

Maiden UniteD started nine years ago as a special one-off for the Dutch Iron Maiden fan club, but then evolved into a project which has toured regularly (or as regularly as they can fit in around their other bands), and released albums – “Remembrance” is their third album. At first …

Love Zombies are a young British band with an American singer who have burst onto the scene in the last few months and who have already supported bands including Ash, The Primitives and Rock Goddess as well as playing Camden Rocks and Download festival.  Impressive stuff for a new band, …

Frank DiMino is best known to rockers of a certain vintage as the frontman of US glamsters Angel, the band discovered by Kiss bassist Gene Simmons playing in a New York nightclub and subsequently signed to the band’s Casablanca label, for whom they recorded a series of acclaimed albums in …

Florida-based power duo Cave Of Swimmers trace their roots to an early friendship developed in 1999 by Guillermo “GE” Perez and Arturo “Toro” Garcia when they were both only 15 and still in fourth grade in their native Caracas, Venezuala.   The duo relocated to Miami in the early 2000s and continued …

  This album actually saw the light of day a few months ago now but having only heard it for the first time recently I thought I would put a few words down anyway   Firstly, and this is purely an observation but there does seem to be a lot …

@planetmosh reviews Indestructible by .@_HouseOfLords_ on .@FrontiersMusic1 House of Lords was formed in 1987, which makes Indestructible only their tenth studio album in a twenty eight year career.  Not exactly prolific but when you take into account the many and varied line-up changes and the time spent on hiatus it’s …

Three years ago, the fate of Lamb of God very much hung in the balance. The much-publicized arrest and imprisonment of singer Randy Blythe on manslaughter charges caused shockwaves across the metal world, with his subsequent acquittal bringing relief, celebrations and a stunning documentary in the form of As the Palaces Burn. …

Hailing from the city of Lviv in revolution-ridden Ukraine, Paganland certainly wear their nationalism on their sleeves, dedicating this, their second album, to “all Patriots fighting against Russian aggression.  The band, who trace their roots back almost two decades, describe themselves as “a group of people holding the same views, who …

Inception of Inhumanity is the debut offering from melodic death metal group Shrouded. Based in Lisburn and Antrim in Northern Ireland, their cd has a lot that I like. There is the bones and most of the flesh of some outstanding tracks but it has more elements that took me a little while to …

It’s been a little over two years since Northern Ireland metal champions Stormzone released what was regarded by many critics and fans alike as arguably their best album to date, the titanic ‘Three Kings‘ – an opus which cemented their position as the region’s premier exponents of their art.  Now, with …

July 18th 2015 will be an important day for Vardis as it will see them playing live in London for the first time in 30 years at a double headlining show with Diamond Head at Bush Hall and 200 individually numbered 12″ vinyl copies of their new 200 M.P.H EP …