Tag Archives: album review

This fifth full-length release from US metalcore mob Hawthorne Heights is billed as a concept album, based around the usual storyline (although admittedly one more often narrated by power metal outfits) about post-apocalyptic world/dystopian future where a totalitarian corporation has risen to overarching power and the ‘little man’ starts to …

Altus are a band very new to the Northern Irish metal scene, and have only been together since late last year. The band members were brought together sharing experiences from being in previous bands. I have seen them perform only once at their debut performance at this years inaugural Helfast …

I first found out about Stormzone in Glasgow, June 2009 while they were supporting the mighty Tesla on a UK tour. As luck might have it, it was great finding out about a band coming from my neck of the woods in Northern Ireland and with a similar background. Since …

I have been a fan of Queensryche ever since a friend of mine got me into them when I was a teenager at school way back when the Empire album was released in 1990. Ever since the fall-out and split with this line-up of Queensryche and former vocalist Geoff Tate …

Ordo Ab Pax, released in 2013, is the debut album from Gauteng, South African progressive thrash metal outfit, Arx. The band has an engaging, melodic extreme metal sound, a bit reminiscent (but not derivative) of Dark Tranquillity or later In Flames. The album ranges from instrumental, to thrash, to ‘hatecore’ …

This debut full-length album from Bristollian noiseniks RIOT|NOISE – the follow up to a successful and well-received EP, released back in 2009 – is as impressive a first release as you are likely to come across this year. ‘Stand For Something’ is a powerful collection of a dozen songs which …

This may be their debut album, but Paris – named after the French capital, in which the band’s central pairing of vocalist/keyboard player Frédéric Dechavanne and guitarist Sébastien Montet were brought up – trace their roots back three decades, to the heady days of AOR supremacy as evinced by the …

SixStringNoise, a four-piece outfit from Greece, formed sometime after 2011’s one-man-band debut “Snowing Bullets While Kissing the Ground” was released. With a lineup (Markos, Nikos X, Alex B, and Alex D) solidified, the band decided to record and release a proper album. Likewise, 2013’s full-length offering, is the result of …

A decade on from their self-titled debut album, French industrial metallers Dagoba have found themselves having to undergo something of a re-invention for this, their fifth full-length album – and not least because of the sudden and controversial departure last year of founder Izakar, whose guitar sound many fans and …

Opinions are extremely mixed on the validity of sample CDs given away free with the vast majority of music magazines… personally speaking, I’m actually quite a fan of them:  they are a good way of obtaining free samples of new work by established artists, and of checking out shed loads …

Although Reign Of The Architect only fully coalesced as a band last year, this ambitious, Israeli-based progressive metal project has been five years in the making, with this album tracing its roots right back as far as 2008, when guitarist Yuval Kramer initially started work on this concept work, along …

‘Utopia’, Norwegian darkened industrialists Gothminister’s fifth album, is a concept work based around the concept of ‘Mr Jekyll And Dr Hyde’ – with, on this occasion, the inspiration coming from band leader Bjørn Alexander Brem and the duality of his existence as a lawyer by day and heavy metal musician …

Although personally this is my first encounter with DGM, if the evidence of ‘Momentum’ is anything to go by it is not hard to see why the Italian five piece are highly regarded as one of the better progressive metal bands on the continent of Europe. Featuring guest performances by …

Death Tyrant emerged from the ashes of Swedish underground supremos Lord Belial when the latter broke up in 2010 – although, in one of those typically murky storylines which epitomizes the Scandinavian scene, they’ve apparently been re-activated on at least two occasions – and this debut album has been the …

At first listen, German electro-industrialists Stahlmann evoke immediate comparisons with fellow countrymen Rammstein – huge chugging, crunching riffs, backed by punchy rhythms… and vocals delivered in their native language!  Add in a penchant for covering themselves in silver paint on stage, and its a parellel which they make stupidly simplistic …

Planet Mosh reviews the debut album from The Resistance, featuring former members of In Flames, The Haunted and Grave.

Unsurprisingly, this seventh album from Rome’s Kaledon is forged in the fires of pure epic metal:  after all, this is a band who, over the course of the past decade, have released a six-part concept work set in medieval England – or the Kingdom of Kaledon as they refer to …

Kadavar are another in an increasingly long line of bands – such as Uncle Acid And The Deadbeats and Purson – who recently have been following in the footsteps of illustrious predecessors of the ilk of Electric Wizard and Spiritual Beggars in re-ploughing the retro furrow of late-60s psychedelica blues meets …

Irish duo Chosen – guitarist/vocalist Paul Shields and drummer/percussionist David McCann – have been working together for around eight years now, releasing a few well-received EPs in that period and temporarily relocating to Vancouver before returning to their native sod to record and produce this debut full-lengther. The result is …

Every genre, musical sub-division, has its artists who epitomize its highest standards, and others (the vast majority, if truth be told) who are content to be pulled along on the coat-tails of said leading lights, often becoming mere pale imitations of the innovators who have gone before them.  Metalcore is …