metal

Mastodon Emperor Of Sand (Reprise/Warner) After having spent the last few years stretching stylistically in a few different directions (The “White Walker” single found a home as the lead track for a season of HBO’s Game Of Thrones, 2014’s Once More ‘Round The Sun say the band get leaner and almost blurring the lines between metal and punk rock a bit), there’s something refreshing and exciting about the fact that Mastodon has made a glorious return to the sort of...

Artist: Metallica Album: Hardwired… To Self-Destruct Label: Blackened/ADA/Warner I must confess that it would be very, very easy to find a bigger fan of Metallica than I am. To be perfectly blunt, I haven’t heard a new album by the band that I’ve liked in twenty-five years – and even that was a reach because I thought the Black Album spent more time plodding than rocking. No, I’ve always been a bigger fan of the earlier, “thrash” side of Metallica...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the vinyl version of Searching For Zero by Cancer Bats. Leave it to Cancer Bats to challenge metal convention by scaling back the production values which are normally strapped to metal albums (“bombastic” is an understatement) and just let the raw aggression and technical talent which is present in every damned microtone of each song be the things which make the album’s stylistic ambition undeniable instead. That’s precisely what the group has...

Continuing our exploration of heavy metal music in Finland, here is a new review by our Finnish correspondent, Suvi Jyrinki. XII – Kouvostomolli by Viikate (=scythe in Finnish) could not have come out at any better time now that I needed something for just floating in mercilessly dark bittersweet moods and being aware of how ridiculous it is. The Finnish band Viikate has been around since 1996 and their music combines metal with 1960s instrumental rock. That´s why this band...

Only a Venn diagram could truly depict the crossover for a bill like The Sword from Austin, Saviours from Oakland and Akimbo from Seattle. Of the three circles, metal is the underlying glue and ultimate center, but Akimbo leans more to hardcore as much as Saviours vaguely hint to their screamo roots, but all rock equally live in their own way. Opening the evening was Akimbo, a three-piece outfit touring in support of their latest album Forging Steel and Laying...