01. Farewell, Mona Lisa 05:23 02. Good Neighbor 02:30 03. Gold Teeth on a Bum 05:22 04. Crystal Morning 02:02 05. Endless Endings 02:32 06. Widower 06:23 07. Room Full of Eyes 04:15 08. Chinese Whispers 04:06 09. I Wouldn’t If You Didn’t 04:14 10. Parasitic Twins 04:39

Ah, Dillinger Escape Plan. Even the mere name of the New Jersey mathcore nutcases can inspire fear and awe. ‘Operation Paralysis’, the band’s fourth full-length album, confirms but one thing we had always suspected; if there’s one thing you can expect from Dillinger, it’s the unexpected.

I mean, there are the familiar Dillinger hallmarks in there; the baffling key signatures and utterly insane levels of technicality, the frankly intimidating breakneck thrash-attacks. But ‘Operation Paralysis’ sees Dillinger run much further with the melodic side of their music. Even in opener “Farewell, Mona Lisa”, after a couple of minutes of frankly mad musical terror, Greg Puciato is crooning something halfway comprehensible over a clean, picked guitar line. There’s a clean chorus weaving a lyrical stream through the madness, even when it returns with a vengeance.
Read the rest »

01. Sleep This Away 03:21 02. Trust No One 02:43 03. Dead Wrong 02:40 04. Doomed to Fail 03:15 05. Black Metal Bicycle 03:32 06. We Are the Undead 02:54 07. Scared to Death 03:22 08. Darkness 03:42 09. Snake Mountain 02:48 10. Make Amends 03:04 11. Fake Gold 02:52 12. Drive This Stake 02:41 13. Raised Right 04:46 14. Sabotage (Beastie Boys cover) 03:01

If I was going to sum up Cancer bats in one sentence it would say this: ‘Its the Past, Present and Future of Hardcore punk’. This can be seen on Cancer bats 3rd album Bears, Mayors, Scraps and Bones. Its all pure heaviness from its mind numbing distorted riffing from the guitar to quite a bit of screaming and whaling from Liam Cornier on Vocals. For those who are die hard Cancer bats fan’s it is definitely a necessity in your collection. But on the other hand for people who are just trying to get into the bats maybe Bears, Mayors, Scraps and Bones isn’t the best starting marker for you.
Read the rest »

01. Sex, Drugs & Heavy Metal 3:55 02. Heart Thief 3:42 03. Trust Your Instincts 3:07 04. Young, Dumb & Full of Fun 3:46 05. Dead Girl Walking 3:57 06. Down On You 3:33 07. Pussywhipped 4:35 08. Hunt You Down 3:43 09. Act Of God 4:17 10. Coming After You 3:12 11. Top Of The World 3:00 12. Sleaze Sells…But Who’s Buying? 2:08 13. Trick Or Mistreat 3:46 14. Sweet Transvestite 3:53

Ahh, that traditional call-to-arms that starts many a heavy metal song; shouting a one-liner about getting ready to go, turning up the sound, or how asses are about to be kicked. A select few are:

Venom - Bloodlust - ‘Come on, turn it up!’
Beastie Boys - Fight For Your Right - ‘Kick it!’
Sweet - Ballroom Blitz - ‘Alright fellas, let’s go!’
Buckcherry - So Far - ‘Come on! Hurrrgh!’
Jackviper - Go Fuck Yourself - ‘Listen up, motherfucker!’
Steel Panther - The Shocker - ‘Are you ready, baby?’
Airbourne - Stand Up For Rock ‘N’ Roll - ‘Alright people, welcome to the show!’
Motorhead - Dead Men Tell No Tales - ‘This is it!’
John Loeffler - Pokerap - ‘Okay guys, we gotta rap some Pokemon… let’s get it on!’

And now we can add the opener from Spit Like This’ first full-length, ‘Sex, Drugs & Heavy Metal’ to the list, with it’s ‘Yeah, turn up the level!’ introduction. The band, named after an utterance from a spitting contest between vocalist Lord Zion and bassist Vikki Spit, get things off to a suitably rollicking, in-yer-face start on an album of which there is something very Rocky Horror about (it’s fitting that it closes with a rendition of ‘Sweet Transvestite’ from the film). There are loads of clichés and silly lines, but the charm and cheekiness of it still leaves a smile on the face.
Read the rest »

01. Ghost 03:34 02. Crucify the Dead 04:04 03. Beautiful Dangerous 04:35 04. Back from Cali 03:35 05. Promise 04:41 06. By the Sword 04:50 07. Gotten 05:05 08. Doctor Alibi 03:07 09. Watch This 03:46 10. I Hold On 04:10 11. Nothing to Say 05:27 12. Starlight 05:35 13. Saint Is A Sinner Too 03:28 14. We’re All Gonna Die 04:30

Slash is considered to be one of the most talented guitarists in the world. From ‘Guns n Roses’ to ‘Velvet Revolver’, he has blown our minds with amazing songs like: Sweet Child of Mine, Paradise city and Slither. But now from the pits of hell and with a host of famous musicians coming out of his ass we get Slash’s awesome new gut busting Solo project called….. ‘SLASH’. This self titled stormer of an album features performances from Ozzy Osbourne to Fergie, Kid Rock to Iggy Pop and M. Shadows to Lemmy.
Read the rest »

01. Raised on Rock 03:58 02. Sting in the Tail 03:12 03. Slave Me 02:45 04. The Good Die Young 05:14 05. No Limit 03:22 06. Lorelei 04:32 07. Turn You On 04:23 08. Sly 05:16 09. Spirit of Rock 03:42 10. The Best is Yet to Come 04:32

The power-metal junkie’s darkest fear has been confirmed; Scorpions are retiring. After one last album, they’re going to bow out to the world with an epic tour spanning five continents. What is power metal going to be, without Scorpions?! I’m not dealing with this well, I’m still early in the grieving process…so as an opening thought, I’m going to quote one of the lines Scorpions use to close the album. “How can I live without you?/ You’re such a part of me/ and you’ve always been the one/ keeping me forever young/ …and the best is yet to come”.

I was actually a little afraid going into this album, because I knew, I knew it was to be their last - and I don’t want Scorpions to retire. Maybe it’s just me - it took me two days to pluck up the courage to watch the last episode of ‘The Wire’, because I just didn’t want it to be over…well, I got the same feeling with this album right before I hit ‘Play’. “Raised on Rock” is the perfect song to dispel such negative thoughts, though - regardless on your feelings for Scorpions or their demise, I dare you to be a heavy metal fan and listen to that opening riff without cracking a big cheesy grin.
Read the rest »

01. Courage Today, Victory Tomorrow! 03:55 02. So it Begins 03:24 03. As Yggdrasil Trembles 04:52 04. Wir Kapitulieren Niemals 03:26 05. This Time We Fight 03:02 06. Master Of The Ancient Art 03:48 07. Cheif Einherjar 03:42 08. Return Fire 04:04 09. Far Beyond Hell 03:18 10. Dead to Me 02:47 11. Yahweh and the Chosen Ones 03:52 12. Cannibalistic Epidemic Continues 04:59 13. Evil Dead 02:32

‘Viking Metal’. There seems to be a lot of that going around, nowadays. Unleashed are generally looked at as having been one of the key Viking Metal bands since the early 90s, but I’d like to make a point even at this early stage - what the hell is Viking Metal?! Basically, it appears to be death metal, or melodic death metal, that just happens to be about Vikings. So…it’s bands who make a career out of a single lyrical theme. Shouldn’t that get old, after a while?

Now, I find Vikings and Norse mythology as interesting (yeah, alright, read that as “cool”) as the next man, providing he’s clutching an axe and in possession of a truly epic beard. It seems like there should be a “but” here, but honestly, there’s not… Despite the question I posed literally seconds ago, don’t care if the whole Viking thing is getting old for you - I still fucking love it. And as a result, in my book, ‘As Yggdrasil Trembles’ is by extension also really cool.

Thankfully, the music also backs me up on that one. Yeah, it is just death metal that happens to be about Vikings, but it’s really rather good death metal. That happens to be about Vikings. The album for the most part strikes a decent balance between technical execution and something called “song writing” which results in a group of songs that are very heavy, but not overly fast-paced or intricate; at times, you’d actually call it catchy. There’s a solid, sort of bluesy mid-tempo heartbeat to the album you can tap your foot and nod your head to, and even growl along to the vocals if you can make them out. Basically, Vikings haven’t sounded this cool since Amon Amarth.
Read the rest »

01. The Trend 07:04 02. Coward 04:21 03. Ambush 03:21 04. Betrayed 04:34 05. 25 Seconds 04:49 06. Nowhere to Go 05:07 07. The Other Side 04:19 08. Death In Your Eyes 05:58 09. Payback 04:47 10. Romeo Delight 4:25

Expectation is a funny thing. The better you prove to be at something, the harder it seems to please people…in the musical sense, it’s often the case of the bigger the band, the bigger the monkey clinging to their back. Metallica, Slayer, even Iron Maiden - they’ve all battled the monkey at one time or another.

Well, Annihilator have one of the biggest expectation monkeys of all, almost King Kong like in stature, simply by merit of being the brainchild of Jeff Waters. Continually named in the single-figure upper echelons of those “worlds greatest guitarist” rankings that appear in the music magazines pretty much every month, the man turned down a place in Megadeth twice so he could concentrate on Annihilator, who have churned out a string of classics since 1989’s ‘Alice in Hell’.
Read the rest »

01. Havoc 06:42 02. Reason 06:55 03. The Stir of Seasons 04:01 04. For a Thousand Years to Come 06:46 05. Abrasion Tide 07:14 06. Fleshflower 03:28 07. Worldwide 06:39 08. My Domain 04:49

Borknagar are a Progressive Black Metal band. Let’s just think about that for a moment. If you’ll allow me to dust off the ol’ stereotypewriter, then Black Metal is going to involve a lot of spiked leather garments, face-paint, and possibly marching around in a forest with a burning torch and a grim countenance. You have to go some distance from this to prog; at least one guy in your prog band has an afro, and is wearing trousers that MC Hammer would declare to be just a bit much. He’s also so high that he’s trying to play a flute with his nose, and will only end up in a forest in the event of some kind of ‘Withnail & I’ situation. So…progressive black metal? How does that work, then?

Quite simply, Borknagar just make it work. They’ve just taken most of those ingredients and mashed them together, leaving furious double bass drumming going hand in hand with Hammond organ and spoken-word intervals. If by some chance you’re actually already Borknagar’s number one fan, and I’m just condescending to you right now, it’s been four years since their last album, and that was an acoustic effort (acoustic progressive black metal…the mind boggles). So I’d imagine we could all do with a little refresher course, right?
Read the rest »

01. The One I Once Was 04:46 02. The Pain Infernal and the Fall Eternal 05:16 03. The Eye of the Storm 05:10 04. The Malice of Life’s Cruel Ways 05:02 05. The Wheel of Fire 04:09 06. The Chains that Wield My Mind 04:30 07. The New Desire 03:50 08. The Vile Bringer of Self-Destructive Thoughts 03:52 09. The Candle at the Tunnel’s End 04:00

Morten Veland is something of a pioneer in the world of Gothic Metal; he was one of the founder members of Tristania, and went on to leave them to form Sirenia. So it’s fair to say he knows his way around the genre, and it’s not much of a surprise that his solo project produces exactly that. For the sake of continuity, he’s even managed to end the band name in “-ia”.

This is a proper solo project, no messing about with guest musicians or even producers - Veland has done literally everything himself, all of the instruments, music, lyrics, even the recording, engineering, mixing and producing. In his own studios. The one concession he’s made to the existence of the rest of the musical world is to use a choir, but I bet that’s just because he didn’t have time to multi-track himself singing all twenty parts. Yes, this is the Morten Veland show, his musical vision finally put straight from his head to record in its purest form.
Read the rest »

01. Snakes for the Divine 08:23 02. Frost Hammer 06:07 03. Bastard Samurai 06:37 04. Ghost Neck 05:01 05. The Path 01:20 06. Fire, Flood and Plague 06:08 07. How Dark We Pray 08:06 08. Holy Flames of the Fire Spitter 04:13

It’s hard to believe that it’s coming up on three years since the last High on Fire album was released. That founder, guitarist and vocalist Matt Pike takes this long to produce an album is always going to instill a note of fear in his fans, most of whom are still traumatised by the saga of “Dopesmoker”. Pike’s old band, stoner metal legends Sleep, attempted to release “Dopesmoker” in 1995, but it didn’t see the light of day until eight years later, by which time the band had long since broken up. Pike has actually been busy with a Sleep reunion in the last year or so, but fear not, High on Fire devotees: “Snakes for the Divine” has actually been released, at long last!

Notably, “Snakes for the Divine” was produced by Greg Fidelman, famed for his peerless work on Slayer’s “World Painted Blood” and Metallica’s “Death Magnetic”, when he rescued both of those legendary bands from sounding like nu-metal ponces. He’s once again gone for the crisp, precise, dry kind of sound he brought to those albums, so it’s a slight departure from the explosive High on Fire sound we all know and love. However, if you take a moment to get used to it, this new style actually works really very well.
Read the rest »