Happy Metal Boy

For better and for worse, this one has been a long time coming. If  Sempiternal was the irritated throat fans brushed off as nothing, then  That’s the Spirit  was their first terrifying handful of blood coughed up after ignoring diagnostics, and  amo  is the progression of the untreated pop infection in Bring Me the Horizon’s lungs that has progressed beyond treatment. For fans uneasy about the band’s direction in 2015, this album is no easy pill to swallow. I’ve been rather critical of a lot of bands aping Bring Me the Horizon’s more try-hard anthemic metalcore style since the success of 2013’s  Sempiternal , but for Bring Me the Horizon themselves, I’ve actually had at least a little bit of appreciation for the boldness and ambition with which they have seemed to try to push their brand of metalcore since their 2010 album  There Is a Hell, Believe Me I’ve Seen It. There Is a Heaven, Let’s Keep It a Secret.  But with that appreciation of what th...

Despite its relative geographical closeness to the genre’s famed originating scenes in Norway and Sweden, when it comes to the prominent music of the UK, black metal isn’t often what first comes to mind. Nevertheless, the advent of the internet and the magnifying glass of Bandcamp and other DIY music platforms have opened windows into teeming underground music scenes near and far, one of them being the UK’s black metal underground, which Barshasketh have made some tremendous waves within over the past few years. The band have struck early this year with their self-titled fourth album, a harrowing voyage through sardonic, abyssmal, blast-beat-laden black metal dissonance. Combining the fierce instrumental thickness of a band like Gorgoroth with a well-tempered balance of the raw aggression of, say, Watain, Barshasketh do well to maintain these contemporary strengths while twisting their approach to come from a slightly more DSBM angle, giving them indeed a sound worthily uniq...

Cover albums are usually the type of project that bands love making. It’s a nice, often nostalgic break from the mental toil of writing a batch of new songs, and a chance for a band to pay tribute to the artists that inspired them to pursue music in the first place. Whether through whatever discussion the band partakes in surrounding the album or just their animated performances of the songs they used to air guitar to in their youth, you can tell how excited band members get for the chance to do albums like these. The writing is all done for them, and it’s confirmed, in their minds at least, to be gold-status material. All there is to do is just go out there and perform it. The only thinking really involved is over the degree of creative liberty a band decides to take with any song, and there is merit in both the true-to-the-original approach as well as wild reinterpretation, when done conscientiously. Arch Enemy have covered quite a few songs throughout their career (some of which ...

One of the most animalistic bands leading the charge of this decade’s nu metal revival, Cane Hill just a year ago delivered their sophomore slab of meaty Korn/Slipknot-esque nu metal after their relentless debut LP,  Smile , in 2016. To be getting an EP from them already this year, especially one of this nature is a bit astonishing. The band had been teasing toward this project near the end of last year with a few singles, and the samples they provided had me pretty interested. Kill the Sun  is a sharp left turn from the band’s raw nu metal aggression into grungy acoustic waters with little to hint back at the rabid fury of their previous albums. Laden with smooth clean singing and smoky alternative acoustic rock moodiness, the six tracks that make up the very  Jar of Flies -inspired  Kill the Sun remind me a bit of Godsmack’s one-off acoustic EP, which comes with a foul premonition. As much as I was eager to hear more of this brooding side of Cane Hill after he...

The Ukrainian band has seen the gradual build of a fair amount of viral hype over the past few years. Their skilled and varied blend of ambient elements into a proggy form of djenty metalcore is certainly interesting enough on its own to set them above the average, generic practitioners of downtuned metalcore, but even so, the subgenre has become so expansive and diverse that even a blend of musical styles such as Jinjer’s is not enough to really separate them all too distinctly from the crowd they’re in. What has really turned so many eyes toward Jinjer as of late is the similarly skilled, juxtaposed handling of harsh growls and angelic clean vocals by frontwoman Tatiana Shmailyuk. The dual wielding of cleans and growls is certainly nothing new in metalcore; in fact it’s pretty much standard in the semi-proggy niche Jinjer occupy, but the slightly different timbre of Shmailyuk’s growls and the elegance of her clean singing (an element not too common in metalcore), combined with...

I wasn’t really looking forward to this album, having never really been a fan of the band, but Papa Roach really blew me out of the water with this one, because I didn’t expect this album to be quite so breathtakingly horrible. I’m certainly not the type of person to take enjoyment in just insulting an artist’s work without making an effort to be constructive in the process, and I’m definitely not the type to try to elevate myself through pompous dismissal of a piece of art either. But what Papa Roach deliver on this album needs a lot of reproach in my eyes, and it’s possible that my honest opinions aren’t going to go down easily, but I will try to address what I think makes this album so worth such harsh assessment in a way that’s not just insulting (though it may be hard not to express my honest disdain for the music in question, a suppression of which wouldn’t be honest). I can’t say I know much about Papa Roach; I never liked their stuff when I was younger (and this album make...

The first release by one of the more long-standing bands in metal this year, Soilwork return after nearly four years to remind the world of their significance and mastery of the proggier side of Swedish melodeath with  Verkligheten . It’s the band’s eleventh album, and one that comes after a string of confident, strong albums, especially the likes of the massive,  The Living Infinite , and even after the understandably long nap following the creation of some of the best work of their career, the band sound as though they are simply tired still. It did really seem like Soilwork put a lot of work into their most recent albums, and  Verkligheten  plays like the valiant, yet exhausted breaths of a climber coming down from the summit. Soilwork don’t really bring too much to the table in the way of surprises on  Verkligheten , and in terms of style, that’s completely fine; they’ve found their niche and it works well for them. But in terms of structures and writing,...

It’s been awhile for me with Born of Osiris. I remember getting on board the hype train pretty early during their come-up thanks to the exciting novelty of their style, and while they were definitely bringing something new and exciting to deathcore and progressive death metal with their blend of flashy technicality, djenty groove, and electronic flair, it still felt like there was work to be done. To say that Born of Osiris were style over substance would be a bit harsh, but after their breakthrough EP, the three albums that followed each felt like the band were just re-introducing the same style without really going anywhere or getting a better handle on their EDM-tinged techdeathcore sound. It’s been a little over three years since the slight improvement that characterized 2015′s  Soul Sphere , and Born of Osiris are back, but starting 2019 small, with  The Simulation  being the first of two planned releases this year. With 8 tracks clocking in at just under 26 mi...

It’s here! The first new album write-up of 2019: the first one I will be scoring out of 10 at the end of this post. It’s a little unfortunate the way labels often dump a lot of albums they don’t have much faith in in January and February. I remember being really underwhelmed for the first three months of last year because it was so much weaker on average than the oddly incredible string of albums that kicked off 2017. But 2018 ended up being a stronger year overall by the time it was over (in my opinion). It’s not something worth dwelling on too heavily, but it’s hard not to see the year’s first few albums as the foreshadowing of the many more to come in a sort of symbolic sense more than anything else, and it sucks that it’s usually the albums the label puts the least investment in. In this case, it’s Napalm Records’ Dutch black metal proletariat Legion of the Damned with  Slaves of the Shadow Realm . I remember giving this band a few cursory listens back in 2014 or so when the...

The 60 Best Metal Albums of 2018 2018 was such a huge year for metal, and I know that every year is great for metal with the abundance of fantastic artists big and small out there, but this year felt so big to me, perhaps because of so much of what the music this year was the soundtrack to, but also for the sheer number of unexpected masterpieces. This year I reviewed 170 metal albums, not including the 15 I briefly talked about missing in 2017, which is more than the total number of albums I even listened to across all genres last year, which is weird because I have actually been busier this year than last. But I am rather pleased with how much more I was able to immerse myself into metal this year, at all levels of accessibility, and given the fact that the coming year might come with some changes and limitations to my output, here’s to 2018, and the 60 incredible albums (LPs and EPs alike) that captivated me this year. Also, this should go without saying, but this is not just ...