I haven’t been keeping track of Venom for a good while now, but I know they went through some sort of fracture or split of some sort that has now produced two incarnations of the band: Venom, with Cronos, and Venom Inc. with Tony Dolan and Jeff Dunn. When I saw that Venom had a new album slated for the end of the year, I figured I’d give it a shot, and I also figured that I may as well do my homework and check out what the other head of the proto-trash hydra had created last year. Venom Inc.’s album was undoubtedly flawed, but I was pleasantly surprised with the energy and the groove the supposed B-team brought to the table. The album needed some trimming and some more imaginative songwriting, but it at least made an attempt to modernize the long-prototypic sound the band had been playing with and showed some potential for future improvement (if things go rather ideally). I hadn’t listened to a full Venom album past Possessed , getting only unconvincing snippets from their pr...
After the loss of founding guitarist/keyboardist Adam Christianson following their 2016 release, the bittersweet yet uplifting All Our Gods Have Abandoned Us , it was uncertain what the future held for Architects without their intergral song-writer. But given the band’s ever life-affirming ethos, it’s no surprise the band responded to their tragedy by refusing to be struck down into despair, carrying on in honor of Christianson. The trail-blazers of the late-2000’s techy, melodic metalcore movement resume the anthemic, melodic brand of metalcore they helped carry into the 2010’s with unabashed conviction. And the band carry the torch in his honor well, coming through with a commemorative album that they can rest assured knowing he would certainly be proud of what his bandmates have made. I was honestly not super floored the first time I listened to Holy Hell ; it came off kind of predictable and safe for Architects. And the massive production value was honestl...
Prophets of Rage’s self-titled debut album, Ministry’s AmeriKKKant , and now Otep’s Kult 45 arrive kind of late to the social protest/anti-Trump concept album party. Just as Prophets of Rage and Ministry conjured up lazy and unoriginal criticism of the current presidential administration, Otep follows suit with pretty much exactly what I had expected and worried about coming from her after seeing the album title. While band leader Otep Shamaya has never been one to shy away from expressing her left-leaning political views and experiences as a lesbian in her music, she’s always been pretty inconsistent in doing so poetically without stumbling into the kind of try-hard edginess that unfortunately frames her equally, if not more, negatively than the many issues and people she attacks. Her reputation within the metal community precedes her, as well, and not necessarily for her music. Shamaya has found herself at the center of several controversies within the metal com...
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