Even though it had been in on their Bandcamp page since 2016, I was glad the more official release of Zeal & Ardor’s debut album, Devil Is Fine , last year gave me the opportunity to talk about it (since I started this blog in 2017). Originally one of multiple solo music projects by creative eccentric Manuel Gagneux, inspired by a comical suggestion on 4Chan, Gagneux recruited ful-time members to form a complete performing band after the huge wave Devil Is Fine made, and I have been so pleased to see this project grow in its short time from the enthusiasm much of the metal community has shown for such an unorthodox artist. Devil Is Fine was a short, but wildly diverse album (only 25 minutes) that blended the soulful blues of slave spirituals and other American folk with varyingly atmospheric black metal, a idea that could have gone terribly that fortunately went terrifically. While I loved Devil Is Fine and had it as one of my top top favorit...
I had no idea Carnifex had a new EP in the works, but by chance I have been listening to them a lot during my exercise lately (their 2016 album, Slow Death , especially), so this EP that dropped this Friday ended up being quite a timely surprise for me. It’s a pretty minor, 4-track release from them, we get one original song (the titular track), a cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “Head Like a Hole”, a cover of Slipknot’s “The Heretic Anthem”, and a Gost-remixed version of their Nine Inch Nails cover. The EP starts with the band’s original song “Bury Me in Blasphemy”, a pretty standard cut for the band at this point in their evolution, much like something that might have showed up on Slow Death . I like the main groove and the big riff that rounds the song off in tandem with a string section. Well-mixed, well-supplemented with what what sound like synthetic strings and even horns at some points, and sufficiently brutal, it’s a satisfying little bonus addition to ...
My introduction to Children of Bodom was through their 2005 album, Are You Dead Yet? , an album that most fans (from what I can tell) regard as the break in the string of great albums that began their career, making way for the even less loved Blooddrunk . Children of Bodom have long been one of those bands that, despite my well-discerned mixed feelings toward, I often feel this uncertain draw toward, yet when I give in and revisit their catalog, I find myself right back where I started as far as my opinion of them and their work is concerned. I often revisit albums like Hate Crew Deathroll and Follow the Reaper because those are the fan favorites. And while I see what made those albums so unique for melodic death metal at the time, they are hardly consistent in their wielding of what would become the band’s signature sound. Those albums capture well the beneficially less-ultra-serious angle I have enjoyed from the band, and it’s their knack for me...
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