Happy Metal Boy

After their four-track digital EP last year took them a little deeper into melancholic noisy ambiance without calling as frequently upon their abrasive metallic characteristics to assist them, the ever-experimental Wreck & Reference are back with a new full-length that finds them riding deeper into the strange ambient darkness with far less reliance on their experimental black metal training wheels than ever. The duo have always sought to provide as boundary-pushing and unconventional percussion and production to provide the foundation for Felix Skinner’s moaned and, occasionally, shouted abstract prose, and on this album, with more open, less claustrophobic instrumentals, Skinner’s performances and lyrics really become more of a focal point than they were when sharing the spotlight with gnarlier instrumentation on albums past. And this is not to say that the more electronic, darkwave-inspired instrumental backing is a mere wallpaper backdrop by comparison either. The group clearl...

Sabaton have been giving the metal world little power-metal-flavored war history lessons from the heart of Sweden since the early 2000’s, and since refining and optimizing their style around the turn of the decade, they really haven’t really altered their macho, fighting-spirit formula at all except to expand their history teaching to a YouTube history channel. Their approach to the genre has been predictable yet effective enough as long as the band enter the studio with a strong supply of musical ideas (as they never seem to be at a loss for lyrical subject matter (humankind wages a lot of war after all)). Anyway, the band’s follow-up to 2016’s  The Last Stand  focuses on World War I (called “The Great War” at the time before the sequel came out), and it’s an interesting topic for them the focus on exclusively. The impact of World War I was significant not just for its span and wide involvement, but for the intense, lasting psychological damage inflicted through the militari...

I came across Oh Hiroshima a year or so ago; it was a brief encounter and one that didn’t lure me into much revisiting. I had heard of them via the acclaim I had seen for their 2015 album  In Silence We Yearn , which I was relatively disappointed to find to conform so closely to the caricature of what post-rock’s critics lament about the genre’s current staleness. When I saw their new album here receiving a fair bit of hype for the immersiveness of its experience, I figured I’d give  In Silence We Yearn  another round both in preparation for this album and to see if I was missing something from that first run through. And honestly, I was disappointed to have gone in twice in search of some post-rock mastery amid a donation bag of the genre’s typicalities.  Oscillation , unfortunately, is hardly any different. There is perhaps a bit more guitar/bass oomph from time to time a la Russian Circles, but most of the album blends right in with the crop of post-rock of the p...

While I certainly enjoy the incorporation of harsh noise and dark ambient music into my metal, I must say I’m not as well-versed in those genres as if perhaps like to be. Yet I’ve long enjoyed Dominick Fernow’s Prurient, a solo dark/industrial noise project with which he has been quite prolific, and particularly his 2015 album under the project’s moniker, the occasionally metal-tinged  Frozen Niagara Falls . I reviewed his massive 2017 album, the nearly three-and-a-half-hour  Rainbow Mirror , which took an intentionally more measured and atmospheric approach compared to Fernow’s usual bend toward more aggressive abrasion on albums like  Unknown Rains  and  Frozen Niagara Falls . Despite the significantly mellower vibe of the album, I rather enjoy  Rainbow Mirror  and the focus on building ambiance more patiently through shifts of interesting textures of drones.  Garden of the Mutilated Paratroopers , though, takes Fernow and Prurient back to the ...

I can’t remember if Thy Art Is Murder are one of those bands that have gotten upset at being labeled a “deathcore band” like The Acacia Strain have. But if so, I can kind of see where they would be coming from, because their drip of hardcore elements into their brand of modern death metal isn’t really any more than Lamb of God’s into their brand of groove metal, and Lamb of God are only rarely associated with metalcore. But the band do still use these elements in ways that are often just like those used by “deathcore bands”. So on one hand, their music isn’t really bona fide deathcore like  The Cleansing  or  This Is Exile , but it likes to dabble in it, which they seem more open to doing on this album than their last, and for the better. When I reviewed their fourth album,  Dear Desolation , in 2017, I was largely underwhelmed by the rather typical and one-dimensional brand of death metal the band were trying to dress up with the occasional obvious cues taken fro...

Despite having heard Tomb Mold’s 2018 sophomore album,  Manor of Infinite Forms , thanks to a fair amount of hubbub within the metal underground, I didn’t end up writing anything about it last year. It didn’t really strike me as anything more than a gruff, Lovecraft-inspired slab of meaty, no-nonsense death metal. And it certainly is the kind of album that can get the job done, and I didn’t really have any complaints about its foundational components. But it didn’t stand out much beyond its efficient directness, and having already written about so much death metal, I felt I didn’t really have much worth saying about it. Yet just a year later, we have a successor, and the excitement surrounding Tomb Mold does not seem to be dying down. I missed the band’s debut album in 2017, and I didn’t write anything about their sophomore album last year. So as their train only seems to be picking up speed, I suppose it’s probably a good time now to speak up about their third album here,  P...

Torche have been a pivotal figure in the opening up of modern sludge/stoner doom to the melodic for the past several years. The Miami-based quartet have based their sound heavily upon the combination of the psychedelia of stoner rock and the thickness of  The Hunter -era Mastodon’s brand of melodic sludge. The band’s last album before this,  Restarter , found them refining even more the melodic aspect of their sound, only to go quiet in the creative ring until now. And now that they’re back the band have further honed their sound with their fifth full-length here,  Admission . Torche certainly put some meticulous work into this album to make it as varied and constantly engaging as possible. The band’s best moments on this album come from when they channel the most potent aspects of their sound into smart compositions focused on highlighting their improved versatility through intriguing psychedelic grooves or infectious riffs. The catchy southern rock riff of “Slide”, f...