You're browsing the archives

« Previous Page
Next Page »
From Sunday 16 April 2017

Bear – ‘///’

Bear have timed their latest album to perfection. With Dillinger Escape Plan hanging up their hat for the foreseeable future, the market – and indeed the plinth for technically demanding math metal – is wide open for someone to carry the flag, and Bear’s latest album ‘///’ has all

Saturday 15 April 2017

Isotopes – ‘1994 World Series Champions’

Canadian baseball punks Isotopes return with their second album, aptly named ‘1994 World Series Champions’ and for want of a better term, they’ve knocked it out of the park. First of all ‘Baseball punk’ is a genre most of us had never heard of, and that’s because it never

Friday 14 April 2017

Hubris – ‘Apocryphal Gravity’

Just glancing at the track list of ‘Apocryphal Gravity’ is enough to put you in an otherworldly state of mind. References to ‘Aphrodite Terra’, ‘Doom Mons’ and ‘Deimos’ – the names of a region of Venus, a mountain range on Titan and a natural satellite of Mars respectively – set

Thursday 13 April 2017

No Zodiac – ‘Altars Of Impurity’

With only one original member left since their formation in 2009, the Chicago based hardcore group have ditched their beatdown sound for a more traditional death metal approach on their latest record. Unfortunately, for the most part, the overly clean production on ‘Altars Of Impurity’ means that some of

Sleepmakeswaves – ‘Made Of Breath Only’

It’s relatively easy to write songs that are negative. Significant other break up with you? Get fired from your job? Lose your favourite pair of novelty socks? Grab an instrument and hash out a sad/angry/raging song about it. It’s a little more of a challenge to write songs that

Wednesday 12 April 2017

Loathe – ‘The Cold Sun’

Music genres are very crowded market places with hundreds of bands fighting for your attention and post-hardcore is certainly no exception. In a genre that’s established a well-trodden formula, differentiation tends to simply come from bands who can execute it better than others. It’s a daunting prospect for any

Tuesday 11 April 2017

Great Cynics – ‘Posi’

It’s the worst of times, so let’s write an album about the best of times. ‘Posi,’ the fourth album by those affable southern punks Great Cynics, is an album split down the middle, told in two parts, treading a knife’s edge between seemingly forced positivity and a more deep

Monday 10 April 2017

Widows – ‘Oh Deer God’

The UK’s sludge/stoner scene is experiencing a real renaissance at the moment, with spectacular bands up and down the country drowning audiences with crashing waves of fuzz-drenched riffs and thunderous bellows. From Wigan’s psychedelic monsters Boss Keloid to Kingston Upon Hull’s ferocious Battalions, via the swarming heaviness

Friday 07 April 2017

The Smith Street Band – ‘More Scared Of You Than You Are Of Me’

“Part of me wants to be dead, part of me’s so happy to be alive.” The line from ‘Run Into The World’ isn’t the only time Wil Wagner – lead singer of The Smith Street Band – references the struggle between enjoying and hating life. There’s a consistency to

Svart Crown – ‘Abreaction’

It’s a tough job for any band coming back with a new album after an extended break. It’s been almost four years since Svart Crown released ‘Profane’, an album that at its time of release knocked critics and fans back with a blistering mix of brutal death metal