2.5

Witchery – I Am Legion Review

Witchery – I Am Legion Review

“I like a gap of a few years between albums; I find it reassuring. Anything sub-24 months and I begin to get twitchy. This is probably wholly unreasonable, and I’m sure the AMG readership can think of a litany of absolute turnips that took years to write and record, but I simply can’t help it. I was a little put out, therefore, to discover that Witchery were planning to unbox their latest work, I Am Legion, a paltry 350 days on from the release of their crushing 2016 effort, In His Infernal Majesty’s Service.” It’s the slow knife that thrills.

Anvil – Anvil is Anvil Review

Anvil – Anvil is Anvil Review

“My introduction proper to Anvil came at the pubescent age of 14 when I chose Pound for Pound as one of my 12 introductory cassettes from the Columbia House Record Club. I’d heard a song here, a song there, but Pound for Pound was the first platter I heard from nuts to noggin. My initial feeling? Underwhelmed.” Will the new platter whelm Mr. Kikuras?

Legion of Andromeda – Iron Scorn Review

Legion of Andromeda – Iron Scorn Review

“I must have had the phrase “Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge” drilled into my head by every music teacher imaginable. Everybody practices chords and scales repeatedly, right? Riffs? Solos? You have to in order to succeed in anything. Well, how about songs? Japan’s newest export in industrialized noise metal, Legion of Andromeda, have set out to challenge your notions of what noise and repetition can create via their debut, Iron Scorn.” And who doesn’t like fudge?

Corrosion Of Conformity – IX Review

Corrosion Of Conformity – IX Review

“Considering that the band was left for dead after 2005’s In The Arms Of God, North Carolina’s Corrosion of Conformity has been on a fucking roll these last few years. The band’s original trio reconvened in 2010 and embarked on heavy-duty touring, followed by 2012’s excellent self-titled LP and the hastily-assembled Megalodon EP for Scion A/V. Just two short years later, COC is back again with their 9th album, creatively titled IX.” Old stoner/hardcore bands never die, they just get more garage-y.

Sheol – Sepulchral Ruins Below The Temple Review

Sheol – Sepulchral Ruins Below The Temple Review

“What’s old is new again. Many new bands are ravaging old graveyards to exhume rotting corpses of bands and styles long since past their sell-by date. 70’s proto-doom, 80’s retro-thrash, and now, 90’s fuzzy Swedeath are the templates that bands are utilizing to create their own legacies. UK’s Sheol are the newest duo to bring out the rotting, zombified corpses of early Dismember and Darkthrone into the sunlight (studios) with their debut EP, Sepulchral Ruins Below The Temple.” 2013 winds down as it cranked up – with loads of old school Swedish death. Do you have room for just a little more?

Cult of Luna – Vertikal II Review

Cult of Luna – Vertikal II Review

“Now, where were we? I seem to remember this this great album from an act simply incapable of disappointing. In was the middle of winter and North Korea appeared as a threat to the dumb half of the world’s population. Today, while that same fraction struggles to locate the hemisphere Syria is in, the summer light convulses in his death throes this side of the planet and we take shelter from the impending cold. OK, but what about the music?” The ever mercurial Alex is here to cover the equally mercurial Cult of Luna’s new release, Vertikal II. If you aren’t careful, you may get mercurial poisoning!

Tarja – Colours in the Dark Review

Tarja – Colours in the Dark Review

When Tarja Turunen took her larger-than-life operatic talents out of Nightwish and off to South Beach, she and her former band-mates engaged in enough back-biting and insults to fill an entire season of a Mexican soap opera (and a few Mexican wrestling matches as well). When all the bickering was done, Nightwish acquired Anette Olzon and soldiered on as Tarja began her solo career in earnest. While Nightwish has fared respectably with a few decent albums under their belt in the post-Tarja era, Tarja’s solo outings have ranged from average to rather bad.” Can this comely Finnish diva reverse course and put out a killer goth-metal platter? Steel Druhm examines all the colours (except blue and green, since he’s a bit colorblind).

DevilDriver – Winter Kills Review

DevilDriver – Winter Kills Review

DevilDriver has always been a bit of an underdog story. Not in terms of success, but in terms of cred. Many metalheads have made the transition from nü-metal goofclown to full-on ripper—myself included—but none of us to had make the transition in the public eye like Dez Fafara. His first band, Coal Chamber, was arguably one of the silliest acts of the nü-heyday (no small feat), and his metamorphosis from mesh-clad demigod to fledgling Hesher has been a minor feelgood story.