Resurrection

The Grotesquery – The Lupine Anathema Review

The Grotesquery – The Lupine Anathema Review

“The man who annually renders your complaints of “not enough time” null and void by spearheading a million bands per annum, Mr. Rogga Johansson returns once again with The Grotesquery, packed to capacity with classic death metal and riffs a-plenty. Having once more conjured Kam Lee from beyond for another round of retro death metal, fourth record, The Lupine Anathema, embarks on a pseudo-concept centered around the legend of the werewolf.” Eyes bigger than your stomach, eh Wolfie?

Judas Priest – Firepower Review

Judas Priest – Firepower Review

“Having spent the last month immersed in the back-catalog of the legendary Judas Priest, a nagging thought kept running wild through my mind. What if I get through this ginormous ranking of the Priest albums, designed to coincide with their latest release, only to hate it and have to bash it? As a life-long fan, that idea didn’t really fill me with joy, but all I could do was grit my teeth, get the countdown done and hope there was a decent album waiting for me on the other side.” Heavy guns on sad wings.

Morta Skuld – Wounds Deeper Than Time Review

Morta Skuld – Wounds Deeper Than Time Review

“The process of quantifying quality is always a capricious thing. Contrary to nature, what I might allow for one band, I may use to vilify another, and we haven’t even begun to touch on the perils of genre favoritism — because, despite any reviewer’s very best attempts to consider a product on its individual merit, there will always be some material that I’ll subconsciously allow an extra furlong of leeway.” Media bias!

Operation: Mindcrime – Resurrection Review

Operation: Mindcrime – Resurrection Review

“Barely a year after their debut record The Key, Geoff Tate’s Operation: Mindcrime project is back with Resurrection, part two of what threatens to be a trilogy of concept albums. Backed by a large cast of supporting musicians, the former Queensrÿche vocalist is aiming to beat his former band at the conceptual-metal game.” Tate v. the Rÿche: Round II. Place yer bets.

Death SS – Resurrection

Death SS – Resurrection

“It seems I’m not quite over my hankering for cheese. In simple terms, that means you get to sit through a review of Resurrection, the aptly titled rebirth of Italian band Death SS and their brand of ‘horror music’. Death SS have quite a history, going back to their inception in 1977 with the only constant of the band (outside of the Evil Metal EP) being the odd vocal styling’s of Steve Sylvester. The list of former members is pretty astonishing (upwards of 30 member changes) which probably accounts for why Death SS have done a complete about-turn when comparing Resurrection against its predecessors.” First Powerwolf and now this? Madam X is off the reservation and wandering through Cheese Land and she may never be the same. Ever see KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park? This could be KISS Meets the Madam.

Halford – Made of Metal Review

Halford – Made of Metal Review

This will come as an unwelcome surprise to Angry Metal folks everywhere, but the new Halford album Made of Metal isn’t angry and is only partly made of metal. Despite the deceptive title, Halford’s third solo album is a diverse but confusing mix of awkward, mostly flawed metal anthems, cheesy love songs with a metallic edge and poppy bubble gum metal/rock. Amid this confusion, only a few quality metal moments can be found. With all due respect to one of the founding fathers of heavy metal and a living legend to many (myself included), the results here are wildly inconsistent and just flat out disappointing.

Kobi Farhi Interview

Kobi Farhi Interview

For anyone who has regularly read my site, it is pretty obvious that I am a big Orphaned Land fan. So it is no exaggeration to say I was pretty stoked to do an interview with the band’s vocalist, lyricist and gigantic personality, Kobi Farhi. We had a chance to talk about several different things, ranging from the cultural approach to metal in Orphaned Land to working with Steven Wilson (from Porcupine Tree). For the first time I am going to offer the audio of this interview edited down with some clips from the record, as well as typing out the “transcript” as it were. The transcript, of course, will have the full text and the audio is a bit more edited down so as to cut out the BS.