“REZN made a minor splash in Casa Dolph back in… March?! Wow, time flies! Psychedelic doom itself isn’t particularly known for getting anywhere fast, but these Chicago practitioners have an admirable hustle to earn yet another release to their name. This go around, though, they’ve partnered with the like-minded, Hawkwind synth-heavy doomsters from way down South in Mexico City, Vinnum Sabbathi.” Double doom.
“I admit, I avoided this band in the past because weed pun names rub me the wrong way. I have nothing against hazy plant explorations—I dabble—but you can only laugh so many times at joke titles like “Kief Castle” or Stoned Jesus. Heck I’m sure in the right state of mind I’ve even made my own joke band names. Chicago’s REZN isn’t here to joke around though. Eschewing comical escapism, this young quartet aims for a more conscious and guided meditation.” Two bongs may make a light.
“Icelandic post-metal titans Sólstafir need little introduction but we at AMG Towers are fans of formulaic, masturbatory prose, so I’ll provide one anyway. Sólstafir is Icelandic for ‘radiating sun beams,’ something I have always thought to be wildly inaccurate as a name for this entity, which at no point embodies sunshine. In their early days, Sólstafir played raw, aggressive black metal, interspersed with hints of Viking metal and occasional atmospheric passages (see the debut, Í blóði og anda). Since then, with each release, Sólstafir have evolved, peaking, many would argue, on their fifth full-length, 2014’s Ótta.” Twilight of the Ice Lords?
“Hysterical bravely sets about to chronicle the worst of nu-metal’s many issues and combine them into a nugget so devoid of anything enjoyable it almost wraps back round to depressive suicidal black metal. Just without the black metal.” 2020 right now.
“2015 has not been the best of years for yours truly, with car accidents, challenges, setbacks, and death upon death upon even more death dropped into my unwilling lap. I was ready to rain supernova-warm hellfire upon this calendar year, but thankfully, a much-needed vacation with friends just this past week helped to deaden the pain of all this negativity the year had brought upon me. Musically, it’s been quite positive and productive. October alone was a monster of a month for metal, as you can see by my list. So despite all the negative garbage, at least the soundtrack was incredible.”
“Once upon a time, in the days of MySpace, there was a band called He Is Legend. They had the misfortune of association with the mid-2000’s metalcore scene, and worse yet, they had a long way to go in the songwriting department. Over time they went through awkward growth spurts, thankfully ditching their core trappings, but struggling with finding their own style.” Mr. Fisting rings in the holiday season with the very first of our “Things You Might Have Missed” recommendations, and this time, it’s all about the fruit!
“An odd album crept its way onto the Angry Metal promo list in this past month, one that while plenty dark, is far removed from metal, and despite all it’s heavily worded promise, as wholly lacking in anger as I’ve come across in a while. At its most basic, it appears the band couldn’t come up with a decent band name and so took the easy way out, calling themselves Nothing…” Madam X has reviewed nothing lately and frankly, we expected more from her. That said, here goes Nothing.
