“River Black, a new project featuring members of Revocation, Municipal Waste, and the long-defunct Burnt by the Sun, doesn’t feel like an attempt at outclassing those bands so much as spruced up recordings of jam session spitballing.” Supergroups in the river.
“Calling a particularly good album “the band’s best in years” doesn’t mean much when the band in question follows the standard release schedule of one LP every two or three years. When applied to Japan’s genre-hopping experimental rockers Boris, however, that phrase really means something.” Dear in the headlights.
“Holy shit, Black Messiah. This is one of those little bands that I found in the mid-00’s while first delving into the metal underground that, though kinda cool in their unorthodox approach, I inevitably forgot about in the wash of better bands. Yet I instantly remembered these Germans once I saw their seventh album Walls of Vanaheim in the promo bay, their blend of epic folk metal, pagan black metal and power metal rushing back in a wave of nostalgia and phantom headaches triggered by memories of awful production. I snagged it without hesitation for old times’ sake, and sure enough, this was the same Black Messiah I had listened to casually in my teenage years, warts and all.” Viking roars and pagan warts.
“I’ve been lurking the metal blogosphere for around a decade now, and while I hesitate to call myself a scene vet, I’ve read enough write-ups from various webzines to know how coverage of a record like the self-titled debut of France’s Les Chants du Hasard generally plays out. Most scribes hunger for the discovery of some nebulous ‘next big thing’ that carries the potential of turning a genre on its head. As such, many writers are overly eager to gush over potential innovators; when met face to face with what their promo sheet describes as an all-orchestral black metal album, they’re often too willing to jump on the hype train, regardless of quality.” Classical darkness.
“The AMG blog is a well-oiled machine. Thus, even a minor wrench in the gears on the part of the writers is met with the most dire of consequences. Last week, that wrench was yours truly, as I turned in a late review due to a sudden bout of illness that caused last-minute work (and general annoyance) on the part of our editors. You know what they say: you mess with the bull, you get the ‘core.” Let slip the dogs of ‘core.
“It’s no secret that Secret Sphere hasn’t seen a lot of love over their twenty year career. On top of being snubbed from AMG’s most prestigious of lists, their distinctly Italian take on the Euro-power formula has never come close to breaking away from second-rate status, and the band itself isn’t entirely free from blame.” And now, a blamestorming session.
“Long Island’s br00tal death pioneers have been having the time of their life for nearly three decades now, specializing in cutting-edge instrumentation and dramatic, crushing tempo changes to build one of the most impressively consistent discographies in all of death metal.” Don’t mess with Strong Island!
“There’s hardly anything that excites me more when discovering music than stumbling upon an unlikely and successful fusion of genres. I’m (mostly) not picky in regards to my taste for metal sub-genres, and when two or more of my favorites are effectively spliced together, I’m likely to remember the band in question for years to come. Yet as much as I’d love to hear an album that can pull off a mixture of doom, power, and traditional metal, with a side of thrash and accents of death and black metal without feeling overstuffed, I acknowledge that this desire is little more than a pipe dream. Except, oh wait, that exact album practically fell into my lap, and it’s actually really goddamned good.” The Last Genre Bender.
“There was a period back in my early high school days where I listened to DragonForce almost exclusively. I learned guitar so I could (badly) play “Through the Fire and Flames,” I wore one of the most atrocious band tees I’ve ever seen with pride, and I even made an unbelievably embarrassing PowerPoint presentation on the band’s history for a class assignment. I’m pretty sure my obsession with them stemmed from misdirected teenage hormones, which, with me being a DragonForce fan, definitely weren’t being aimed where human biology intended.” Dragonfetish.
“Based on my review stats thus far into my AMG career, I’ve got a 66 percent chance of snagging a record featuring Spectral Lore guitarist Ayloss whenever I pull an I, Voidhanger release from the promo bin. It’s easy to see why the label is so eager to back his work; he’s one of the few black metal guitarists I can recall who possesses a unique playing style, slapping an unmistakable stamp onto pretty much every product he touches. But before he staked his claim to black metal fame with Spectral Lore, he cut his teeth on Divine Element.” Sharp teeth, sharp riffs.
