“Quick word association game: New Jersey and metal genres. What are you thinking about? If it was jazz-infused progressive metal, well, you should probably be checked by a medical professional. Yet you’re not wrong, because that is exactly what East of the Wall have to offer, and have done for over a decade now. After releasing 4 albums in 5 years between 2008 and 2013, the band took their time for NP-Complete, partially forced by numerous line-up changes.” From Jersey with…jazz??
“I have been a fan of Devin Townsend for well over a decade now. I’ve been with him through half his career, including his entire Devin Townsend Project phase. But his most recent output started to feel a little stale. It was like he had painted himself in a corner and was finding it difficult breaking out of a rut formed from Epicloud’s echoes. Ziltoid 2 was overwrought, more of a comedic radio drama than a music album, and its companion piece Sky Blue had no staying power for me. Transcendence fared only marginally better. So when Devin announced he was laying the Project brand to rest, it made me hopeful. Could Empath, the first album since Ziltoid under his own name, be Devin’s new metamorphosis?” The Devin you know.
“With some exceptions, in a rule-of-thumb sort of way, the ‘technical’ modifier means ‘this was harder to play’ while ‘progressive’ means ‘this was harder to write.’ As such, experience is highly valued among progressive musicians especially, and progressive supergroups seem more common than other genres. The Mute Gods is another one of those, consisting of Steven Wilson’s bassist Nick Beggs and drummer Marco Minnemann, who also performs guitars here, and keyboard player Roger King who played with Nick and Steve Hackett of Genesis fame.” Great expectations.
“Proto-metal is a bit of a strange moniker to apply to modern-day bands. The “proto” prefix literally means “first” or “common ancestor,” so linguistically it makes little sense to apply it to any band past 1975. Yet with the popularity of everything retro, plenty of bands try to recreate that pre-metal hard rock sound that laid the foundations of our favorite genre. Hot Lunch are as proto as proto gets, despite first appearing with their self-titled debut in 2013. With the sophomore slab, appropriately titled Seconds, can they function as the time machine they aim to be?” Back to the past and future.
“It’s funny how bands try to embellish their true nature through genre tags sometimes. Metalcore often tries to lay claim to melodic death metal, probably because it causes less out-of-hand rejection. Progressive metal promos are a minefield of djent bands, which can be progressive but are often anything but. Another one to be wary of is groove metal. Groove metal doesn’t have a great reputation in and of itself, and it’s bound to degrade further with the amount of nu-metal bands co-opting the term. Blacklist-9 (written randomly with or without hyphen even on the band’s own sources) ostensibly play groove metal.” Adding to the list.
“Iron Fire have been hitting the pavement for a long time with dogged persistence. Despite a three-year hiatus, they’ve knocked out their ninth album this year since their 2000 debut, which is a staggering pace of release to keep up for so long. Yet their most recent work, Among the Dead, was not up to snuff with their preceding release, according to our own Jean-Luc Ricard. With Ricard in absentia, it falls to me to judge whether Beyond the Void fares better than its immediate predecessor.” Dull and void.
“In the mid-00’s, I was just starting to dip my toes into the realms of metal. Maybe it was just the entry point I had with Children of Bodom, but there were a slew of bands that were called melodic death metal, but like a Scooby Doo villain, turned out to be power metal with some harsh vocals, some of them adding some cues from Gothic metal to seem a little darker. Bands like Eternal Tears of Sorrow or Before the Dawn went over well with pubescent me, with their straightforward, Maidenesque guitar harmonies and gloomy veneer. Dying Embers fall in this category as well, being tagged melodic death metal, and instead molding bits of Gothic and growls onto a mid-paced power metal album with the unwieldy title Where Shadeless Dwell Frozen. Time to feel like a teenager again.” Drama Club metal.
“We take the electric guitar for granted. Where would metal be without its deliciously distorted tones? Dronte asked themselves the same thing, and they interpreted it as a challenge. And while they were at it, they got rid of all electrical feeds to their instruments. Yes indeed, we are dealing with a self-proclaimed acoustic metal band. Can there even be such a thing? Are electric instruments not an absolute necessity for metal? And would anyone besides the French be insane enough to even attempt it?” The other Tenacious D.
“Join me, boys and girls, for a little history lesson slash tragedy. It was the early 80s in the United States, with thrash metal on the verge of taking over the metal scene completely, particularly in the infamous Bay area. Traditional heavy metal bands in the US were far and few between. Manilla Road’s star was rising, but from San Francisco came the sounds of a wildly creative band, sprung up from the ashes of a band called Prisoner. This band was Brocas Helm, and for a little while after their 1984 debut Into Battle, they seemed poised to be at the forefront of US traditional metal.” Trve romance.
“The years have not been kind to Electric Wizard. After the monumental fuzz-fest Dopethrone, the band’s quality has slowly scooted downhill, owing allegedly to drama behind the scenes causing the band to coast endlessly. Drummer Mark Greening left after a high-strung tour in 2003 and, though he briefly rejoined in the early 2010s, in the end he decided to follow his heart to greener pastures. This quest ended with the founding of Dead Witches, whose sophomore slab of burly stoner-doom lands this month.” Which witch?
