F.A.G. is as sick and tired of retro thrash as he is of typing out “Rumpelstiltskin.” Luckily, he likes the album or the extra F-bombs would get us tossed of the interwebs.
Candlelight
Fear Factory – The Industrialist Review
Fear Factory was pretty revolutionary back in their beginnings. That was then, this is less than wow.
Ihsahn – Eremita Review
Post-Emporer, Ihsahn has kicked a lot of ass, but After was a controversial record without a doubt. While I gave it my thumbs up at the time, I feel like it hasn’t aged well—with the saxophone performance being my biggest complaint. Sure, jazz and metal have histories of solo players who push the boundaries of what is “acceptable,” but the saxophone performances get pretty taxing after a while. So for me, the thing that I’m looking for from a new Ihsahn record is that it lives up to the songwriting and groove-oriented riffing from The Adversary and especially angL which is one of my favorite records of the last 10 years. So, as you can guess, I approached Eremita (Latin for “hermit” and the root of the English word “eremite” if you weren’t aware) nervously.
Havok – Point of No Return EP Review
Hey, Havok is back! I know everybody thinks we review far too much retro thrash (or was it Mexican murder ballads?), but Havok is at the top of the movement and excels at what they do.
Diablo Swing Orchestra – Pandora’s Piñata Review
Mixing the meathead with the egghead. Also opera. Mandatory purchase.
The Wretched End – Inroads Review
Some bands can easily blur the line separating thrash and death metal. You find yourself enjoying blast beats with screams, mid-tempo chugs with blistering solos, a trebly production with some deep throat growls. They are the elements we all love so much about those two very convincing reasons for man’s existence on this planet. But what do you actually call it? Is it Death metal? Thrash metal? Death/Thrash metal? And how about that ridiculous tag ‘deathrash’?
Wodensthrone – Curse Review
Black metal and folk metal are tightly entwined in many ways, but also also have a fraught relationship. Both are often inspired my the beauty or bleakness of the natural world and frequently use pagan symbolism and iconography. Wodensthrone occupy a unique location in the liminal space between these two extremes.
Interview with Mirai Kawashima from Sigh
Enigmatic and uncomfortably cheerful, gregarious and ambitious Happy Metal Guy managed to catch up with Mirai Kawashima from the Japanese avant-garde black metal band Sigh. He bombarded him with positivity, amusing anecdotes and uncomfortable questions about steel phalli until Mr. Kawashima relented; answering the questions and talking about… flowers? This fucking blog gets weirder and weirder every day.
Sigh – In Somniphobia Review
Bands really get the shit end of the stick sometimes, and one of the areas that this happens with is the concept of change. On the one hand, a band is never supposed to change their sound. Their fans will freeeeak out and everyone will call what they do a big pile of shit (how about that last Drudkh album, went from darling of the scene to whipping boy in the matter of a day). On the other hand, others will hear a record from a band that functionally the same and say something cocky like “Is Cannibal Corpse even remotely relevant anymore?” [Oh wait, that was me and everyone got mad. — AMG] Sigh is one of those bands that I think threads that needle perfectly—offering up records every couple of years that change their sound, while keeping the core in place. In Somniphobia is really no exception to this rule—and it triumphantly continues the band’s current success streak.
Corrosion of Conformity – Corrosion of Conformity Review
Corrosion of Conformity fans can generally be divided up into two teams: aging hardcore guys who only enjoyed the band’s first few records from the early ’80s, and metal dudes who prefer the band’s more recent incarnation with Pepper Keenan on vocals. These two teams don’t like each other, and Team Hardcore really doesn’t like latter-day COC. This conflict has been going on for decades, but the battle lines shifted recently when the three founding members of COC decided to reunite, sans Keenan, to record new music as a trio for the first time since 1986. Would the band finally deliver some crossover thrash to satisfy the old-schoolers? Or will they continue along the sludgy path they’ve been traveling since 1994’s Deliverance?
