“Hailing from Rhode Island and boasting a moniker indicative of their mode of destruction, Hell Bent create metal sympathetic for the time poor modern metalhead, unleashing a livewire debut LP which shreds through nine potent songs in a mere 23 minutes. Before you ask, Apocalyptic Lamentations is not a grindcore album but rather a raw, punk-infected slab of death-thrash that aims right for the jugular and does not let up.” Reigning Hell.
Horror Pain Gore Death Productions
Synapse Misfire – Losing the War Against the Sands of Time Review
“As the deranged voices of ‘Loathe Thyself’ jeer ‘you’re wasting time’ and ‘just stop,’ those glimpses of receding sanity mirror my own mental state. My fists clench. My teeth grind to the nerve. My notes devolve into an all-caps frothing that echoes those exact sentiments. If pressed for time, the finale of Losing the War Against the Sands of Time might be all you need to understand the debut of Illinois’ Synapse Misfire. Egregiously flawed and fundamentally half-baked, the black/thrash/grind record is a good idea in theory and a very poor one in execution.” PuppyMonkeyBaby has some competition.
God Root – Salt and Rot Review
“Despite what the band and album name may conjure up, Salt and Rot by God Root is not the latest word in primal vegan cuisine. What we have instead is the second release from the Pennsylvanian quintet, a sludgy, post-metal mediation that sings of soil and sky and man’s connection to both.” Have we finally reached post-Neurosis?