Record reviews
“Eclectic is the name of the game when it comes to Dot Legacy. The French quartet has been around for seven years, playing a unique brand of fuzzed-out energy rock. How’s that for a genre? To be honest, Dot Legacy’s second offering, To the Others, kind of defies genre categorization. It’s a mish-mash of everything, and that was the intent going in.” Kitchen sink-core.
“In 2014, my main claim to AMG fame or, if your tastes are less than impeccable, infamy, lay in awarding Alestorm Record o’ the Year for the truly excellent Sunset on the Golden Age. I did some other good deeds as well, such as spotlighting Entrapment’s top-shelf Swe-death platter Lamentations of the Flesh.” Cause one out of two is kinda bad.
“Trying to think of a catchy way to start a review when there’s very little information available on the band concerned, most of what is out there is in a foreign language and the record in question isn’t actually very good can be tough. In an ideal world, I probably ought to power through irrespective, taking plenty of time in order to come up with something snappy. Well, in an ideal world I’d also be married to Emilia Clarke, so what can I say?” Get the lede out!
“To paraphrase the immortal Hansi Kursch: “time, what is time? — it does not heal, but it lets us forget.” Ukrainian power-metallers Defiant seemingly agree, with the concept rampant on their sophomore release Time Isn’t Healing. It would appear, around the AMG water cooler, at any rate, that power metal continues to be one of the most divisive components of heavy metal.” That water cooler is actually filled with cheap bourbon.
“Naming your doom metal band Heavydeath is like naming your cat “Whiskers McPussyface,” but somehow this Swedish trio manages to pull it off. In early 2015 these former Runemagick members quite impressed me with debut Eternal Sleepwalker, at least enough that I actually bothered to check out a few of the motherfucking 16 demos, EPs, and compilations the band released since forming just three years ago.” Slowprolific.
“You wouldn’t know it by my amazing metal cred, but I’m actually a huge nerd. And, as such, it seems to be my moral obligation to watch British sci-fi staple Doctor Who religiously. It’s a campy affair with loads of creatures and concepts that seem to have been invented by someone going “what if…“ and constructing entire episodes around that.” Destroy! Destroy!
“Though Dimmu Borgir and Cradle of Filth continue to deliver some decent material, I struggle to find that initial pleasure I once felt with releases like Enthrone Darkness Triumphant, Spiritual Black Dimensions, Dusk and Her Embrace, and Cruelty and the Beast. And, for the most part, I had a falling out with both bands. But, I recently discovered a musical venture of Dani Filth’s I had no idea existed—one that I am rather enjoying.” If you can’t have the King, at least you can wallow in Filth.
“One-man black metal projects are like rats nowadays; you’re never more than a few meters away from one at any given time. Okay, I may have made that up, but there does seem to be quite a surplus of them knocking about at the moment. While this abundance of choice is great for those of us who like our music bleak and wintery, with every man and his dog getting in on the act, cutting through the chaff and finding material actually worth listening to can seem like a pretty mammoth task.” Allow us to separate the wheat from the rats.
“I don’t know what the hell is going on in Finland these days. Late last year the quirky northerners gave us a band by the name of Speedtrap, a proto-thrash garage band who put out a messy but fun album, Straight Shooter. Now we get Initiated, another garage band naturally featuring Speedtrap’s guitarist on the lead axe (I don’t know if there are enough people in Finland for bands to not share members), for a less thrashy but no less messy record, World on Fire.” Raw power or raw chowder?
“Things are getting worse. The seasons are becoming more unforgiving and natural disasters on a colossal scale are becoming more common. Species and their habitats are being pulverized into extinction at a rapid rate and humanity, instead of looking for a solution, seeks to jump ship to other planets. How are we, the powerless, going to solve this? What can we really do? Well, we can curl up into a ball and listen to Maschine’s second full-length that focuses on the ramifications of our disregard for Mother Earth.” Prog it up as the world goes down.
