“Sympathy for the Ignorant is ten tracks and 38 minutes of groove-centric thrash metal. Misfire’s sound walks the line between pure thrash and crossover and really doesn’t care which side of the line you want it to stage-dive into. I hear similarities to some of the big-name crossover bands like Enforced and Power Trip.” Thrash til dive.
“I still remember the initial impact Realms, the 2016 full-length debut from singer/songwriter Jayn Maiven, aka Darkher, left when it was first released. Her stripped-back instrumentation, multi-layered vocals, and hefty command of atmosphere reshaped what doom metal could be if a little bit of creativity were applied, and in doing so, set one hell of a bar for similar acts to try to surpass. Thanks to numerous delays, word on a follow-up was sparse, and it looked like anything that would follow such a tremendous album would be a letdown.” Dark expectations.
“I miss the 1980s. There’s a special place in my heart for bands that foreshadowed the development of extreme metal while keeping one foot firmly planted in their thrash or NWoBHM roots, like Sodom, Venom, and Slayer. German first-wave black metal enthusiasts Blood Torrent agree. We get lots of promos that cite early-90s second-wave bands as influences, but it’s rarer that albums purport to revive their mid-80s ancestors.” Blood and olde treasure.
“In a recent review, I described the death/doom sound of Grand Harvest using a variety of band comparisons. One of our lovely readers soon brought up one I meant to include but somehow left out: Portland’s Nightfell. Mere days later, Nightfell’s Instagram account became active after an extended hiatus, teasing some artwork and the date “4.1.22.” Then lo and behold, they sneakily self-released their fourth full-length album on that very date. Nightfell’s Bolt Thrower-gone-atmospheric sound crushed me on 2019’s A Sanity Deranged, and if I’d known a follow-up was coming, it would have been one of my most-anticipated releases of this year. Alas, the dudes in Nightfell robbed me of that sweet, sweet anticipation with their surprise album. Well, two can play that game. Behold! Here’s my surprise review!” Owning the night.
“Another review, another band with a ten-year gap between albums. When I was a young whipper-snapper, the gap was ten months! C’mon bands, get prolific again. Okay, anyhow, French dark metal act Lux Incerta produced a promising debut, now-ironically entitled A Decade of Dusk, back in 2012. If I were reviewing back in those days, it would have received one of those “there are a number of issues but this is a promising debut and I look forward to seeing where they go from here” summaries. Strong in many areas, clearly influenced by bands such as My Dying Bride and Katatonia, but still a ways to go in maturing and honing their sound.” Darkness fanciers.
“I’m not gonna lie, I grabbed this one based on the band name alone. While I don’t consider myself to be a hardcore gamer, I’ve still played enough to have the name End Boss give me an immediate feeling of nostalgic mental arousal. The name makes me want to head to the nearest merchant to stock up on healing potions, buffing elixirs, and specialty arrows before listening. But who am I kidding? I’m lazy. You know perfectly well that I Instacarted the hell out of that shit.” All your head are belong to us.
“I scoff at the idea of curses, but things have been dicey since I let Concilivm’s dark magicks into my life. My hated rival Grigori Ilanovich got the promotion I’ve been vying for, there’s a strange shadow on the bedroom wall that seems to be creeping closer each night, and my credit rating has been lowered to “Shoot on Sight.” Can A Monument in Darkness’s forty minutes of blackened death metal really be the source of all this bad mojo? Spin the debut offering of this duo from Chile, and you too might find yourself consumed by the encroaching blackness. It may well be too late to save me, so I’ll set down this record of my findings.” Dark deeds done dirt cheap.
“Nostalgia is powerful. As I write here, I’ve found that I can often remember exactly where I was when I first heard a noteworthy promo, and the ability to relive those experiences through music makes me happy. When I first heard Between Land and Sky, the debut full-length release from Finnish Marrasmieli in January of 2020, I was commuting to work, comparatively new employment that I enjoyed, blissfully unaware that we were not all that far away from everything changing. While the year itself turned out to be less-than-great, the album certainly was, and I came back to it a lot as uncertainty took over. Because of this, Between Land and Sky has a special sort of significance to me, and the news that Marrasmieli has returned with a new full-length album was thrilling.” Wistful introspection and pandemic nostalgia.
“Even though I have pigeonholed myself as the album art guy around here, when I’m selecting promos, I actually don’t often select an album based on the art. I usually go by one of three methods: completely blind (either random or letting a colleague select), selecting straight from the list (where the only information I have is artist, title, genre and label), or cherry picking (where I listen to singles until I find something I think I’ll like). Trick or Treat is an exception, because just look at this goofy-ass cartoon cover! Either this will be stupid enough to work, like Nanowar of Steel, or it’ll be too stupid to work, like most power metal. So which one is it?” Symphonies of slickness.
“I’ve said this in other reviews, but damn, it is really cool to see the US power metal scene thriving. Not that it matters much for someone like me, who lives in the middle of an un-tourable flyover state. Even so, it’s heartwarming to see people like me, who grew up asking “why doesn’t power metal have a scene in America?,” growing up to actually do something about it. The number of great USPM bands is so large now that it takes something special to stand out, and thus it took four LPs for Lords of the Trident to finally catch my attention in 2018 with Shadows From the Past.” A three-pronged attack.
