The manbun has landed! We repeat, the manbun has landed!
Haken
Dr. Wvrm’s Top Ten(ish) Records of 2018
Christmas is over, but the lists are still lurking! Next up is Dr. Wvrm and his highly important opinions on what ten albums you should hear in 2018.
Mark Z.’s and L. Saunders’ Top Ten of 2018
More lists for the list machine! The men who unwisely go by their real names, Mark Z. and L. Saunders boldly proclaim their best albums of 2018.
Huck N’ Roll’s and Eldritch Elitist’s Top Ten of 2018
The top tens are marching, and Huck N’ Roll and Eldritch are ready to spread the gospel of good metal across the land. You wanted lists, you got lists!
Haken – Vector Review
“My introduction to the band was on The Mountain, which found the band dropping incredible songs with deeply creative compositions and amazing performances. But The Mountain‘s follow-up—Affinity—has never really established itself in my listening rotation. Unfortunately, while Affinity was full of ideas I loved and things I appreciated intellectually, it was like the girl who’s “perfect” for you but that you can’t get into. So I’ll admit mild consternation when Vector arrived. I wondered if Vector would continue in Affinity’s footsteps or if Haken had stayed on the move.” Moving and remaking.
Southern Empire – Civilisation Review
“Let’s be real here: are bands truly progressive when the longest song between them is but a measly fifteen minutes? Adelaide’s Southern Empire say “Not so!” as they drop the massive platter that is Civilisation. The four-track album clocks in at a mind-numbing seventy minutes! Can they justify the enormous time investment required to fully appreciate a record of such hefty girth?” An album with big bones.
Obscura – Diluvium Review
“Obscura’s 2009 release, Cosmogensis, dropped right when I was getting back into metal in a big way. I, like most people who heard it at the time, hailed it as the spiritual successor to Necrophagist and crowned the band the Kings o’ Noodly Death Metal. They have, in my estimation, never lived up to these expectations. Both Omnivium and Arkóasis fell flat, and both suffered from similar weaknesses; ballooning song and album-lengths, often at the cost of compositional focus and coherence.” If that’s not a cliff-hanger that makes you need to click, nothing is!
Burial in the Sky – Creatio et Hominus Review
“Of all places, Pennsylvania has seen a strange upwelling of prog-death bands in recent years. It started with the much-maligned Rivers of Nihil, gained momentum with Black Crown Initiate, and finally got going with Alustrium. Burial in the Sky jumped aboard with their 2016 LP Persistence of Thought, an album very much in the progressive vein of those groups, tying in bits of classic prog-death a la Atheist and Cynic with the tropes of core-polluted modern death metal.” Penn-death.
Caligula’s Horse – In Contact Review
“‘I am convinced,’ Nietzche wrote, ‘that art represents the highest task and the truly metaphysical activity of this life.’ Though he wrote this in a preface to his first work, The Birth of Tragedy, he was certainly not referring only to the written word — an art that few can claim more ownership of than him. That preface was written by none other than Richard Wagner, and though Nietzche would sour on him later in life, this profound appreciation for art in a broad sense would not end. The love of aesthetic creation, the belief in its power to affect the heart and erode human differences, is the very core of In Contact, a starry-skied series of extended vignettes on love and revolution, passion and loss, fragility and courage, rain-soaked in the joy of creation.” Creationism ascendant.
Nostoc – Ævum Review
“Firsts. Life’s full of ’em. Some are wonderful, such as the proverbial first kiss, or the first time you heard (or wrote about!) heavy metal. Some are horrible, such as the Drew Music-al first kiss, or the first time you heard Good Charlotte. A band’s first album can fall anywhere within this spectrum, and with their future depending on that first impression, the importance of debut albums cannot be overstated. This being said, let me prepare your future selves to remember the first time you ever heard Nostoc.” First shot at glory.
