“I have a soft spot for young bands releasing records under their own steam. With the amount of time I’ve spent pooling money for too little studio time and going through sketchy post-production just to have a stack of records I end up giving away to friends and family, I feel a masochistic duty to tackle self-releases when the promo sump presents them. Today’s lucky candidates are the French quintet Uncomfortable Knowledge, with their second full-length Lifeline.” The burden of knowledge.
“The U.K.’s Final Coil have once, twice graced these halls under the watchful gaze of our benevolent taskmaster Steel. But his eyes are all denim and leather these days, leaving me to find the band’s latest The World We Inherited languishing in the Dry January promo sump. Blending post and prog metal with a healthy dose of grunge, it’s been four years since they dropped their last LP, The World We Left Behind for Others. Unsurprisingly this 2024 release is connected to its predecessors, the third and final piece in the band’s “Persistence” triptych. Concept-driven albums are natural draws for this reviewer, an excellent choice for ushering in the new year.” Triple Coil points!
![Khirki – Κτηνωδία [Things You Might Have Missed 2021]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Khirki_Κτηνωδία_01-768x768.jpg)
“Hard rock and post-grunge are pretty much dead to me. After being a huge fan of that kind of stuff in the mid-aughts, my tastes started to branch out into other avenues. Once that happened, every new record in that scene sounded the same as the last one, regardless of what band released what album. Seeing no evolution or novelty anywhere just confirmed for me that there was nothing left to look forward to. Then Khirki arrives, and I’m all fucked up. How dare the Greek trio choose fucking 20-goddamn-21 to release a post-grunge debut record, entitled Κτηνωδία, that actually rocks hard back to front?!” Hellenic heroics.
“I was so confused when I picked up Shotgun Revolution for review a few weeks ago. I thought for sure someone here reviewed them already on this site, but a cursory search returned zero results. Then, I suddenly remembered I was thinking of Shotgun Rodeo, and all was right with the world again. So, I downloaded my totally up-for-grabs promo and smashed that heckin’ play button. Instantly I teleported to 2005, when post-grunge and hard rock saturated every radio station on the East Coast. I thought this kind of thing was pretty much dead in the water, but I guess I was wrong.” Gun up or stand down.
“Hard rock. Alt-metal. Post-grunge. These were the things I listened to back in high school. Breaking Benjamin and Disturbed in particular satisfied my desire for a bit of harmless aggression in my angsty youth. To be fair, I still hold a soft spot for the stuff, with Phobia and Ten Thousand Fists rising above the rest as the two albums from this subset of artists that I still regularly revisit. Los Angeles’ Hyvmine emerge from the same gene pool, fully intending to rock the world with their sophomore effort Retaliation.” You have hives.
