“It was before a long journey that I haphazardly shoved all my new music on to my iPod, paying no regard to the attached one sheets and band biographies. Having never heard their material before, it was without expectation or even awareness of genre that I approached Seven Year Storm’s début EP Aion I.” Road trip music is important. Does the rubber meet the road here?
“Given AMG and Steel Druhm’s well-documented love for power metal (Sonata Arctica, Riot, Edguy), it’s difficult to claim high profile names within the genre for review. The reviews I just linked were all within the last eight months, and 2015 alone has already seen well-received releases from Blind Guardian, Angra and Orden Ogan. Aside from demonstrating the corrupt poseurs masquerading as our leaders, this leaves us meager staff writers scraping the bottom of the power metal barrel…” Did El Cuervo just call the Metal Tribunal corrupt? That’s a paddlin’ offense.
“I once had a roommate who assured me Converge was “really just noise.” At one point in his life he had played guitar for a metal band, so my naïve young self believed him. My surprise when I finally listened to Jane Doe and was blown away by the sheer emotion inherent in the spastic, ballistic dissonance. Idylls have much the same thing going on – traditional melody is eschewed, and at times, it does sound like four guys trapped in a room trying to make as much commotion as possible.” Bring forth the noise room!
“Long gone are the days of demo releases being the lifeblood of underground metal. With the tape trading days of circulating a raw and rough cut demo to create word of mouth buzz and build street cred a thing of the past, and the digital age having firmly taken over, the format has become a fading relic in the modern metal landscape.” But this putrid gem might just take you back to the rancid demo days of yore.
“Do you ever wonder what Dissection would have sounded like after Storm of the Light’s Bane if Jon Nodveidt made much better life choices and became obsessed with death metal and the original Star Wars trilogy? Yeah, neither did I, but Washington’s Hoth decided to answer that question in the form of their sophomore album Oathbreaker.” Some ideas just don’t look good on paper. This is one of those.
“Symphony X nerds rejoice! Then again, maybe you won’t. Symphony X bassist Mike LePond’s first solo effort was released in September of this year and those expecting LePond to stick to his primary band’s keyboard-laden progressive metal path may be sorely disappointed. If you are, get that geeky head out of your pale behind (if you can get up off it long enough between games of Skyrim)…” New Jersey knows metal, and Al Kikuras knows New Jersey.
“Is there a better way to start a review of a metal album that with a brief discussion of semantics? Yes, there is, but I’m going to do just that anyway, written hooks be damned. Can anyone accurately define what “progressive” metal, or even “progressive” music, is? Is it letting everyone within earshot know that you listened to and enjoyed the entire discographies of King Crimson, Camel, and The Mahavishnu Orchestra?” Semantics? This here website is getting too damn educated these days!
