Seemingly coming out of the blue — like the sudden emergence of a horrible memory buried for years — drone doom supergroup Khanate returns with To Be Cruel (released digitally on May 19th and on physical formats on June 30th via Sacred Bones Records) the group’s first album since 2009’s Clean Hands Go Foul. Shrouded in secrecy prior to its release, To Be Cruel delivers three tracks and 62 mins of harsh, cold, sparse, experimental sounds fit to ruin any good day.
It’s been twenty years since Deathstars arrived on the scene with the release of their debut album Synthetic Generation, and Everything Destroys You (Nuclear Blast) is their sixth outing, and the first following a hiatus after the release of The Perfect Cult in 2014, and its subsequent touring cycle.
Prior to last October, nobody could have foreseen a full comeback from the hit act Hundred Reasons, let alone it to be accompanied by their first album release in fifteen years. Nonetheless, the day has finally arrived, when the band responsible for some of the big rock hits of the early noughties have released some brand new music. The only big question leaving the fans wondering – has the ship sailed on the band, or are Hundred Reasons back to create more of those hits?
Sweden’s Defleshed have returned to the land of the living after a nearly seventeen-year hiatus. The band broke up shortly after their last album, Reclaim the Beat, in 2005. The original core lineup runited just last year with the intention of recording just a few new tunes to be included in a vinyl box set. The group was more than satisfied with their efforts and decided to press forward and recorded an entire new album and Grind Over Matter (Metal Blade) was born.
“Progressive rock” is a term that can encompass a wide variety of sounds. At one point or another in their 35-year history, Porcupine Tree — the brainchild of Steven Wilson — have probably touched upon most of these. Having put out several albums of electronica-infused psychedelic space rock since their formation in 1987, the band reached a peak of critical and commercial success in the 2000s with the metal-influenced experimental songcraft exemplified by In Absentia and Fear of a Blank Planet. By the start of 2011, however, Porcupine Tree appeared to be no more, with Wilson announcing a hiatus to focus on his solo career; he stated as recently as 2018 that getting the band back together “would seem like a terribly backward step”.
It’s been nine years since A Wilhelm Scream released Partycrasher – an eleven-song banger of an album that expanded upon the hardcore sensibilities of its predecessor Career Suicide. Now, after nearly a decade of touring, the New Bedford, MA progressive punk quintet has finally offered some fresh material with their newest release Lose Your Delusion (Creator-Destructor). Continue reading
If you told me that Stabbing Westward, an Industrial Rock band originally from Chicago, would reenter my life twenty years after they first impacted it, I would not have believed you. Yet after all this time, I am listening to their first new studio album since 2001, Chasing Ghosts (COP International), and my world has been changed again. After devouring their most recent EP release Dead And Gone (COP International), fans were hungry for more and I was certainly no exception. Original founding members Christopher Hall and Walter Flakus have retained their signature style and newer members Carlton Bost and Bobby Amaro have brought so much richness to the sound.
There was a time where Metal had an ageism problem; the perception prevalent that once heavier bands passed certain milestone birthdays or anniversaries, or wracked a certain number of albums, or miles on the road, they became jaded, watered-down parodies of themselves. The late nineties, and, to be fair, a good chunk of the first decade of this millennium, were not kind to our grizzled veterans, some of whom fed into the prophecy, with stock output outweighing those who could still hold their own.
After months of rumours fuelled by glimpsed sightings and blurry photographs taken outside recording studios, the worst kept secret in rock was finally confirmed at the end of September this year. With a sudden flurry of activity on their website, the announcement was clear. AC/DC was back.
Tyrant’s long-awaited fourth album, Hereafter (ShadowKingdom Records), has come out under some rather interesting circumstances. In addition to serving as the Pasadena veterans’ first full-length since 1996’s King of Kings, Hereafter sees journeyman vocalist Robert Lowe at the helm in place of Glen May. The prospects of this collaboration are certainly intriguing, especially as a fan of Lowe’s work with Solitude Aeturnus and Candlemass. I wouldn’t go so far as to think of it as Tyrant gone doom, but it approaches their established sound from a noticeably different angle.