Steel Panther – Lower the Bar


One of the nice things about a band like Steel Panther is that, like a box of chocolates, you always know what you’re gonna get. And with the Panther, you get the chocolate too; vocalist “Michael Starr” dips right in on the opening track of Lower the Bar (Open E), dropping this little nugget of wisdom: “Sometimes the back door is the only way in.”Continue reading


Lock Up – Demonization


Yes, it’s a cliché, and no, I don’t care if writing professors from here to hell say to avoid clichés at all cost, but Heinz was on to something… It has been six years since Lock Up’s last album, and three years since Kevin Sharp (Brutal Truth) replaced much-beloved vocalist Tomas Lindberg and very simply, good things come to those who wait.Continue reading


Fit For An Autopsy – The Great Collapse


Fit For An Autopsy’s fourth album, and second full-length with vocalist Joe Badolato, doesn’t come out of the gate swinging furiously. It comes out slogging, a hulking creature dragging its knuckles through mud and grime, knowing it can take its time. Because you can’t run. You’re frozen in fear.Continue reading


Havok – Conformicide


Conformicide (Century Media) is not Havok’s Master Of Puppets or Reign In Blood moment.

But that’s okay.Continue reading


Benighted – Necrobreed


“Honey?” She creeps through the kitchen to a door that stands open but a crack, dull light streaming up from the cellar. Her husband’s workshop. He’s been spending an awful lot of time down there lately. She fears for his mental stability, but he swears that he is simply focused on his work.Continue reading


Ember Falls – Welcome to Ember Falls


 

Self-proclaimed Electro-Metalcore futurists Ember Falls call Finland home, but their début Welcome to Ember Falls (Spinefarm) may well have been delivered from some distant, imaginary multiverse where people carry huge Final Fantasy-type swords Continue reading


Once Human – Evolution


If you slept on Once Human’s The Life I Remember, you need to wake up. Right now. Evolution (both earMUSIC) is exactly as the name states; an evolution of extreme music blended into one glorious molten mold of metal.Continue reading


R.I.P. – In The Wind


R.I.P.’s début In the Wind (RidingEasy) is, quite simply, a grimy middle finger to the heavier cadre of bands that take themselves and their image a bit too seriously. Dripping with reverb and cavernous echoes, the album may very well have been recorded not in the wind, but in a dark, dank basement obscured in thick, pungent smoke. Peeling walls decorated with black light posters. Lava lamps and ashtrays scattered about on a carpet sporting thirty-one flavors of stains.Continue reading


Fight The Fight – Fight The Fight


At first glance, you would be forgiven if you expect Norway’s Fight The Fight to lean toward a certain Satanic style born in Oslo, judging by their guitarists names Amok and Lord and considering the band’s hometown, which also happens to be the birthplace of that blackest of metal.Continue reading


As Lions – Selfish Age


While it is unrealistic to expect the son of a world-renowned musician to naturally sound like (or even want to sound like) his father, the fact is, when your last name is Dickinson, people are going to judge you based on preconceived notions. Author Joe Hill knows all about it; his father is master horror storyteller Stephen King, and when Hill started out, he intentionally took on his mother’s maiden name (bad pun, sorry, couldn’t resist) to avoid the inevitable comparisons to his old man.Continue reading