ALBUM REVIEW: Avenged Sevenfold – Life Is But A Dream…


 

Avenged Sevenfold are potentially one of the most divisive metal acts out of the US since Metallica. All you need to do is look at their previous two albums, 2013’s Hail To The King & 2016’s The Stage to see the extreme polar oppositions these albums created. The former for how the band wore their Metallica influence on their sleeve, creating their own version of The Black Album, and then the following 2016 release throwing all of their previous influences and sounds up in the air, bringing in outside sources from the likes of Pink Floyd, and creating a wholly new progressive rock/metal experience.

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EP REVIEWS ROUND-UP- ft. Black Coast – Halocene – Tokky Horror – Loud As Giants – Swollen Teeth – Spinebreaker


 

Bursting onto the scene, as Potteries pounders Black Coast did with Outworld their 2021 debut, is one thing, keeping the momentum going is another, and from the onset of the raging ‘REAL (Are You Listening)?’, it’s clear the five-piece contemporary metal outfit are not just looking to do that, but they intend not to waste the opportunity this five-song offering gives to remind people just how good and how potent they are ahead of any subsequent longer releases.

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ALBUM REVIEW: Veil Of Maya – Mother


 

Brief storytime. Back in the mid-2010s, the WWE was hellbent on crowning star Roman Reigns as the next big thing. As soon as fans caught on to this shove-it-down-your-throat approach, they balked, and booed Reigns out the building every chance they got. It took years for the majority to embrace Roman finally. And maybe that path is prophetic when it comes to Veil Of Maya’s newest record, Mother (Sumerian Records).

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ALBUM REVIEW: The Amity Affliction – Not Without My Ghosts


 

When any kind of metal band promotes their new material as “the heaviest music they’ve ever made”, it’s usually met with eye rolls from fans who have heard this very promise time and time again from their favorite groups who failed to deliver. Hearing this from The Amity Affliction, a group that has always stood on the lighter side of metalcore, I was one of the skeptical ones. Ever since the Australian quartet released their instant classic Let The Ocean Take Me in 2014, each album following has paled in comparison.

Until now.

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ALBUM REVIEW: Death Goals – A Garden Of Dead Flowers


 

Imagining what sounds the absence of something emits can be as intangible as it is incomprehensible. A garden of dead flowers, for example, would presumably lack much in the way of disturbances or noises. Yet, Death Goals penned a soundtrack for that scene and it’s deranged, cantankerous, and irrepressible.

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ALBUM REVIEW: IN FEAR – All Is. All Shall Be


 

Metalcore is a style of music that will likely always have appeal, and always have avid listeners, but few in the genre can land a knockout at the start. Bristol UK metalcore scene newcomers In Fear have wound up and clocked quite the sucker punch to the noses of the dubious and unsuspecting.

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ALBUM REVIEW: Unearth – The Wretched; The Ruinous


 

Everything is cyclical, isn’t it? These days I read numerous think pieces telling me how Nu-Metal is experiencing a revival. There are even young bands like Tetrarch and Tallah that openly identify themselves as being nu-metal acts. Would’ve never thought that possible ten years ago. No way. But yet here we are, and it seems like we all plan to attend the Coal Chamber show.

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