San Diego trio Earthless is no stranger to live recordings and From the West (Silver Current/Nuclear Blast), recorded just before the launch of last studio album Black Heaven (Nuclear Blast), seems to laud that album’s release and the band’s new deal with the larger label.Continue reading
Woah! SHINING (the Norwegian BlackJazz Munke(b)ys) have got some balls. While Rock and Metal fans are often the most obsessive and loyal of supporters, woe betide a band who undergoes a misplaced style change; when heroes embark in a new direction that isn’t just left at the traffic lights but involves a radical transformation, it’s not unknown for a band to split and lose an audience, sometimes irretrievably. Make no mistake, Animal (Spinefarm) is one such move.Continue reading
Carcass didn’t invent death metal, but they helped perfect it. The didn’t ascend to the pantheon of the death and goregrind genres overnight either. Their earlier work, especially their debut Reek of Putrefaction, Symphonies of Sickness, and Tools of The Trade and a few EP’s were all growers. The band had a penchant of shifting genres and styles within songs and albums, owing to their talent, but displeasing some of the more ardent fans. They likely didn’t think about this or even discuss it, just musically going wherever the evil spirits guided at the time. This kept their growing fan base agitated, but interested to see what the band would do next in the burgeoning underground scene. So when Heartwork was unleashed on the world (Earache) in 1993, it seemed like all of these elements coalesced. Continue reading
Here are some tips on how best to enjoy Domkraft’s Flood (Blues Funeral). If you have some rich Kush lying about then you may partake. It’s not essential, but I find it to be of great assistance. The following items, however, are vital. Find the comfiest chair in your apartment, an Acapulco shirt and a decent set of headphones. Don’t say I never did anything for you.Continue reading
Troubador is a terminology almost forgotten to time. Sure it applies to a lot of Indie-Folk and Alternative artists. There are some really great storytellers across different genres in music history: Johnny Cash, Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Neil Young, Eddie Vedder, Loudon Wainwright III, Jaye Jale, Emma Ruth Rundle, The White Buffalo, Marissa Nadler, Chris Smither, Wovenhand, and even the lighter side of artists like Xasthur and Panopticon. Why not mash-up soulful Blues and Country like Hank III, but also Torch Song Art-Punk like Amanda Palmer? It can be done if you have the talent and the ability to convey realness. Fake anything won’t work for this style at all. Amigo The Devil a.ka. Danny Kiranos deals in these realities that point the mirror at the less flattering and absurd moments in life, including at himself. His new album, the Ross Robinson (Korn, Sepultura) produced Every Thing Is Fine (Regime Music Group) conveys this in spades.Continue reading
Landmvrks is relatively a new band. Hailing from Marseille, France the quartet that consists of Florent Salfati, Nicolas Exposito, Rudy Purkart, and Nicolas Soriano only have one album under their belt, Hollow that was released in 2016. The debut earned them a set at last year’s Hellfest. The quartet signed a deal with Arising Empire and crafted their new album Fantasy.Continue reading
Fans of the legendary Doom outfit Woods of Ypres (RIP David Gold) are aware of bands’ legacy in the North American Doom Metal scene. Former WoY members Joel Violette and Rae Amitay (Immortal Bird) have carried on a kinship through their work together in Thrawsunblat. More of a doom and Dark Folk side-project, it is their link to to the past and boldness to move forward which courses through fourth album IV: Great Brunswick Forest (Ignifera Records).Continue reading
“We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever but to create something that will…” begins the fifth Amaranthe album, all proudly released by Spinefarm. And while this particular release may not be quite in and of itself destined to live indefinitely in our hearts and minds, as a collective, the band really must be given credit for carving a sound and style that is wholly and completely their own. Ten years deep into a healthy and prolific career, Helix not only shows no sign of letting up but feels like a second wind to launch the band into a second decade.Continue reading
There are albums that hit all the right notes, and usually in the right order. There are other albums that spend their entirety looking for a focus and never quite finding it. The new album by American Doomsters Castle somehow manages to do both.Continue reading
Metal has a problem with nostalgia. As soon as the Slipknot riff that gets the energy going to start the record in opener ‘The Awakening’, everything about The Legacy of Shi (Sharptone) feels like it should have been part of a record made about 20 years ago. An amalgamation of lots of different tricks designed to garner the attention of every 90s teenage metal-head. Pantera’s groove? Check. Machine Head’s attempt at Hip-Hop? Check. An aesthetic based around eighties Shōnen manga? Ticks across the board.
For a band that lists such Nu-Metal luminaries as Rage Against The Machine and Deftones among their influences, Rise Of The Northstar don’t seem to have taken lessons from these acts to heart, lacking the fire of the former and the elegance of the latter. There are elements that aim for a more brooding, menacing atmosphere with down-tuned riffs and vocalist Vithia’s measured delivery. To his credit, he shows ample restraint on moments like ‘Kozo’ where his vocals emit genuine anger and turmoil at well-timed moments in-between these almost demonic voice effects for maximum impact. The chorus, however, is so lumbering and ham-fisted that all subtlety and intrigue goes out the window and it doesn’t feel like the intense battle with one’s inner demons (à la KoRn) that I feel was their original intention. When the vocals aren’t being heavy-handed, they’re just outright mystifying such as in the bizarre rapping throughout the whole album. The delivery somehow switches between the obvious clichés of ‘Nekketsu’ and the stunted awkwardness of ‘Here Comes The Boom’, and it’s hard to figure out which is the more unpleasant.
What this record can boast rather well is a solid production thanks in huge part to Gojira’s Joe Duplantier, and even with this record’s faults the man knows how to make a riff sound good, and there are plenty of them to like. ‘Step By Step’s’ bridge is a groovy, punky little number, ‘This Is Crossover’ is exactly what it says on the tin, and ‘All For One’ is essentially the first Slipknot record condensed into 3 minutes. The title track is arguably the album’s biggest highlight as it finally feels like Rise Of The Northstar are bringing some real weight and bounce that make for a stupidly fun track that could easily get your metal club night moving. The trouble is that it comes far too late to get the party started and could have benefitted from appearing sooner to break up the monotony of earlier tracks.
No subgenre of metal is free of the nostalgia criticism, as musicians and fans alike can often be beholden to the past. The increasing popularity of bands like Cane Hill even proves that there is still demand from sections of the metal community for some Nu-Metal bounce. It boils down to one thing; is The Legacy of Shi fun? While there is a smattering of decent moments scattered across the record, in the end it’s repetitive breakdowns and gang-vocals, grating rapping, and clichéd aesthetic makes it difficult to recommend. Whatever the legacy of Rise Of The Northstar ends up being, I can’t imagine too many will be sticking around to find out.
5.0/10
ROSS JENNER