Low-key doom supergroup Lighting Born has formed with members hailing from notable bands such as Corrosion of Conformity Bloody Hammers, Demon Eye, The Hell No, Hour of 13 and Mega Colossus. The doom metal collective with roots in North Carolina and Maryland has signed a world-wide deal with Ripple Music, and are already working on a new album due out in late 2018. Continue reading
Bad Wolves have gone from low-key metal supergroup to global sensation on the strength of their hit cover song ‘Zombie’ (The Cranberries, RIP Dolores O’Riordan). Now the band has dropped the seriously heavy track ‘Better the Devil’ both establishing them as a legit heavy band and no one hit wonder. Watch the killer lyric video for the track below. Continue reading
Prog metal supergroup Sons of Apollo just released a digital EP for their track Alive/Tengo Vida. The EP features a Spanish language version of ‘Alive’, ‘Tengo Vida’, and several other versions of the tracks, including acoustic. Continue reading
Former members of The Devin Townsend Project and Stapping Young Lad have teamed up with Jon Howard of Threat Signal to form a supergroup, Imonolith. Howard explains the choice of band name in a post on Facebook.Continue reading
Legend Of The Seagullmen, the band featuring Mastodon guitarist Brent Hinds, Tool drummer Danny Carey, Giraffe Tongue Orchestra bassist Pete Griffin, vocalist David “Dr. Dreyer” Dreyer, guitarist Jimmy Hayward, and keyboardist Chris Digiovanni, will release its debut self-titled album on Friday, but you don’t have to wait any longer to hear it. Continue reading
It’s got to be natural for music fans across the board to broach the subject of supergroups with a healthy sense of trepidation. Does this musical meeting of the minds come from a place of altruism or are there nastier motivations that have yet to be dredged out? That’s what circled through my head for about 30 seconds before I started out Dead Cross’ self-titled debut album (Ipecac).Continue reading
Swedish rock supergroup, The Nightflight Orchestra, is dropping their new album, Amber Galactic, on May 19th, via Nuclear Blast. Watch the band discuss their “Famous Firsts’ in music in the piece for Ghost Cult below:Continue reading
Talk about a supergroup! Buzz Osborne and Dale Crover of The Melvins, At The Drive-In’s Omar Rodríguez-López, and Teri Gender Bender of Le Butcherettes have joined forces as Crystal Fairy. Continue reading
Once again Hellyeah has proven why they are dubbed with the name “supergroup”. This all American heavy metal band consists of many of the biggest names of metal to date. Including vocalist Chad Gray of Mudvayne, former guitarist Tom Maxwell of Nothingface, bass player Kyle Sanders (Bloodsimple/Monstro), guitarist Christian Brady, and former Pantera drumming legend Vinnie Paul. Release their fifth album since their debut in 2007, entitled Unden!able (Eleven Seven Music).
This in your face power house of an album will get your body begging for the pit. From beginning to end the album shows the raw talent of the five member team. Fast paced riffs, wicked blastbeats, brutal break downs, and demonic vocals, this thirteen track album reminds us of what it means to be “Born and Breed a metalhead”.
The album opens up with ‘!’. This powerful intro begins raising the intensity inside your body until you are slapped in the face by track 2 ‘X’. This track is full of a strong lyrical rhythm accompanied with powerful double bass, strong break downs, and mind shredding riffs. Then it leads my personal favorite song on the album track 3 ‘Scratch a lie’. Chad Grey brings those blood chilling screeches, and fast paced lyrics that made him the monster he is today. This song will make you want start a mosh pit at your family reunion. The fourth track ‘Be Undin!able’ is what I like to call the anthem song. Most albums have them. It is the song where it seems to bring the crowd together, though heavy and still has the possibility to knock your teeth out, it’s a song with a positive message and encourages us to stand together as one.
Next song ‘Human’ was the first single off the album. This song gave you the sneak peek of this monstrous album. Though not as heavy as the rest, it still gives you the adrenaline pumping, head banging feeling the rest of the album gives you. The album slows down a bit with the next couple tracks. Though still pure metal, it is just not as in your face as the beginning half. ‘Leap of Faith’, ‘Blood Plague’, the Phil Collins cover of “I Don’t Care Anymore” and ‘Live or Die’ bring you back to the typical Hellyeah style, the heavy metal outlaw, showing a little bit of that southern side of metal. ‘I Don’t Care Any More’ features some leads courtesy of Vinnie Paul’s brother, Dimebag Darrell Abbott, making an appearance via tapes from beyond the grave.
Then there is the track ‘Love Falls’. A melodic ballad that pulls at the heart-strings. Chads’ lyrics transport you to a heartbreak we have all received before, showing his embarrassment and humanity. It’s a refreshing song in the midst of such chaos and brutality. Then the sirens fill your ears. A short intro ’10-34′ that leads into a riot, ‘STARTARIOT’. This song alone makes me want to bleed in a pit. The impact of the drums, the lyrics, guitar, amazing bass riffs, all of it. It’s the perfect storm for a circle pit. Lastly, ‘Grave’. The last song of the album. Just as strong and in your face but has a nice fade out giving you a sense of rejuvenation. Like you just won a war. All and all this album is strong, fast, brutal, and most importantly, HEAVY!
In closing. This album is a must have for any metal fan. It shows the roots and development of our beloved genre. Combining southern and heavy metal together into a sweet harmony of chaos. I recommend this album to anyone and it will be in my playlist for a while. Did they make a great album. I say Hellyeah.
8.0/10
TIM STEBBINS
[amazon asin=B01DVJSX7S&template=iframe image1]
The concept of the “Supergroup” may date back to the sixties with bands like Cream and Humble Pie, but it’s one which only began to infiltrate the heavier end of the music spectrum in the late ’80s. It wasn’t until Down arrived with NOLA (Elektra) in 1995 that Metal fans started to recognise its increasing validity.
These days, Supergroups have been popping up with such regularity that you can barely get out of bed for tripping over one. The term has also been stretched enough over the years to incorporate smaller bands as well as the more famous names, even reaching into unlikely genre-specific corners such as Black and Death Metal.
Hailing from sunny Sweden, Firespawn (known until recently as Fireborn) consists of guitarists Victor Brandt (Entombed AD) and Fredrik Folkare (Unleashed), bassist Alex Friberg (Necrophobic) and drummer Matte Modin (ex-Dark Funeral). However, it is vocalist L.G. Petrov who will be the most recognisable face, being the long-serving frontman of Death Metal legends Entombed.
Shadow Realms (Century Media) opens with ‘The Emperor’, a track which hisses and boils with pure Blackened Death Metal aggression. Those more at home listening to Petrov’s distinctive “Death’n’Roll” style vocals will be punched squarely in the ears by the bladder-loosening ferocity of his untamed Death Metal roar. The more mid-paced ‘Imperial Burning’ stomps its way across your face next, it’s punishing groove just as effective as the slashing speed of the preceding track. ‘Lucifer Has Spoken’ will be familiar to some listeners as the band originally released it back in August. Another slow to mid-paced affair, a nicely atmospheric chanted Latin section and a great guitar solo make this one of the better tracks on the album.
The unrelenting speed returns with the brutal but fairly forgettable ‘Spirit of the Black Tide’ and is followed by the short acoustic interlude ‘Contemplate Death’. ‘All Hail’ is up next with its big drums and bigger chorus, and things continue forward in a positive, albeit straightforward direction. ‘Ruination’ is all bluff and bluster, however. Fast and aggressive but leaving the memory the moment it finishes, while ‘Necromance’ looks set to be another throwaway track until it suddenly kicks into life halfway through. Bizarrely, ‘Shadow Realms’ is one of the album’s weaker moments. Considering title tracks are so often the lynchpin of a whole album, this one just doesn’t grab you at any point. It’s fast and heavy, but contains nothing to really sink your teeth into.
Instrumentally speaking, the Behemoth-esque ‘Ginnunga’ sounds great, but Petrov’s vocals really don’t do the song justice. Not poorly performed or particularly weak, his voice is just nowhere near as fearsome as it should be for a song like this. Closer ‘Infernal Eternal’ is another decent, if unspectacular cut but it does feature a magnificent played guitar solo, quite probably the best on the album.
Although certainly not a bad record, Shadow Realms is pretty basic, generic stuff which never really pushes itself as far as you would like. It’s ferocious enough, tightly played with a strong production, and there are moments when everything sounds like it’s suddenly going to fall into place and move up a couple of gears. Unfortunately, it never quite does.
7.0/10
GARY ALCOCK