Many of Porcupine Tree’s recent albums have centered around a theme or mood, but it’s been quite awhile since Steven Wilson and crew have delivered a full-on concept album. Here, it’s not just a narrative concept album, but a structural one as well, as The Incident is less a collection of songs than a loosely [...]

I think Dave Mustaine might be trying too hard. Don’t get me wrong – Endgame, his twelfth studio album, isn’t a bad album, but it’s also not the epic-return-to-form masterpiece that he’s been peddling it as over the past several months. This isn’t Rust In Peace Part 2, no matter how bad he wants it [...]

Devildriver is a band that gets a lot of shit from the “troo” crowd, mostly because of frontman Dez Fafara’s previous band Coal Chamber it seems. Supposedly that band called it quits because Mr. Fafara wanted to pursue heavier sounds while his bandmates wanted to head in a more mainstream direction. If that’s the case, [...]

I’ll make a confession and tell you that I hadn’t had much faith in Dream Theater since they brought out their timeless masterpiece Metropolis Pt 2: Scenes From A Memory back in 1999. While its successors Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence and Train Of Thought both had their moments of brilliance and assured the listener [...]

I had an axe to grind with this album before I even heard it- not only was it a self titled album, which is one of my pet peeves, it was the second time the band has released a self titled album- are you kidding me? Also, with the band basically writing the same album [...]

 Based on the My Skin is Cold EP earlier year, I had hopes that perhaps Satyricon would start stepping out of the sterile little comfort zone they’ve created for themselves of late. Maybe a little more textural or structural variety, or perhaps just something with a faster tempo. I wasn’t expecting the return of The [...]

It would seem that every time I come across a Cradle of Filth CD, I feel slightly more inclined to school people. Not proverbially school them, but literally. I cast aside grammatically challenged losers like moldy bread, begin using more sophisticated words like “assuaged” and “indubitably” in daily speech, and resume my lifelong quest to [...]

I always thought Trivium was a decent band, but I just couldn’t get past Matt Heafy’s monotonous screams. It’s no surprise then that their last record, The Crusade was one of my favorite releases of 2006. The screams were pretty much gone, there were better hooks, and despite being complete Metallica worship, I thought it [...]

One of the most anticipated records of the year for me was Cavalera Conspiracy, reuniting Sepultura vocalist/guitarist Max Cavalera and drummer Igor Cavalera. Though it’s been eclipsed in my mind by records released since, it was an outstanding effort, and I thought it would be tough for Max’s other band, Soulfly, to compete. So I [...]

I remember seeing some pretty wretched reviews for Now, Diabolical when it was released – claims that Satyricon had finally deconstructed and dumbed-down their sound to a simplified parody of their once-feral greatness. I didn’t think so – sure, it was minimalist, but not toothless – it still seethed in the right places, and rocked [...]

Churn out as much quality as Opeth, and each album will be studied for the slightest inclination of a flaw. Truth is, Mikael Akerfeldt and his mammoth baby Opeth have no flaws and are literally, in this reviewers eye’s, perfect. Say what you will, Watershed proves without a doubt that you don’t mess with Opeth.
Even [...]

After a three year absence Opeth return to us and somehow they manage to get even more bizarre yet again. I’m not going to compare this to older Opeth as I am a latecomer to the Opeth phenomenon myself. I only started a bit before Blackwater Park, thanks to a friend of mine who could [...]

I think from the time that Max Cavalera left his brother Igor and Sepultura behind in 1996, the entire metal world knew that at some point the two would reunite, either in Sepultura, or in a new project. In his absence, Max spent his time in Soulfly, a band that I was never really sold [...]

What’s the deal with everyone wanting to be compared to Testament recently? I like Testament as much as anyone who grew up on ’80s thrash, but I must have gotten at least a half-dozen records in the last month with quotes like “This is Testament for a new generation of thrash,” etc. For a band [...]

Ha-this is so awesome.
Vancouver’s 3 Inches of Blood return for their anticipated 2nd album and the cursed Ozzfest appearances, and as second albums should be, everything is bigger, better and more METAL!
The sheer, guiltless enjoyment that the band’s old school thrash meets NWBHM meets melodic death metal meets Robert E. Howard is as present as [...]

Here’s a pleasant surprise. Yeah, I know a lot of people called Megadeth’s last record The System Has Failed a return to form, but personally I didn’t hear it. I thought that record had about three really good songs and a bunch of mediocre stuff that sounds like what Dave Mustaine’s been pushing for the [...]

I assume if you actually clicked on this review, you are either a Killswitch Engage/metalcore fan, so will forgo the usual metalcore is saturated and KSE is the darlings of MTV 2 spiel and get too it.Despite plying basically the same sound as the previous record and an overall sense of metalcore cliche overload, As [...]

Well folks, they have done it. One of my favorite bands has finally forced me to write the review that metal fans and COF detractors have been waiting for. While, there’s no question these arguably influential British shock rockers have been shedding the black metal guise of their fat Nick Barker, top hat wearing, precocious [...]

Although last year’s Ascendancy was a near-masterpiece, breakthrough record for the young metal attack known as Trivium, heavy metal fans should consider The Crusade to be an indication of this future legendary band’s coming of age, a first true utterance of maturity. And in a year that has seen more stellar albums than most metalheads [...]

I like Obituary, really I do. And I wanted to like their reunion album after an 8-year layoff, really I did. I happen to think that Cause of Death is arguably one of the top five death metal albums ever, but this album (as well as the subsequent albums) only serves to cement one fact; [...]

I thought Trivium’s debut Ashes to Inferno held a lot of promise and so did Roadrunner apparently, snapping them up to try and reinvigorate their flagging metal roster, and they picked a good band to do it as Trivium seem while possibly herded under the vast metalcore banner, would actually seem to fit in with [...]

I could take up half of this review discussing the viability of Cradle of Filth as a bonafide black metal act and their subsequent litany of either crazed fans or haters that pass them of as pop stars slithering under the banner of a more extreme exterior. But instead, let’s just talk about the album [...]

METAL!!! I’ve got absolutely NO business liking this album. By all rights, due to the Rob Halford/King Diamond-like squeals of Cam Pipes alone I shouldn’t have even made it past the first song. However, a few things not only keep me listening but actually end up making this a damn fine METAL!!! album.
First, to offset [...]

Someone please give Killswitch Engage and All That Remains a hug-they’re having major heart issues. Anyhoo, I don’t know about you guys, but Alive? Or Just Breathing, was kind of my first heavy exposure to metalcore on a grand scale, despite other bands forging the way many years before and my quick souring on the [...]

Brooklyn’s governors of gloom check in with the inevitable rarities comp that spans their entire career of misanthropic melancholy.
Kicking off the grim festivities with yet another track of digital silence-this one is a “remix” of “The Misinterpretation Of Silence And Its Disastrous Consequences” from their 1991 Slow, Deep And Hard debut – the usual suspects [...]