Album Reviews
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THE SWEETReincarnationMetalville Records As time marches ever onward and the people and family members in your life sadly pass on, so do the movie stars, athletes and your musical icons that held a special place in your heart. That especially holds true for the ‘Classic Rock’ bands that I grew up on. Let’s call them…
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CRIMSON GLORY‘Chasing The Hydra’No Remorse Records Flower power!Transcending time!Metallic facewear! Since their inception in 1983, Sarasota, Florida-based metallers CRIMSON GLORY have been runnin’ down a dream with their brand of powerfully chaotic-sounding operatic metal. They were definitely the ideal band for the era just as heavy metal was transcending the mainstream as their self-titled debut…
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ARCHSPIRE‘Too Fast To Die’Self-Released The problem with extreme technical death metal usually isn’t so much just how ridiculously over the top the music is, it’s how ridiculously over-seriously the bands and musicians take themselves. And what you often end up with is an impressively/impeccably played but ultimately joyless mishmash of brutality, wankery and over-indulgence. Canada’s…
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IMMOLATION‘Descent’2026, Nuclear Blast Sometimes, when we struggle to find adequate words to succinctly express ourselves, our friends help us along. To that end, I defer to the sage words of my dear friend and colleague, Brian Krassman: “How dare IMMOLATION still be making records this good.” Praise be to the never-ending fire. Entropy is the…
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FROM ASHES TO NEW‘Reflections’Better Noise Music When a band scraps nearly an entire album’s worth of material and starts over, expectations of fans and the band itself skyrocket. That was exactly the situation facing FROM ASHES TO NEW heading into their latest release, ‘Reflections’ via Better Noise Music. After tossing out most of the original…
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METAL CHURCH‘Dead To Rights’2026 Rat Pak Records 2026 is quickly turning out to be the year of the supergroup. METAL CHURCH’s new lineup is a concrete example. Bassist Steve Unger, vocalist Marc Lopes, and drummer Stet Howland (all legends in their own right) have exited the band lineup, only to be replaced by veterans David…
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NERVOSA‘Slave Machine’Napalm Records There’s a very specific world that NERVOSA builds across Slave Machine, and it never really loosens its grip once the record starts. This album feels like the last stretch of civilization before the lights finally go out. Steel skeletons of buildings stand half-buried in dust. Smoke drifts across a skyline that no…
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PRONGLive And UncleansedSteamhammer Records PRONG is a band that effortlessly flows through different genres and sound at home in all of them. 80’s crossover-check. Hard Rock-check. Metal-check. Industrial-check. And while I believe it plays to band leader Tommy Victor’s strengths, to some of the gatekeepers out there that’s considered a weakness. It does give PRONG…