Wrote about the fun-as-hell new record from Black Wizard.
If you like your stoner rock and you like thrash, you’ll wanna check this out.
Wrote about the fun-as-hell new record from Black Wizard.
If you like your stoner rock and you like thrash, you’ll wanna check this out.
Wrote some words on Myles Kennedy’s debut solo album over at Spectrum Culture.
It’s a solid singer-songwriter record if you can ignore the MTV Unplugged feel of it.
I wrote about the new Insect Ark record, which is very good.
If you like dark drone music, check it out.
I wrote about the debut LP from Teenage Wrist over at Best Fit. It’s easily my favorite album of 2018 so far. If you like Siamese Dream, check this out.
A behind-the-scenes note on this piece. I set up two rules for myself: 1.) No mentioning other bands in describing what TW does, and 2.) No song titles.
Over at SC, I wrote about the great new record from Good Tiger, the non-metal band on Metal Blade Records.
Think Protest the Hero if they were a straightforward rock band and you’re in the area.
Over at Best Fit, I did a short piece on Brian Fallon’s second solo LP, Sleepwalkers.
If you like Fallon’s classic rock worship, you’ll like pretty much anything he’s ever done, including this new record.
Here, he throws in a few new flavors to his Springsteen-isms. It’s not a great album, but at least give the fun lead single “Forget Me Not” a try. That, or you could just check out his slightly superior first album, Painkillers.
I wrote about the new Mammoth Grinder album, Cosmic Crypt, over at Spectrum Culture.
Solid bit of punky death metal from the drummer of Power Trip. Nothing special and nothing new from the band. It’s a half hour of evil fun, and that’s all it tries to be.
The worst kind of pop record: one that spends its entire runtime insisting on its greatness instead of actually proving it. Yeah, FOB can still write a killer hook, but it’s buried under Top 40 production with an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink mentality. (That they included the album’s title and one song title in all caps suggests partial self-awareness.) Sure, guitars make an occasional appearance, but their function is less songwriting tool than reminder of their existence. At one point Stump asks, “Are you smelling that shit?” Great question, but you should be looking in the mirror when you pose it.
Wrote about the new C.O.C. record over at Spectrum Culture.
It’s a solid record, especially given that comes 3.5 decades into their career.
If you like the Pepper Keenan-era stuff, then check it out.
The movement known as ‘re-thrash’ – i.e., new metal bands that are bringing, or attempting to bring, thrash metal back into popularity – was pronounced dead four years ago by Invisible Oranges. In the piece, it’s observed that Havok’s 2012 EP Point of No Return might be one of the then-last “notable piece[s] of work” to be on author Joseph Schafer’s iPod.
Interestingly, two months to the day after that column ran, Havok released their third (and, up to that point, best) record, 2013’s Unnatural Selection. It continued their mix of Metallica’s penchant for serpentine riffing and Slayer’s no-bullshit songwriting, the latter of which dominated their first two records and a good chunk of their third.
So here we are with their newest offering. That Conformicide is Havok’s fourth LP is fitting because it’s their …And Justice for All. Which is to say: Conformicide is their most ambitious, their most political, and their most self-indulgent work to date. It’s also the pinnacle of the entire re-thrash scene because Havok succeeded where many of their peers failed: striking a balance between being memorable and being ferocious. Thanks to riff after fantastic riff, surprisingly hook-y songwriting, and the most nimble rhythm section in modern metal, Havok crafted a 57-minute love letter to thrash’s heyday.
At least part of the credit goes to the fact that the band’s current lineup – vocalist and guitarist David Sanchez, lead guitarist Reece Scruggs, bassist Nick Schendzielos, and drummer Pete Webber – ellipses any past iteration. The quartet’s ability to interlock as a single unit throughout the record is a wonder. To wit, the space formed from the darting riff that opens album centerpiece “Ingsoc” is expertly filled in by Webber’s agile ride work, before doubling it on kick drums alongside Schendzielos. Or take “Circling the Drain,” where Sanchez and Scruggs defer to the galloping interplay between bass and drums to carry the song forward that includes a funky (!) middle section allowing Schendzielos to be the star for a few seconds. Even when Havok revs up to hyperloop speed (“Masterplan”) or slows down to ride a slick groove (the unfortunately named “Peace is in Pieces”), or when do both in the same song (“Intention to Deceive”), its members know when and where to accent every section of every song.
And as with many (metal) songs in 2017, these ten are often political in nature. Most of the topics covered are standard fodder for metal – political correctness, government corruption, war, societal manipulation by the media – but are nonetheless sold purely on the basis of Sanchez’s raging snarl. Despite being clichéd, a line like, “The fighting will never cease/ As long as it is still profits over peace” works because Sanchez’s cornered animal delivery feels honest and relatable. Even when he spends three (!) songs on religion, metal’s favorite punching bag, you can’t help but side with his blunt force lyricism: “It doesn’t matter to you/ That he’s a power-tripping maniac/ ‘Cause he’s got you convinced / People of other faiths should be attacked”.
Perhaps an autopsy on (re-)thrash is unnecessary, then. Much like Power Trip’s Nightmare Logic and Warbringer’s Woe to the Vanquished, Conformicide confirms thrash metal in 2017 can still offer superb records that can stand next to any other metal subgenre brethren. Hell, Havok even showed the Big Four how it’s done by making an album that’s an order of magnitude better than any recent release from those icons. Havok made not only the year’s premier thrash record, but one of the year’s high-water marks in all of heavy metal. It’s gonna be difficult to top something this impressive, but as long as Havok’s next effort doesn’t have a song called “Unforgiven” on it, there’s still hope.