Cormorant – Metazoa (Saturnine Music)
In the American acoustic/folk-y/dark-y metal canon, no one tops Agalloch and surely no one ever well. Surprisingly, there are few imitators to this sound, only a handful of like-minded bands willing to bend beyond the standard...
Merrimack – Grey Rigorism (Moribund Records)
This scribe and several other more BM-inclined writers bought into Merrimack’s 2006 effort, Of Entropy and Life Denial and who wouldn’t have? In terms of primal, yet hardly dated BM, Merrimack shot the gap with a...
Korpiklaani – Karkelo (Nuclear Blast Records)
Boozing for a bruising or a cruising…it doesn’t matter – Korpiklaani are the preeminent “hummpa” metal band, Finntroll be damned. As productive as these Fins are, they regularly produce albums of worth, albeit a...
White Wizzard – High Speed GTO (Earache Records)
More retro and it’s not letting it up. And these guys are letting go of the past, which in metal, is acceptable – anywhere else, it’s not. So here we have White Wizzard from...
Paradise Lost – Faith Divides Us, Death Unites Us (Century Media Records)
Even during their very-experimental late 90’s/early 00’s period, Paradise Lost never totally lost their plot. Sure, 1997’s One Second and its follow-up,Host irked more than a few, especially those who cut their teeth on the seminal Gothic and to-die-for Icon and Draconian...
One Without – Thoughts Of A Secluded Mind (Lifeforce Records)
The last female-fronted Swedish “death” metal band (we’ve really stretched that term… “death metal”) to come along was Amaran, who in the span of two better-than-average albums, left little impact. It’s not an easy...
Ghost Brigade – Isolation Songs (Season of Mist Records)
It’s the sort of thing some of us metal-journos live for: a band making a gargantuan leap from album to the next, developing, evolving…getting better. We’re so inundated with releases nowadays that it’s commonplace...
Municipal Waste – Massive Aggressive (Earache Records)
Hailing from Virginia, Municipal Waste epitomize a love of crossover thrash and partying- gaining large number of accolades for their energetic, fun loving live antics. Massive Aggressive hits the streets as their fourth full length platter,...
Ravage – The End of Tomorrow (Metal Blade Records)
On the outskirts of Boston, a young quintet of musicians follow their hearts through rarely known terrain for their territory. In the land of hardcore, metalcore and tribute bands, Ravage dare to dream in colors of...
Swashbuckle – Back to the Noose (Nuclear Blast Records)
Totally on board for this and yeah, we’ll pun-the-fuck out of this review if we have to. Pirate metal without the sea-faring sound elements ala Alestorm (who are of equal value), New Jersey’s Swashbuckle prove...