Alestorm – Black Sails At Midnight (Napalm Records)
Avast, this be pirate metal of the highest order mateys. Hang on, of the highest order? Anyway you get the gist. You’re not going to get anything groundbreaking or too mentally challenging with Alestorm,...
Entwine – Painstained (Spinefarm Records)
Entwine’s 2005 effort DiEversity remains a pop Goth metal hit in the Gehlke household, a domicile that is usually not very forgiving of such meanderings. Then again, those luscious, seductive hooks and muscular riffs heard on jams...
Amorphis – Skyforger (Nuclear Blast Records)
Is Eclipse not the best “return-to-form” album of the past decade? It is, right? Seriously, Amorphis’ 2006 opus has proven to have more staying power than most albums with that “hey, we’re going back to our old...
Battlefields – Thresholds of Imbalance (Translation Loss)
A boggy, almost stagnant doom concoction, Battlefields are yet another in a long line of sludge doom bands that like to make impatient people (read: me) wait for good things to develop. More often than not,...
Stratovarius – Polaris (Armoury Records)
A Tolkki-less Strato, eh? That’s like a Mustaine-less Megadeth or a Schaffer-less Iced Earth (which might be a good thing). Now finally beyond the soap opera that led to the axeman’s apparent dissolution of...
Trail of Tears – Bloodstained Endurance (Napalm Records)
It’s not like we throw a 9/10 rating around here every day, but the unbridled vitriol and contrasts on Bloodstained Endurance practically begged for this mark. All this, after Trail of Tears nearly split up in...
Endstille – Verfuhrer (Regain Records)
Lots of blasting here, almost too much, even for an album with nine songs. Being one-dimensional is not necessarily a band thing in black metal, but with variety not being Endstille’s forte, Verfuhrer bogs down pretty quickly....
Success Will Write Apocalypse Across the Sky – The Grand Partition and the Abrogation of Idolatry (Nuclear Blast Records)
It would be wise to keep SWAATS (sorry, we’re not spelling that name out again) away from the whole new-jack, deathcore nonsense. Clearly, they’re not playing that game, but when you have a moniker as...
Ministry – Adios DVD/CD (Thirteenth Planet/Megaforce Records)
The final salvo from Al Jourgensen and co., Adios celebrates the self-imposed end of Ministry, whose long-running career has endured tremendous highs and multiple lows. A CD/DVD (there are two) of various live performances shot during...
Nahemah – A New Constellation (Lifeforce Records)
Falling in line with the numerous Opeth-infused/inspired bands, Spain’s Nahemah have quite the quirky, but charming creation on their hands with A New Constellation. It’s not direct Opeth worship (hey, Farmakon), but just like the Swede’s,...