metal

Do the Brits really do it better? For this kind of RAWK (read: metal) Saxon have got it locked down. From the production, to the riffs, it’s popping off over here on Denim And Leather. The songs are catchy as hell. I’m not suuuuper sold on Byford’s vocals at this point but hopefully they will grow on me. Fire in the Sky!!!!

An interesting one. At first note, it sounds heavier than any of the previous albums, but as the songs progress there’s actually less “metal” here than ever before and more so is just “rock” dressed up in a big sound. It may feel like I’m splitting hairs, but fuck it. Also, Ozzy sounds tired as fuck on this one, like he just can’t be arsed. Production-wise, things are still pretty top-tier but the boxed in…

Bark At The Moon is IMO the strongest album chronologically up to this point. It seems a change of staff (a whole new band, Don Airey aside) did wonders. The production is fantastic and the bass tone is phenomenal. I was worried that the record was going to be top heavy, with the title track being one of my favs from Ozzy, but my worries were unfounded. Stand out tracks for me would be the…

Similar to Ozzy’s solo debut in overall production and style, although the sound is slightly warmer. I find that Diary Of A Madman is a better album as a whole; the band seem to be finding their feet (I believe there’s a different sticksman here) and Ozzy has the best of the best propping him up, in all fairness. There is a lack of absolute stand-alone belters here, such as “Mr. Crowley” from the previous…

Whilst this falls firmly into the “shit dance music for goths” version of industrial music, the beats are banging and the songs are quite catchy in parts. It was fun and enjoyable but I will never listen to this thing ever again as long as I live.

A mixed bag, and a weird note to end on. Some of the contributions are excellent, others are pointless (as the listener, I’m sure it was fun collaborating with these artists even during the COVID end times). A nice project idea but I’m not sure if it stuck the landing. A strange end to a strange discography. RIP Sepultura (as we know it)

Overproduced, plastic metal with lame vocals and the cringiest subject matter. Hey, that might be for you, but it’s not for me.

I feel like Quadra goes hard, harder than most of the more recent Sepultura records, which have all been quite progressive. Quadra has its moments, but I find the recipe has been tweaked to include some of that old school brute force too, making for an interesting and potent mix.

I can’t remember where or how I got this but this one of the few albums I had on CD as a kid. I remember selecting it as one of the few CDs to take into my art GCSE exam, which was like a 3 hour sitting (or felt like it) that I spent working on some bullshit painting that nobody gave a fuck about. But yeah, anyway. My favourite thing about Burn My Eyes…

Sounds promising in many respects. Harkens back to the sounds of old, such as Midian and the Cradle To Enslave EP, but also has that homogenous sound that has permeated the last several records.

Nihil displays a maturity to Impaled Nazarene’s sound that I must admit I did not see coming. The punk / black / war metal blend is still there, but some tracks have a morose melody to them; a more developed and dare I say grown up sound to them. The production isn’t as laser sharp as Rapture, but the balance is still great (the bass sounds fantastic) and the songs hit home as you would…

Rapture, despite it’s unassuming artwork, feels like a return to form and focus. It’s not that previous LP Latex Cult was bad, but it definitely leant to the cheeky, silly, perverted d-beat punk stylings more than the previous records (of which there were only elements, rather than a full theme of). Rapture feels almost uncompromising in comparison, with a fuller production and a much more urgent style of songwriting. I’ll refrain from comparing it to…

Hooooooly fucksi this shit is absolutely deplorably bad. By far, easily, the worst Slipknot record to date. All hope is gone amirite?

And with WANYK (ya friggin wanykah m8!) we are back to the muddy, middling, mediocre Slipknot that I thought I would find on on 5 – The Gray Chapter. There’s a few standouts here, but I find that they are usually the super fast “death metal” parts that are the intro to some of the songs, and then the rest just falls off into boringville. “My Pain” was the only song that genuinely held my…

Another album I got the day of release (well, the day after in this case; my friend Ross skipped school to catch the train into town to buy the album, and we gathered round to see it when he arrived back for the afternoon’s science lesson). Mezmerize, at the time, felt significantly different to me that the SOAD that had came before. The guitars seem to have a jangly thinness to them; the bass and…

Well then. I have been ignoring the “later” Slipknot records for what seems like forever. I didn’t expect to be rating this better than both the two previous albums, especially Vol. 3, which despite its lack of favour with me, is regarded as one of their better albums by the wider consensus of fans. I think the main that saves 5 from being just another Slipknot record is that they finally sorted out the production….

I remember when this came out. After the seemingly massive event that was Disasterpieces, this seemed utterly and completely fucking pointless. I guess it was a slightly different era of the band, but still, it stood in the shadow of that slightly earlier live album / DVD and still does to this day.

It’s hard to convey how I felt as a 13 year old, upon first hearing this on release. I’d been in love with Slipknot since Iowa, and had worked backwards through the self titled and MFKR, and through all the various online lore, demos etc. – my disappointment upon hearing Vol 3 wasn’t immediate, though. I knew something wasn’t the same… I just didn’t really have the capacity to explain what. At that age, I…

I never really gelled as well with the second Iron Monkey album as I did the first, but time has proven if nothing else that this is a proper fucking solid – not to mention legendary – sludge metal release. Not sure what I make of that art work though, I won’t lie to you.

People seem to absolutely fucking love this thing and I can see why, it has a lot of endearing qualities for what is essentially the most cheesy form of metal. Some of the tracks are very strong, “Rats in the Attic”, “Jonathan’s Diary” and “Stronger Than Heaven” as a start, yet others are a bit lacking. The version I’ve heard also has a bunch of shite live tracks at the end which kills the pacing….

Inside you are two wolves… lmao sorry I couldn’t resist. Seriously though, this Aufnorden project is absolutely fantastic. This record is no exception. The Bathory cover(s) in the middle of the album’s run time is a weird inclusion, but in all fairness the song choice blends in rather nicely with what Aufnorden is trying to achieve here. If you take the complexities of acts like the covered act Bathory, or even the scope of the…

Fucking great shit. An epic mix of more “trad” metal styles like thrash / power metal but dosed up with some savage hold overs from the more heathenistic pagan black metal world. Both songs on this thing really surprised me by how great they are. To top it off, the production is pretty solid too. Highly recommended.

Manowar’s second record is a logical continuation of their first (even if the artwork is infinitely crummier). You can thank Into Glory Ride for such powerful gems as “Gloves Of Metal”, “Gates Of Valhalla” and the epic closing track, “March For Revenge”. Production is still a bit shite, but fuck if it just adds to the overall charm of this thing. It has such a glowing analogue warmth, it makes me want to go back…

The flexi is a flimsy piece of shit that has slipped or skipped on every record player I’ve ever had (I probably need to weight it down) but damn this cover fucking rules. Super fucking dense and heavy sound from Godflesh, as you can imagine, and the drum machine is really great here. Wish they’d used this sound a little more.

My initial thoughts after returning to this record 14 years later was that it had not aged well. However, I firmly believe this is due to the production, rather than the songs. By the time the middle instrumental part of “The Madness and the Damage Done” had rolled around, I remembered entirely why I fell so much in love with this record in the first place. I’m not sure if the mix of jazz and…

Nordland II continues where Nordland I left off, but my interest is not as high for this one. Perhaps it would have been different in “real time”, with a year or whatever between the two albums, but back-to-back these two feel like one bloated, overly-long record. It is also an unfortunate reality that many of the least interesting songs are placed here on Nordland II. Don’t get me wrong, I need to speak plainly in…

Nordland is something of a return to form after a series of what many perceive to be rather wishy-washy albums. I’ve enjoyed all of the various detours in the Bathory catalog, but have to admit that Destroyer Of Worlds was one of the weakest. It is with great relief then, that it’s follow-up, Nordland, starts off incredibly strong. Unfortunately, the record is somewhat top-heavy, with my interest waning as the record goes on. The first…

Disc 1 is a “best of” collection so is pretty redundant to anyone even remotely familiar with Godflesh. The goodness lies with Disc 2, which is an odds and ends collection of other random shit. There’s some absolute gems here however, like “Love Is A Dog From Hell”, which is arguably one of the best Godflesh tracks ever. There’s also some club remixes from the 90s singles (which have aged better than I remember) as…

I’ve been trying to let this one take its time to grow on me before I make any decisions around whether I like it or not, but Call The Devil has failed to make a significant impression on me. This started with the chosen singles, which are dreadful (truly they are), but you can’t judge an entire album by its singles. To Mushroomhead’s credit there is a lot of different vibes and ideas here. This…

Beautiful production, if one could say such a thing about a Gwar record. On top of that, musically, Violence Has Arrived is something of a return to form after the fever dream that was We Kill Everything (don’t get me wrong, I enjoy that one too, but I do understand why folks might not like it). I remember when I was a little kid getting into metal, Violence Has Arrived was the latest Gwar record…

I am dying of cringe.

Interesting and progressive sound compared to Mediator… which had a bit more focus on the heavier aspects, as well as the more tribal drumming etc – Machine Messiah instead flexes its muscles a bit and goes a bit more “out there”, for Sepultura, at least. There are some moments that do not really inspire me but there are always equally as many that are quite clever and definitely engaging. It’s never going to top the…

An improvement on “Fall in Line” but still fairly uninspired. The production however is fantastic.

I remember reading that Kirk Hammett lost his iPhone which contained all the riffs for Hardwired in demo form. I can’t imagine how devastating that would be. However, in a hilarious twist, Hardwired Mk2 is a completely unnecessary double album. Someone really needs to learn how to tell these people to “just stop”. Every album since 1990 has been overly long, there has been no quality control, and goooooood lord some of the songs are…

Otep’s seemingly nonsensical ramblings have not aged well, but at least on Sevas Tra the musical section has enough chops to sustain a full record and act a baseline for her to run free. Outside of “Battle Ready” (which I heard on a promo CD back in’t day) and the tbh pretty fucking good “Blood Pig”, I’ve always considered this album to be an inescapable mire of self-loathing set to a hideous meandering backdrop of…

Supposedly the last gig the band did with Ray Gillen before his release from the band. This adds up because during the between-song banter he says that they are going to take a break after this show and work on a new album, which could only have been The Eternal Idol. Unfortunately, we all know what happened to Ray Gillen and the lassies he was fucking whilst touring the world. HIV ain’t no joke. Regarding…

If the production doesn’t cook your head… if the unnecessary length of these songs doesn’t fry your brain… then there are some good songs in here, somewhere. You just have to find them.

Ah, Load, truly you were the death knell for Metallica, right? The warning signs were there with the self-titled, but the songwriting remained strong enough that most did not notice. On Load, the transition to whiskey-drankin yeehaw RAWK had finally completed, and if Load was the death of Metallica then ReLoad was the final nail in the coffin that buried them forever afterwards. But I like Load. This is entirely because it was one of…

Trepanation is the debut full-length album of industrial / nu-metal act American Head Charge. They were another one of those bands to quickly “forget” their original debut as soon as they got signed, and a considerable number of these tracks ended up in re-recorded form on the Rick Rubin produced The War Of Art. It’s easy to perhaps fall into the trap over wondering which is better, this or the major label debut that followed?…

Lures you in with fake promises of the band’s very prominent death metal influences / roots, but very quickly devolves into boring ass plodders and big hit singles. “Gehenna” has to be a career low for this band, up to this point. On top of all of these different vibes you’ve still got vestiges of nu metal groove like a second rate 2000s+ Sepultura, and fucking DJ cutting. Nobody needs fucking DJ cutting. Get that…

Nowhere near as confused or as eclectic as I went into it expecting it to be. Destroyer Of Worlds is yet another strange u-turn in the meandering back-and-forth river-like discography of Bathory. There are some hold overs that sound like they are from the Blood On Ice sessions here, such as “Lake Of Fire” (although I do appreciate there was like a five year gap between albums), but for the most part Destroyer Of Worlds…

If you ever needed proof that Mushroomhead is now a dog that needs putting down, then look no further than this single.

Like a lot of people it seems, I wasn’t all that fussed on Pale Sketches when it came out (not to be confused with another JB project, Pale Sketcher). Returning to this album over a decade later however, I am happy to say that I was incorrect to dismiss this record. Whilst at the time it felt like a change of pace, nowadays it fits right on in to the larger Jesu canon of albums….

The title of this record carries such a high reputation one could be fooled into thinking that this is one of the classic Maiden albums. You would of course, be wrong. Fear Of The Dark is a puzzling affair where the first and last tracks (especially the last!) are great whilst the rest of it is an ocean of bad rock music. Like, I’m sorry but what the fuck is Bruce doing with his voice?…

Sabbath’s short residency in Moscow after the fall of the iron curtain is a fairly famous event in their long and varied history. Touring with Cozy Powell, Neil Murray and Tony Martin, desperately trying to claw back some credibility with a solid lineup and a new album on a new label (for Sabbath), the Moscow shows seemed to come at a good time for the band. The band played both matinee and evening shows for…

Synchestra was the Devin album that came out around the time I properly became aware of his wider output as a musician (rather than just SYL). At the time, this thing just could not compare to SYL’s Alien and I immediately consigned it to the bin. With more adult ears, I can appreciate about half of this, and the other half unfortunately drags the album down in a soup of breathy synths and meandering guitars….

An interesting entry in the ever-surprising Sepultura catalog. This is an EP full of instrumental weirdness, but Derrick fans do not fear, the man still crops up now and then. The biggest WTF moment of this whole thing is the closing track which is just like… not very good at all.

I remember this coming out like it was yesterday, which in hindsight makes me feel real fucking old! Looking at this now, at this insane cast of characters – this fucking STACKED release filled with incredible guest spots – it makes me realise I didn’t have a fucking clue what I was talking about when it came to metal in 2004. I thought I was the bees knees but I didn’t know shit, clearly. Anyway,…

Kairos is another latter day Sepultura record that whilst being pretty fun and actually very well made / produced, still ultimately falls into just being “OK”. There is nothing about Kairos, for all its excellent musicianship and fantastic vocal performances from Derrick Green, that is particularly bad or even boring. It’s just somehow the album blurs into one gelatinous blob no matter how many times I spin it. Well played, I’ll give it that, but…

Well, colour me surprised at how fucking good this is. Goddamn! Yes, Firepower and Angel Of Retribution were solid, consistent and more than serviceable, but I was strongly of the opinion that Priest hadn’t done an excellent album since Painkiller. Here comes Invincible Shield them, to knock me off my high horse. Bloody heck! At first I wasn’t sure how I felt about this, because it has the same super slick and modern metal production…

Historically, I’ve had a hot / cold relationship with the solo albums of Devin Townsend. Much to my surprise then, when going back to the very first one from 1997, I found that I truly enjoyed this album. Devin’s “wall of sound” production is in its infancy but still mostly present; sheets of guitars and synths are the backdrop for this collection of compositions, setting the stage for the growing levels of bombast that would…

Noticeably different from the debut album in both in terms of tonality and general production, the Loser 7” sees Angel Witch adopting a more “fun”, cheeky approach to their dark NWOBHWM sound. Historically, it’s the start of a change that did not pay off for the group, but nevertheless this three track single is an interesting and enjoyable listen. “Dr. Phibes” is arguably the weakest of the three, but the other two are great little…

These original versions of the tracks that would go on to make up The Eternal Idol are a treat to listen to. It’s not as groundbreaking a reveal as the original sessions for Born Again, but hearing Ray Gillen’s original vocals is a treat for Sabbath fans whichever way you cut the cake. The songs didn’t quite get the full studio polish up in these takes, but the roughness (it’s not exactly black metal haha)…

Without doing side by side listens it’s hard to really differentiate between these versions and the same tracks from the debut album, but both songs work rather pleasantly together as a 7” single release. Not to mention the art is cool as fuck, so if I ever saw this at a used record store for a decent price I’d probably pick it up because it’s a cool little package.

Legendary, obviously, but drops off for me as the record goes on, generally. I’m talking in a songwriting sense only, because the production on this thing is just absolutely to die for; proper analogue warmth with space and definition between the bass and lead guitars, not to mention the percussion. Really makes tracks like the title-track, “Atlantis” and “White Witch” pop out of the stereo. As I kind of touched on, I love how strong…

Solid. That much I can say: solid. Definitely one of the strongest records the band have done since 1990 onwards. I’m not super sure if a fat, overproduced modern sound really works for Judas Priest, what with the compression and the scooped mids and what have you, but there’s some bangeroonies here on Firepower. “Flame Thrower” is a bop, as is “Necromancer”, and these are probably my favourite tracks here. Firepower is a pretty long…

Manson Child! Manson Child! Manson Child! Fucking hell, honestly… with that “epic” out of the way, Shootin’ Up The World isn’t too bad. Granted, the vocals, as per the two albums before this, are absolute fucking dogshit (with all due respect), but musically this is the strongest of the three Discharge “experiments” of the 80s and 90s. I still wouldn’t recommend checking it out unless you have a strong stomach for monotony.

Judas Priest circa 2015 were a well oiled machine. This live album is tight as fuck. Some of the older classics sound a bit weird at first in such a modern form (I’m so used to them in their warm 70s analogue sound) but once that initial shock is out of the way, Battle Cry is a really fun listen. They went pretty heavy on the Redeemer Of Souls material too, which is a brave…

Solid later effort from the legendary Priest. After the safe Angel Of Retribution and the uhhh “brave” (lmao) Nostradamus, Redeemer is a breath of fresh air. Long story short, here Priest stop fucking around and instead focus on doing what they do best. We all miss KK Downing, but honestly, like super honestly, at first I didn’t even notice he was missing. TLDR: not as good as some previous discography highs but a solid album…

I’ve thought quite long and hard (oo er) about how to rate this one, and half marks seems like the best idea. Musically, of course, Judas Priest are not to be sniffed it. It is however, the misguided energy of which they have thrown themselves into such a massive concept album that is perhaps worthy of criticism. I appreciate the concept, as well as the vision involved, but unfortunately, Nostradamus is a bloated corpse of…

This has aged pretty terribly, like all nu metal, but of course with Limp Bizkit in general. There is no changing however, that I listened to the absolute fuck out of this record when I was a kid. I remember it as if it was yesterday, following along – or at least trying because the lyrics were so small in the booklet. I remember rumours of there being a hidden track with Eminem on it…

I was into “Cyber Waste” when this first came out (“nothing you say matters to us”? – matters enough for you to write a whole fucking song and release it as the lead single to this album LOL) but otherwise I mostly snoozed on this album. I was 13 or 14 years old, and wasn’t really THAT into Fear Factory. Now, as a legit old cunt, one can return to the Fear Factory discography in…

“She Is A Fire” sounds great, to be fair. Dani sounds amazing, the current / new version of the band is on the ball, and Martin is a machine on the drums. Regarding the live session, I’ll be honest, when I heard about this release of yet another Cradle live album I rolled my eyes, but I’d be lying to you if I didn’t say that the band are tight as fuck right now. Like,…

Not sure what happened here, because Animatronic, whilst divisive, appeared to come off as a successful experiment. I guess what SETI does is double down on the style of that previous album, but maybe the band pushed too far with this one. SETI is like, what, 80 minutes long? 80 minutes of mediocre industrial metal is enough to drive anyone to absolute madness, regardless of quality, but SETI fails to deliver the instant satisfaction of…

Finally, Halford returns to his rightful place at the front of Priest. No shade to Ripper, who had a 50/50 track record with Priest albums, but Halford belongs as the group’s front man and from the off this actually sounds like a Judas Priest album, despite the modern production (which is not a problem, just a little jarring if you think the last time we heard Halford-fronted Priest was the legendary Painkiller, an album that…

A stunning debut from this legendary band. Personally, I think the Rainbow sound was perfected on Rising, but there are some frankly excellent songs on this album, including the now immortal opening track, “Man on the Silver Mountain”. The production, seemingly shared between Blackmore and producer Martin Birch, is organic and flows nicely through the various styles of songs present on the album. (Apparently I enjoy listening to this so much that I reviewed it…

Somewhat predictable but immensely satisfying industrial metal that worships almost exclusively it seems at the altar of Godflesh. Expect claustrophobic guitars, punishing programmed drums and robotic vocals. Expect pain, anguish and misery. Expect it to sound a lot like Godflesh!

I appreciate the experimentation that Sepultura did with A-Lex. Previous album Dante XXI aside, Sepultura ran a very real risk of becoming stale in the years running up to this record. However, A-Lex is a step down from its predecessor in a number of ways. The first is the production is nowhere near as clear. As a musician I would find it infinitely frustrating having found the perfect palette of sonic clarity for my band…

I expected a fairly high drop off of quality after Seasons… so I was pleasantly surprised to find that Divine Intervention has aged quite well. Yeah, there’s more of the “groove” sound here than anything that could be called thrash metal, but we are now firmly entering the phase that I like to call “angry Slayer”. It’s a silly term, I know, because Slayer has always been angry, but from here on out they seem…

When I saw the “Cyanide” single on the TV as a teenager I thought it was pretty cool even though it was clearly very cheesy goth music. I wouldn’t usually be super into this sort of stuff, but I was really into The Kovenant’s Animatronic album, after hearing “Mirror’s Paradise” on one of Bam Margera’s CKY dvds (those were the days, eh). Deathstars to me seemed like KovenantLite, and that was OK with me. I…

Dante XXI is the best Sepultura album chronologically in quite some time. There seems to be a fire underneath Dante XXI that has been absent for far too long, despite the band’s best efforts in the interim period. With the metal world crawling out the grip of nu / alternative fads and into some whole other bullshit (metalcore I’m looking at you), Sepultura forged ahead with their own unique sound. The production for Dante XXI,…

The Jugulator V Demolition argument has raged for several decades now, but I’m here to finally lay it all to rest: this shit fucking blows ass. This is clearly, unequivocally the worst album of the two, and is a stain on the Priest name. There’s probably two good songs on this thing, the rest of them are either inconsequential or sound like bad Rammstein or Fear Factory b-sides. Cyyyybeerrrfaaacccceeee lmao get the fuck out of…

Calling midnight sloppy does them / him a disservice, but there is a looseness to this EP which gives it a kind of drunken swagger, allowing tracks like “Black Rock N Roll” or “Vomit Queen” to hit that much harder. I don’t want to say farewell to hell, especially if this is what it sounds like. Sounds like Satan smashed on whiskey.

Triptykon, whilst perhaps the logical continuation of Tom G Warrior’s sonic journey after the dissolution of Celtic Frost, was a band that I found difficult to get into. Even seeing them live around the release of this record didn’t manage to sell it to me. “Goetia” was massive (especially live), but that was as far as I went with Triptykon until recently. I’m not sure what happened, exactly. All I know now is that Eparistera…

Is this Pantera’s heaviest album? It certainly goes pretty fuggin’ hard at points. A clean as fuck production job by Terry Date and the lads allows for these heavy hitters (and the softer ones too) to really land. Bonus points for Seth Putnam guesties on track 1, although some of the later lyrics / themes are a bit cringe. Oh, and, the line “Lesbian love is accepted and right” in “Underground In America” is just…

The first few tracks here originally appeared one year earlier on the split with Eluvium, only here they come with a few additional alternate takes to fill out the run time. I can’t help but notice the original split art was a photograph of either the Menkaure pyramid at Giza or perhaps one of the smaller satellite pyramids, yet this EP release has a photograph of the much larger and imposing Khafre pyramid. As someone…

Y’know, it’s real sad boy hours when one of the lads throws on Conqueror. That’s the end of the party vibes, my friend. But that’s okay, because generally, Jesu is a very good project. Conqueror, despite hailed as Jesu’s masterpiece in some circles, is a transitional record for the band, as Broadrick led the project from the super-heavy style of the debut through to the lighter, more synth-reliant gazey songwriting that would come. This transition…

A surprisingly solid and consistent collection of remixes, from a time period where remix albums are usually a death knell for creativity and are not exactly conducive to a good time during playback either (lol). Remanufacture however, genuinely does rework the original songs into something completely and utterly new. Its well worth giving it a go, unless you have some sort of allergy to 90s electronics. This thing is so 90s that wearing one of…

A collection of various early Earth recordings, including the entirety of the Extra-Capsular Extraction EP, as well as I believe the first demo from 1990. As the compilation goes on, into the earliest songs composed under the Earth moniker, there are parallels that can be drawn not only from riffmasters like Iommi but also with early Swans and other such noisesome ilk. An interesting look at this group’s primitive beginnings.

Hard to beat in my eyes, especially because of side B’s monolithic “Ouroboros is Broken”, one of the most powerful, hypnotising and mesmerizing drone tracks of all time IMO. Yes, it has drums, but if I need a “drone” “hit” then nothing really satisfies as much as the repetitive dirge of side B of this EP. One of the first Earth records I ever got on vinyl and it’s remained one of my favourites ever…

To say that Sextrash fell off would probably be incorrect, because they were never “on” to begin with. The third record by this project however, apparently 14 years after the previous full length all the way forward in 2006, is a shadow of the former sounds of the band. It may be the “modern” production, it may be the shtick is wearing thin, or it (probably) is a combination of both these things. The hideously-titled…

It took me a while to get my head around Purge. I think it’s because my head really has to be in a certain space to fully embrace a Godflesh record. I can admire the beats and wailing guitars at any time, but to fully allow the absolute claustrophobia of their music to envelope me, well that takes a special kind of headspace, I guess. With all the pieces aligned, I can finally make my…

Leeeeheeeheeeeeeeave mmeeeeeeeeeeeee I’ve probably heard this song a hundred thousand times. Since it’s release in 2004, with my friend’s obsession with the CKY / Bam Margera videos and my sister’s obsession with Ville Valo (before the goth kids got into emo music, although HIM is pretty IMO to be honest haha), this thing seemed to be in the CD player at all times. Be it in the car, in our room, or at my mate’s…

It would perhaps be slightly derivative of me to compare God to the spacey, dub-style Godflesh tracks that bounced around a lot in the mid 90s, or to the second half of the excellent Vae Solis by Scorn, another project to feature the guitar work of Justin Broadrick. But, without going on a mad trip that would involve shoving a trumpet up my ass and putting a beret on my head to adequately convey the…

I vividly remember this single dropping. Goddamn, I thought it was the heaviest shit on the fucking planet. I rushed out and got the CD (the version with the blue cover) and played the song to death (ignoring the fucking dreadful remix version also tacked onto the CD). How in the sweet motherfuck did all this happen 22 years ago!?? Where did the time go? Where did my life go? Now I’m just sitting on…

In season 2 of HBO’s critically acclaimed series The Wire, dock worker and part-time criminal Thomas “Horseface” Pakusa asks his union boss Frank Sobatka the following question: “Let me ask you something important. You like fake tits? Thus far, I am undecided on fake tits.” – Now, I’m not saying that David Simon’s masterwork on the failure that is the war on drugs could or should have been written in any other way, but if…

What a U-turn…. LOL Whilst not as “weak” as Turbo, Ram It Down doubles down on the 80s-to-the-max vibes of stadium bands of that time period. BUT – and its a big but – the electronics here have a much more industrial element to them, at least that’s how it seems to me. There’s a coldness to them, a harshness and a heaviness. So instead I find myself welcoming these strange electronic / rhythmic elements…

As enjoyable as Twilight Of The Gods is, there is something about that pales in comparison to some of the earlier records in a similar style. It is difficult to put my finger on it, purely because there is nothing “wrong” per se with anything that I am hearing. There is also the fact that TOTG was the first “viking” Bathory album I heard (before I decided to address them chronologically, which was a much…

Make no mistake here, Pandemonium is a punishing listen. Doubling down on the rejuvinated sound of Extremities…, Killing Joke fall further into the world of industrial metal. Their sound is always unmistakably theirs, wherever they take it, but the industrial influences are hard to ignore. Geordie’s riffs are still dissonant, angular and strange, but there’s a repetitive chug to them in leui of the abstract post-punk approach on older records. Pandemonium finds a band which…

Prime rib pussy shit. Goddamn is this a let down compared to the other shit that came out in this era by these guys. How all of a sudden have we transitioned into this artificial boring-ass stadium rock? I mean, JP always has mainstream appeal, let’s not pretend otherwise, but this is like a fucking Kiss record. This is some cornball Alice Cooper shit. Objectively it is a well made album, in regards to production…

Does it sound like complete and utter ass? Yes. Are the instruments a bass guitar, a cheese grater and a cardboard box? Sure as fuck sounds like it. Is it an important rehearsal demo in the history / development of extreme music? You can bet your life it is, so it is worth checking out for that alone. Hearing the proto-version of “Stench Of Burning Death” in the form of “Cracks Of Doom” is so…

Suitably as nonsensical as the band’s promo photos, Rommel come across like a hair metal version of Venom. It’s all good, silly metal fun (which does not match the band name at all), with the charm that comes from old school metal demos that proliferated on the cassette format. Don’t go in expecting the world and you will no doubt have fun.

It would probably be pretty obvious to say that Defenders Of The Faith is up there with the best of the Priest albums. Everyone knows this. What I will say however is that this one is loaded to the gills with unforgettable songs. There are very few troughs, instead the whole thing is like one giant peak of incredible songwriting. Couple that with the band firing on all cylinders and the production being perfectly balanced,…

Bold, magnificant, triumphant – these are just some of the words you could use to describe Judas Priest in this particular era of thier career. “Riding On The Wind” is all of these things, but coupled with a radio-friendly sensibility that no doubt effortlessly added to the band’s interstellar levels of success. My three year old son loves chanting along to the chorus of “Bloodstone” (he thinks the words are “let’s go!” but hey, that’s…

I was in attendance for this momentous event; it was not one that I would have missed for the world, having travelled to France the year before for Godflesh’s reformation show (hideously cut short to half hour). Roadburn of course, pulled all their tricks (or is that cash?) out of the bag and thus began a series of performances of Godflesh albums at the 013 in Tilburg. I was not present for the others, but…

A brutal, blunt thrash attack with hallmarks of the proto-death and black styles abound at the time. Couple that with some iconic art and you’ve got a tough record. The production is robust and the songs pack a hell of a punch. Sodom would go on to change fairly quickly into a different style of metal (whilst retaining their heavy punch), so Sign Of Evil is a special entry into their discography, as well as…

Easily one of the most boring pieces of music I’ve ever had the misfortune of hearing, and I take no pleasure in writing such words out for all to see. The trouble with Harakiri For The Sky, is that they are not a band which immediately strike you as bad. Like a deep, penetrating damp resulting in black mould, it takes a while to unfurl and destroy. It took me a while to realise that,…

This doesn’t sound like a live album at all. In fact, going in blind, all I could think of was that this was one of those “fake” live albums which are recorded in a studio. It seems I was half-correct, with the vocals being re-recorded at a later date. To be honest, they should have just scrapped the whole thing if it came to this, but whatever, live albums don’t exactly have a history of…

As nice as it is to explore the back catalog of Tony Martin, one of my favourite Sabbath singers, Scream really just misses the mark. The production is muddy, the songs are mostly mediocre at best, and beyond bad at worst (I’m looking at you, “The Kids Of Today”). It’s really cool that Geoff Nicholls is on this thing too, providing keyboards, and I believe some of the songs were built from Cozy Powell drum…

Thorns is the very recent full length album by once-Sabbath vocalist Tony Martin. With Sabbath, and I’m guilty of this myself, his output is often overlooked, which is a shame because albums like Headless Cross have gone on to be my favourites from Black Sabbath. Anyway, let’s talk about Thorns. Thorns has a stacked line-up, and a polished, modern sound. This gives Martin’s rock numbers a shot in the arm, essentially I guess this is…