metal

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…

I was a bit young when this came out so I didn’t really get involved with the hype at the time, but I understand how big a deal this was at the time. It is sad in retrospect to see the Tony Martin line-up finally go under for once and for all, but the people wanted Ozzy-Sabbath and the people got what they wanted with this release. Trouble is, I couldn’t give a bloody fuck…

I need to get myself a copy of this. Born Again is one of the better latter Sabbath albums (fight me), but the mix is a fucking abomination. The Manor Tapes not only clears up the production so that the record is appreciatable in its definitive form, but we also get extended / different version of “Stonehenge” and “Zero The Hero”, and on top of that we also get the unreleased track “The Fallen”. This…

Perhaps a bit silly, and a bit flimsy on the production end, but damn is this a classic. Stuff like “Living After Midnight” is what I’m referring to here, but there’s a place for that kind of thing (shit rock bars hahaha). I’m joking of course, but I’m more interested in some of the other songs on this record like the amazing “Grinder”, “Metal Gods” or the legendary “Breaking The Law”. My most recent listen…

A bit of a weaker entry into the extensive Judas Priest catalog, but not an album without it’s charms. Supposedly written after Halford relocated to Arizona, Point Of Entry is the perfect driving album. I decided to try that out, and being stuck in traffic on the M4 wasn’t exactly the perfect vision I had in mind, but I could not deny the tunes coming from my car stereo. My biggest complaint with this is…

At the time of writing I’ve yet to have the pleasure of hearing every single Priest album, but I’ve heard enough so far to comfortably say that Painkiller is my favourite by a long shot. That isn’t to say that I dislike the other material, but there’s something about Painkiller, like it is some sort of perfect culmunation of the band’s sound up and to that point distilled into one LP. I really wish Halford…

I find it mad that in the 70s it seemed almost common place for big mainstream acts to drop more than one album in a year. It is the only time Priest do this (I think), and the slight drop in quality perhaps shows, as this was a bit of a rush job? IDK, it’s really not that bad, and quite endearing, even though they would hit the nail on the head with this style…

Pretty great boot, which showcases some of the cuts from the Gillan era in a live setting but with good quality sound. It is a shame that this was never officially released, as Gillan was in Sabbath for such a short time. Heck, the entire rest of the band are on Born Again so Gillan’s era is as valid as Dio’s / Heaven And Hell, so even the nay-sayers who quote the Sabbath revolving door…

I have a soft spot for this thing, as I do with most of the earlier Slipknot records. When I was in school, I think 13 years old, my friend Ross burned a copy of this thing off the internet for me, as well as a few other tracks from the supposed “Crowz” sessions. Some of us like to look back at the glory days of the internet as if things were actually different back…

Man O Man is that fuckin’ cover art something, huh? I’m not sure what it is about it exactly that is so endearing to me but I really like it. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same about Stained Class, for as brilliant as it is, it fails to strike a chord with me as much as Sin After Sin or Sad Wings… did. Despite this, this is fantastic record with that lovely 70s rock production….

I have this DVD (bootleg) and it is actually a very good set. Recorded in 1994 and released in 1995, the line-up is Geezer and Tony, with Bobby Rondinelli on drums (I think this is when Cozy Powell was still recovering from accident with the horse). Tony Martin is back on vocals after a brief stint with Dio back in the band for one album. So we get Martin here performing songs by all eras…

Wait, is that Motorhead? No, it’s long-running and legendary Czech goregrind outfit Malignant Tumour on a bizarre death’n’roll’n’Motorhead’worship trip. Does it work? Well, yes it does. It is very, very well made, if I may say so. But, it is not what I come to Malignant Tumour for, so it’s taken me 15 years to muster up the energy to even write this short paragraph about this album.

You could argue for days whether the songs here “landed” or not, but one has to respect the effort involved here to cover different songs from all these different genres. It’s mad to listen to “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos” and think, damn this is the same band who released Bestial Devastation lol, at least in name. Despite not really liking any of the songs here, I don’t hate Revolusongs (man, what a…

Sin After Sin, sounding absolutely massive and glorious in all of it’s golden-era analogue production, is another fantastic early offering from the legends that are Judas Priest. Personally, this doesn’t reach the heights of the sheer VIBE that is Sad Wings but I will note the stunning production (as above) as well as Rob’s vocals sounding particularly incredible here, case in point being “Here Come The Tears”, which is just absolutely phenomenal.

Not bad by any stretch of your twisted imagination, but definitely falls flat compared to the likes of what came before it. In isolation, Possessed is an enjoyable album, but has its predecessors to live up to and therefore kinda lives in their shadow a little bit, if I’m honest. Production wise, its par for the course for an early Venom album. Musically, the band seem a bit more put together, perhaps after the epic…

Uhhhhhhh OK, then. So. Off the bat, this isn’t anywhere near as bad as Grave New World. In fact, it is, on a sliding scale, probably quite a bit better. The general style of “funk” / groove metal (think the more “fun” end of thrash meeting Faith No More and Helmet style stuff) is a massive improvement on the Motley Crue shite they tried to do on Grave New World. At least you can make…

Chronologically, Sad Wings Of Destiny is infinitely better than it’s predecessor. For a start, it sounds more like the band we all know and love today, and well, if I could make such a bold statement, this feels like the true debut album for Judas Priest.  Production wise, this is absolutely perfect. Perhaps a symptom of the times, but it’s so well put together that it doesn’t matter if it sounds a bit aged now….

I’m loathe to rate this lower than a 3/5 because of how inventive it is for what is essentially nu metal. As far as Sepultura goes, this period is definitely a low point in their career, but truly, all elements analysed, this really isn’t that bad. There’s one thing you can do for me, though, and that is to promise to avoid the absolutely fucking godawful remaster of this thing. I don’t know if the…

Bathory’s ever-changing sonic palette is taking me to places that I never thought I would go. Honestly, when I think of “viking metal” I think of idiots at festivals with their plastic drinking horns and cringe shit like Amon Amarth’s stage shows, but honestly, Bathory are leading a much more genuine charge and I’m fucking here for it. Maybe I’m just forever bitter than Skyrim is infinitely more popular than Morrowind and I will forever…

The first time I heard this record I was 15 years old, and drunk on black metal classics like Transilvanian Hunger or Burzum’s first few records. Hungry for more I decided to start at the beginning with Venom’s Black Metal album….only to find a bunch of sloppy thrash with terrible lyrics about shagging your teacher or Satan being your dad. Safe to say, this went straight into a pile and never really got played ever…

I won’t lie to you, I’ve avoided this album for about 15 years, only because Venom doing a 20 minute song has never really been something that has appealed to me. However, the joke’s on me becuase this shit fuckin’ rules. Also, generally, across this whole record, the production is fantastic. The sound isn’t a million miles away from the other earlier albums, but the guitar tone is just so goddamn sick and crunchy. I’m…

Struggling to find the words to accurately convey how absolutely atrocious this single is. Nobody asked for this. Nobody wanted this. Nobody deserved this. This is, honestly, quite possibly, the peak (or is that nadir?) of cringe.

The Number Of The Beast is classic Iron Maiden, don’t get me wrong. There is no contesting that. My issue with this record however is that it is kind of on a bit of a pedastal. The tracklist is something of a classic run, but as a casual Maiden fan only four of these songs really mean anything significant to me. Personal preferences aside, it is impossible to deny that this is a fantastic listen…

A bit of a mixed bag, but such is the way of compilation albums. The first half – or two thirds – of this thing is fairly solid. Granted, danceable industrial metal is not the reason why most people come and listen to Voivod but if you enjoyed the E-Force albums then this is a natural next step. Some of this is very similar to Godflesh, at least their more drum’n’bass-focussed stuff. The record rounds…

Admittedly, metalcore, deathcore, melodic death metal, all of this stuff – it is not in my wheelhouse. The reason I’ve decided to check out this album is the intriguing album art. It is rather still, serene and beautiful, and not something that I would ever expect to represent something that tries to be so heavy and aggressive as this. Unfortunately, where Veto falls for me is it’s enormously compressed production, which whilst not exactly rendering…

Where has this shit been all my life? Now this is how you do 90s industrial properly! Goddamn. It’s like if someone took Pure / Selfless era Godflesh and turned it into a design document, fed that into the machine from The Fly along with a few Sepultura CDs. Fuckin’ sound on this is perfect – amazing production and balance, which really allows those riffs to hit home hard. It’s a shame this is the…

Solid, funk-influenced hardcore from a Cleveland, OH outfit that features some of the dudes from Mushroomhead, namely one-time vocalist Jason Popson and classic-era guitarist John Sekula (known to MRH fans as JJ Righteous). You can tell immediately upon firing this up that Sekula is playing; that dry, super thick guitar tone that immediately reminds me of M3 comes bursting out of the speakers. As far as the funk influences go I think these are held…

Listening to the Sepultura albums chronologically, I was initially surprised by how Against held it’s own – especially after how much I’d read the first transition to a Max-less world (lol) was recieved. Against held its own, allowing the band to continue as a three-piece but also begin flexing their new 4th member. I expected Nation to be more of this, but unfortunately it doesn’t even compare. Nation is just bad nu metal to the…

Something that I initially wrote off as a pointless odds-and-ends collection does actually turn out to contain some interesting moments. All the cover songs at the beginning are well worth a listen, and for the sheer oddity of it, as are the tracks that guest Mike Patton and even Jonathan Davis from Korn. But that’s it, really. One for the die-hards and completionists.

An album that failed to resonate with me on every possible level. I love Max, I love nu metal, I love Ross Robinson, but this just does absolutely nothing for me. It’s hard to decide who was floundering more at this point, Sepultura with Against, or Max and Soulfly with this new project. I respect both artists for continuing in their own direction, but I don’t think either direction really paid off. Against by Sepulutra…

The Underground Resistance was something that I really disliked when it first came out, because I had an mp3 rip of this thing that had the tracks listed backwards, and the opening moments of “Leave No Cross Unturned” that had those King Diamond kinda worshipping vocals immediately had me checking the fuck out of there. Of course, in hindsight, this is hilarious as “Leave No Cross Unturned” is easily the best song on this entire…