It’s summer, okay? And I’ll do as many mini reviews as I want! ?
First up is Dutch band Adeia‘s new album, Serenity, coming out on September second. It’s a true hybrid between progressive death and black metal, with an abundance of strings, played by the singer and the keyboardist on violin and cello. Their emphasis on long songs – over half of the tracks on the album are above ten minutes -, allow them to really showcase that “progressive death metal” sound, a bit like earlier Opeth, with odd-time signature riffs and ever-changing song structure. It’s a … Read more
Karmakanic – Dot
Karmakanic’s fifth studio album, Dot, is a progressive rock album inspired by recent writings by Carl Sagan. Frontman Jonas Reingold stated that this inspiration stemmed from Sagan’s quote about the picture of the earth that Voyager 1 took in 1990 from the outer areas of our solar system. “Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter … Read more
Mini-Reviews V
There’s a lot of good stuff, so let’s dive right in!
Mini-Reviews IV
Adolyne‘s Of Ash / of Shit / of Shame is what I’d call a post-mathcore (post-hardcore with mathcore elements to it) album from 2015. It’s a really gnarly bunch of tracks with heavy riffs taking a tangent on the math side of things, which reminds me a bit of Amia Venera Landscape, but more aggressive and less atmospheric.
Tom “Fountainhead” Geldschläger finally releases his new album, Reverse Engineering, on August first. It’s very different from his debut, “Fear Is the Enemy”. While FItE was almost like classical music with masterpieces such as Hithérto and I Do … Read more
Mini-Reviews III
Russia’s brutal technical death metal band Neurogenic will release their debut EP, Ouroboric Stagnation on September 2nd. You can now stream “Spirited Bloody Emesis” on bandcamp, and it’s very representative of the rest of the album. At exactly 25 minutes of running length, it’s pretty short for an album, but it’s to be expected from that genre. The riffs are interesting and sound unique to that band, the singing consists of, in typical grind fashion, a mix of death growls and pig squeals. The production is a bit harsh, but that’s also a staple of the genre. Overall, it’s a … Read more