Who knew that accordion would be so good in black metal? Путь, translated to Path or Pathway in English, is a Russian black metal band. Earlier, I reviewed another Russian band called Молчат Дома ( check out my review of Молчат Дома - Этажи here ) and, I'm not sure if it's a quality of all Russian music or just these two bands but, they both have this distant, detached feeling in their music that can only be described as "cold". This "coldness" can be easily felt on the album's first track "Эпитафия" or "Epitaph". The song starts with a slow plucked guitar melody, reminiscent of Молчат Дома. It slowly builds up till it suddenly stops and an overwhelming wall of guitars and drums sweeps in. The blast-beat is somewhat faded into the background, to give the song a smoother, more sullen sound, and cascades of toms are played in the foreground, resulting in this exciting, and almost mystical sound. In the last 20 seconds, the song brea...

Hi everyone! This is a post that I started in 2018, but never finished, so you might notice some differences in writing style in the first few paragraphs (although I edited them quite a bit).   I have a large amount of draft posts that I started, but for whatever reason, never got around to finishing. This is one that had a lot done, so I figured I should finish it.  Operation: Mindcrime is an awesome concept album by the progressive metal band, Queensrÿche. It tells the story of a heroin addict named Nikki in a future dystopian society. The story is told by Nikki after the fact, as he is remembering it while laying in a bed at a mental institution. He is recruited by a revolutionary group run by a mysterious man named Dr. X, and brainwashed into becoming a hitman for the cause. What becomes of him? You'll have to keep reading (or listen to the album) to find out! The cover of this album is very unusual, and it looks suspiciously like the cover of Napalm Death's cornerstone ...

"A celebration for the death of man..." "...and the great cold death of the Earth" The names of the first and eighth tracks come together to create a perfect description for the mood of this album: It's harrowing, it's dreary, it's the soundtrack to the world slowly dying. The Mantle is the second studio album by the American blackened post metal band, Agalloch. If you want to know what blackened post metal sounds like, imagine black metal, way slowed down, and with some doomer guitars thrown in. Agalloch is especially good at throwing doomer guitars, and as a result has created some of the best music in the genre. The band created five great albums, but their  pièce de résistance  is The Mantle. The songs on The Mantle sound desolate and mournful in a way that feels almost terrifyingly relatable. Chilling song titles such as "A celebration for the death of man...", "In the Shadow of our Pale Companion", "You Were but a Ghost in ...

It's been a while since I reviewed a straight up metal band, and considering this blog has "metal" in the name, I figured I better do it. That being said, I haven't been listening to a lot of metal recently, so I figured I'd pick something fun to review to make it easy on myself. Example of a Belzebubs comic (Click to enlarge) Just like Gorillaz, Belzebubs is a cartoon band, but unlike Gorillaz, Belzebubs is a black metal band and is based off of a comic strip. I think Gorillaz has a comic too, but I believe that their comic didn't exist before the band itself. The Belzebubs comic was very popular in the metal community for a while before the band was formed, and is a comedic mockumentary style slice-of-life strip about the members of a black metal band and their families. It was pretty good, I even bought a physical copy of the book! (Check out their website here , and their tumbler here for the merch store and comic strip). When I first checked out the band...

  Wow, it's been a long time since I've posted on this blog, mostly because of a lack of motivation on my part. However, I really want to start posting more, and writing the blog for Pvrth has brought me some newfound motivation ( read the blog I'm writing for Pvrth here! ). Therefore, I'm going to try to post at least once a month. Anyway, I'd like to introduce you to a fantastic band that I've been listening to recently, Boris! Boris is an experimental noise/ drone metal band from Japan. I can't understand what they're saying, but that doesn't take away from the spiritual experience that is listening to one of their albums. Boris is also named after a song of the same name by one of my favorite bands, the Melvins. You may remember my review of the album Lysol by the Melvins ( if not, read my Melvins - Lysol review here ). Lysol's first two tracks "Hung Bunny" and "Roman Dog Bird" are slow and powerful drone tracks which rely...

        This is an album review that I'm very surprised I am doing. When I do these reviews, I often cover extreme genres, such as black metal or experimental noise, but these are always genres I have a history of enjoying. However, Cattle Decapitation is grindcore, a genre that, in the past, had always eluded me. I went into this album fully expecting to hate it, but I was very surprised to find that not only did I not hate it, I loved it! I went on to listen to several other albums in their discography, and found that I liked pretty much all of them. I guess I'm a fan now. Anyways, now I'm here to share this album with you.         As I said above, Cattle Decapitation is grindcore, or more specifically, goregrind a fusion of grindcore and death metal. If you aren't an avid metal fan, you may be asking yourself "What is grindcore?" and "Why should I listen to it?". To answer the second qu...

        Here it is! The long awaited Tool album, finally released after 13 years of waiting. The question on everyone's mind: was it worth the wait? The answer: meh... not really... But is it at least good? Yah, I think so.         I'm getting ahead of myself. There are probably some people reading this who don't even know about the band Tool. Tool is a legendary progressive metal band well known within the metal community for their unique progressive/psychedelic sound, math based rhythms, and pretentious fans. Their best songs have lots of amazing singing from the frontman, Maynard Keenan, are intensely psychedelic, and have weird music videos to go with them. Tool is honestly a really hard band to describe. If you aren't familiar with Tool already, I suggest you just stop reading this review right now, sit down somewhere comfortable, and listen to Ænima and Lateralus, their two best albums in my opinion. ...

        Ahhh... I love reviewing albums by my favorite bands. Melvins is an amazing band of many faces. Their music ranges from slightly bluesy hard rock, to harsh noise, to thick sludge and drone. This particular album is mostly sludge and drone, with some bluesy hard rock mixed in. In addition, the frontman, and singer, of the Melvins is a guy with crazy hair named King Buzzo, so they've also got that going for them. Some quick facts about this album: it was originally called Lysol (as seen here), but the Melvins were sued by the Lysol corporation for using their name, and was forced to change the name. The Melvins opted to just remove the word Lysol from the right side of the album, and make it self titled. Despite this, fans still refer to the album as Lysol . The cover art is a painting of a sculpture named "Appeal to the Great Spirit". This image also appears on the cover of a Beach Boys live album, The Beach Boys in Concert . You may no...

Listen Here         I t's October, and Halloween is around the corner, so I thought I'd celebrate with some spooky, Halloween themed bands, or maybe just a band that has a name that sounds like Halloween. If I feel up to it, I might even make a second post this month on Halloween with a second Halloween themed band.          Helloween is one of the original power metal bands, and is credited with creating the genre which is modern European power metal. Despite the band's name, Helloween isn't really a Halloween themed band, although the do have a few songs on the topic. Helloween's music is often very grand and whimsical in nature with fantastical themes. Considering Helloween is a band that helped found power metal it's not very surprising that the genre is also characterized by fantastical themes and  grand melodies. In addition both also feature singers with clean vocals and large vocal ranges. Hello...

Listen Here         Y ou might notice that I'm trying out a new format for my posts, based on suggestions I received. Instead of putting the album art and link at the bottom of the review, I'm putting them at the top so you can easily look at the art and listen to the album while you read the review. I haven't decided if I like this new format yet, so I might change back in a few weeks, I don't know, we'll see. Anyway, lets get to the review.         I mmortal is what I'd call an important band: they aren't necessarily the best, the founding, or even the most famous band of the genre, but they without a doubt had a lasting impact on it and music in general. Immortal is a Norwegian black metal band, which stands out due to their good recording quality, relatively accessible sound, and unusual melodies. Immortal's early albums were still in the style of traditional, second wave black metal, but At the Heart of Wi...

Here's a great band: Muse. Muse is one of my favorite prog/ alt rock bands. They often have catchy, melodic, symphonic songs and dramatically sang vocals that remind me of opera. Their music is always unique and interesting, with each track being a new experience and each album a new journey. Their song styles range from electronic, disco esque, songs to dramatic ballads, to head banging hard rock tracks.         This is one of my favorite Muse album covers because there is a lot to wonder about when you look at it. We can see the shadows of people who are flying overhead with some kind of divine or paranormal power and a man who is looking up at them in wonder/terror. There are a lot of ways to interpret what is happening here. Maybe this is the rapture and the "true" Christians are flying to heaven as the apocalypse is beginning, maybe some ancient power has been unleashed and has given humans the power of flight; They seem to be flying symmetr...

Testament is one of those classic thrash metal bands from around the same time as Slayer, Metallica, Anthrax, and Megadeth. Testament is not considered one of the big four thrash bands, but I feel like they could replace Anthrax; which, in my opinion, is the weakest of the four. Testament has a sound that is like a cross between Metallica and Slayer, with a sharp cut guitar sound, somewhat complicated and fast riffs, rapid beating drums, and sweet solos.         To be honest, I don't really like this cover, it is kind of ugly. The colors yellow and purple are complementary, and don't really work together. The coolest part of this cover is the weird skull, although it is placed strangely, kind of hovering there. Also, what is that thing next to it? Is that some kind of animal tail or a smoking rope or something? I don't know why they decided to include that. Also, even though the skull is the coolest part of this cover, I feel like it would almost be b...

I feel like in order to be a real music enthusiast, you have to enjoy browsing the local record shop, looking for new albums to listen to. This is how I got Enter the Arena ; the cool cover art attracted me to it, and after listening to a track, I decided to buy it. Warbeast is an somewhat underground thrash metal band which formed in 2006 as Texas Metal Alliance. Really, what kind of name is Texas Metal Alliance? It sounds like the name of some kind of metal program started by the chamber of commerce. It's not really surprising that they changed their name to Warbeast in 2008, a much cooler name. The singer of Warbeast was also the singer of Rigor Mortis, a much more well known speed thrash band. Warbeast has a sound heavily influenced by Pantera, which is not surprising considering both bands formed in Arlington, Texas. Both bands have hard hitting tough guy vocals, although Warbeast is more thrashy. Warbeast also has some Anthrax influences, occasionally doing the talk-singing ...