rescuing musical virtue in distress.
Alphoenix can be found at the point of the heavy metal spectrum where melody and groove begin to be subsumed by attributes such as power and speed, weight and intensity. Even the sub-genres we use to organise such metallic strands have names which tell you all you need to know, prefixes like speed-, thrash- and... Continue Reading →
Metal, in pretty much all its forms, has always been on a mission to do things, bigger, harder, faster, heavier than its competitors. It may have sprung from a doomy yet melodic place but as it evolved and spawned new sub-genres many of these new metal tribes wrote their own rules to fit their preferences.... Continue Reading →
Some albums are best reviewed from the inside. By unpicking the component parts, by lifting the lid and seeing what lies within, by studying the blueprints to understand how the mechanics work. There are others that are best viewed from a distance, where you have to stand back and look at the overall picture, that... Continue Reading →
Punk wasn’t built in a day, but it probably didn’t take the whole weekend. And this is the attitude that lies at the heart of A G E N T’s music, get the job done and then get the hell out of there. Fuck This Noise, a typically uncompromising statement of intent, is the sound... Continue Reading →
Advance releases should act as a teaser, a sonic signpost to a forth-coming bigger release, a taste of things to come. And on the face of it that is exactly what Stop Talking was in regards to this album as it landed in the review pile only a few days previous. But it is a... Continue Reading →
I sometimes struggle with music in such an extreme end of the market, a lot of it doesn’t speak to me on a very personal level, that isn’t a problem, not everyone can be the target audience. But then I heard Our Darkest Shadows, a song that sits both comfortably within the sound that In... Continue Reading →