Rabea Massaad – ‘Grinding Gears’ (EP Review)

As one of the Internet’s leading guitar personalities, Rabea Massaad is widely recognized by six-string aficionados worldwide as…well…a bit fucking good. A total, authoritative master of rock and metal playing with a unique, immediately recognisable style of his own, this guy knows his shit. Bea (pronounced like “beer”) is also a key member of long-term personal favourites Dorje and Toska – a pair of bands already making an impact on the online rock, metal, and instrumental prog scenes Read more…

Posted on 08 February 2018

Rolo Tomassi – ‘Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It’ (Album Review)

Rolo Tomassi are batshit crazy in the best possible way. If you fancy trying to pigeonhole them, good luck. You’d probably have to come up with some ridiculous new genre label to make it work – something like “box of mathy death-frogs” or “kitchen sinkcore”.

Alternatively, you could just call Rolo Tomassi “Rolo Tomassi”, and be Read more…

Posted on 06 February 2018

August Burns Red – ‘Phantom Anthem’ (Album Review)

August Burns Red are more than just a metalcore band. For most of the past twenty years, the music industry has been stagnating – and since Killswitch Engage dropped The End Of Heartache about thirteen years ago, plenty of bands have stuck rigidly to the same old same old formula. Why stick your neck out when Read more…

Posted on 29 September 2017

Arch Enemy – ‘Will To Power’ (Album Review)

Arch Enemy know what they’re good at – and they also know how to stay true to themselves, no matter how the music world twists and turns around them. Over the course of years and decades, they’ve earned the respect and admiration of many a melodic metal fan, and kept it all going through multiple major lineup changes.

Arch Enemy’s latest lineup – now including six-string wizard Jeff Loomis – is Read more…

Posted on 31 August 2017

Arcane Roots – ‘Melancholia Hymns’ (Album Review)

In order to create, you sometimes have to destroy. Ripping everything up and starting again can be cathartic, reinvigorating, exciting, terrifying, relieving, overwhelming, and/or everything above all at once. Forcing yourself to confront the truly blank page takes a hell of a lot of heart, and Arcane Roots certainly have that.

Through their first album Left Fire, Arcane Roots became synonymous with air-guitar-inducing acrobatics and the kind of time changes that would make the world’s physicists weep with despair Read more…

Posted on 23 August 2017

The Contortionist – ‘Clairvoyant’ (Album Review)

In an age of constant content overload, it’s become increasingly difficult to create something that truly stands on its own. So much has been done before; so much has already been done to staggeringly high standards. Still, with 2014’s Language the Contortionist pulled off the near impossible.

Listen back further to 2012’s Intrinsic and 2010’s Exoplanet, and you’ll see how far the Contortionist leapt on Language. Over time, their fusion-flavoured influences crowded out the Contortionist’s heavy side until the results became mellower, more soulful, even ambient. Language was ultimately an uplifting prog album with strong shades of metal spliced in at just the right moments. Read more…

Posted on 16 August 2017

Oceans Ate Alaska – ‘Hikari’ (Album Review)

Oceans Ate Alaska have found a solid solution to Second Album Syndrome. Too many bands fall at that fateful hurdle and sink swiftly into creative oblivion. Oceans Ate Alaska, on the other hand, have pulled off what can only be described as a win.

These guys have already made themselves synonymous with stuttering tech-riffage Read more…

Posted on 20 July 2017