Like Vultures – ‘Win Some X Lose Some’ [Review]
Cute. Cheerful. Bright and sunny. Nice. Win Some X Lose Some is none of these things. Read more…
Colossus – ‘Badlands’ [Review]
This isn’t so much an album as an unforgiving barrage of beyond-heavy ultra-distorted guitars, cage-fighting drums, utterly guttural bass, and brutalising vocals. If you’re only interested in nice and friendly finger-clicking tunes, Badlands is not for you – but if you’re pissed off beyond reason and your tastes tend toward the corner of musicland labelled ‘Extreme Metal’, it most certainly is. Read more…
The Hell / Flesh Trench / The Deadlights / Toska [Live Review – The Boileroom, Guildford, 27/11/14]
Some shows are born special. Although I’m relatively new to The Hell, I’ve already become hopelessly addicted to their latest album (reviewed here) – so nothing short of a bad case of death was going to stop this show (the first of The Hell’s A Shitemare Before Christmas tour) from getting featured on TMMP. Read more…
The Hell – ‘Groovehammer’ [Review]
The first time I heard about The Hell, I was advised to imagine The Lonely Island – only metal. Well, The Hell might not have Justin Timberlake crooning about how “Every Mother’s Day needs a Mother’s Night”, but they do have a bottomless bag of fat grooves and slightly less than serious lyrics. And they’re called The Hell – which should really be enough for any self-respecting metal fan. Read more…
Volumes – ‘No Sleep’ [Review]
Bursting out of the gate with a crystal-clear salute in Meshuggah’s direction and really coming into its own from second track 91367 onward, No Sleep is a dense album easily penetrable to fans of modern progressive metal, and worth the time and effort for the curious. Read more…
Skyharbor – ‘Guiding Lights’ [Review]
From the big picture perspective down to the finest details, this album is a spectacular triumph. Skyharbor’s struggle to make their latest opus more than just a fanciful dream is finally over – and they’re evidently revelling in the results, as well they should. Read more…
SikTh / Heart Of A Coward / Idiom [Live Review – Concorde 2, Brighton, 11/11/14]
Outside Brighton’s favourite seafront venue, the wind is whipping up white waves that crash heavily into the shoreline. Inside, the air is moving even more violently as Idiom tear through a barnstorming set, followed in short order by Heart Of A Coward‘s crushing djent-fuelled brutality. Both bands deserve their dues for effortlessly eliciting manic reactions from a crowd set on saving their energy for the headliners. Read more…
Cea Serin [Interview]
Cea Serin’s upcoming sophomore album The Vibrant Sound of Bliss and Decay will be more than worth the ten-year wait. Fusing a multitude of styles both metallic and non-metallic and sprawling over almost 50 minutes despite being composed of only five tracks, The Vibrant Sound of Bliss and Decay is a tad epic, and raises a number of questions. TMMP posed a set of said questions to multi-instrumentalist J. Lamm – and the answers were nothing short of fascinating… Read more…
BEAR – ‘Mantiis’ [Review]
BEAR know how to fucking rock. Tighter than a gimp suit that’s been left in the wash and as dense as a black hole’s singularity, on Mantiis Belgium’s loud-and-clear answer to the Dillinger Escape Plan take on desire, exploitation, and self-centredness via much brutal riffing and a no-nonsense video. Not for the faint of heart, but an undeniable blinder for the rest of us. Read more…
Cea Serin – ‘The Vibrant Sound Of Bliss And Decay’ [Review]
On The Vibrant Sound of Bliss and Decay – Cea Serin’s second LP – the self-proclaimed Snergonian mercurial metallers slaughter and sacrifice many a metal subgenre in the name of birthing something somewhat unique. Read more…