Racing Mount Pleasant's (former Kingfisher) debut album accomplishes a lot for being only 35 minutes long: surely this is a convincing debut.
What impresses the most is the diversity that this album is able to set out although its short duration: there are delicate and touching songs, but also more rhythmic ones. I could almost argue that this is a pop-rock album in the peculiar sense that it has both rock and pop songs and moments that rarely are mixed together and usually are separated ... read more

This album was recommended to me sometime ago by @SultrixSymphony, whom I really thank for the recommendation.
Basically, The Pretty Wild follow that music current of contemporary industrial metal that in part made Bring Me The Horizon one of the biggest band in metal's more mainstream scene. It is an extremely accessible kind of music, easy to listen to, that I could define pop in a broad sense. The other clear inspiration it seems to me to be that kind of djent that Meshuggah first ... read more

The latest album from GY!BE can be easily described as "Yanqui U.X.O. years later": indeed, both from the perspective of the content and from the musical perspective both album are pretty similar. The main difference between the two works is the fact that, twenty years later, GY!BE have developed a way of being heavy and dark with their music without being noisy or chaotic (it's not that I prefer one way more than another to convey certain emotions or feelings, I'm rather ... read more

Hulder's second album is a fine black metal release: without inventing anything new and even though being extremely derivative in this genre, this album does nothing wrong in the end and has some great moments. There's surely much room from improvement and to find a more distinguishable sound that doesn't feel like generic at times.
Favourite song: A Forlorn Peasant's Hymn

Black Holes and Revelations is Muse's peak to me. This album has both the power and energy of Origin of Symmetry and the more pop-driven and electronic atmosphere that Absolution had already introduced perfectly synthesized together.
It is surely a shame that after such a promising streak of solid works, Muse's production fall off completely, perhaps in the hope to do something that Radiohead did (and succeeded in) in the passage from OK Computer to Kid A - i.e. going towards a more ... read more

Thanks to @HomeSession3 for recommending this kind of underground album to me. I didn't know this album and, since I haven't lived in first person the period where screamo was a thing, I don't really know if this album was kind of mainstream or not. Surely, at least to a more generalist public, it remained in the shadow of more famous album of that period, as They're Only Chasing Safety or Translating the Name. I think it may have contributed to this also the fact that this ... read more

GY!BE eighth studio album is pretty good, surely a great release after the previous two album that felt somehow weaker.
G_d's Pee AT STATE'S END! is a solid and smooth listening: you go through without any problem, it flows really well, even though it lacks a real peak - GOVERMENT CAME is close to the level of the group best songs, but it's not quite there imo. All things considered, although we are not dealing with a masterpiece, I think we can say that this is a good ... read more

The Last Dinner Party's second album brings a development in the band's sound with the enrichment of an already pretty much pompous and baroque sonority: many songs are filled with different sounds and a lot of things happen in them. Furthermore this album is much more rock-ish in its soul. Even though it doesn't cut off with pop genre, it is surely more rock-driven than Prelude to Ecstasy.
Aside from these changes, I don't feel like this album is any better or worse than ... read more

Absolution represents a first moment of shift in Muse's music career: from the heavy stuff that was contained in Origin of Symmetry, the band incorporate some electronic sound that will progressively be dominant in the rest of Muse's discography. For different reasons and with different merits, I feel like that Absolution is more or less on the same level of the band's previous release.
Absolution loses much of the energy that distinguished Muse's sound in Origin of ... read more

Metallica go pop and do it great!
Metallica's self titled is the last album in Metallica's discography (isn't it?) and it's a great way to close the efforts of an almost ten years long career - even though it is not close to the band's masterpieces.
This album surely denotes an opening of the band to a more wide approach that wanted to made the band as mediatic as possible: they achieved this purpose and they did it with good songs overall. It's nowhere comparable ... read more

"Luciferian Towers" is more or less on par with GY!BE previous release, but for different reasons.
It drastically cuts drone sections that was the part that I've less appreciated in Asunder, but in doing so it is not able to reach the build up that the latter was able to create.
Politically and socially speaking this album carry a lot, but it fails to fully convey its message due to the lack of field recording on the one hand (as in GY!BE first two studio albums), and the strong ... read more

A twist on the scene.
Though being part of the windmill scene, The last dinner party differ stylistically a lot from most of the bands that are part of it. Adopting a pompous and extravagant sound, the band is able to make a great pop album with some really good sections in it (maybe I'm biased, but they were always the parts were the bass was the protagonist, like in Sinner).
Despite not being my go to type of music, this album has surely a lot of elements in itself to justify the will ... read more

Origin of Symmetry is an electrifying and energetic album that combines heavy, dirty and hypnotic riffs with great vocals, resulting in an outstanding progressive rock album. After Showbiz, that was an ok but overall unimpressive debut album, Muse give a real display of their sound in this album that it is, still to this days, one of their best releases.
The only flaw of this album is that ion the second part feels like it holds back so that it is unable to match the strength of the powerful ... read more

Why muting the bass?? It could have been a holy trinity, instead we ended with the straight up duality of Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets as contenders for the best Metallica's album.
...And Justice for All is surely a good album, instrumentally full of great ideas, but the tracks sound empty at times: why hadn't this album been re-recorded yet?
Favourite song: One

Basically this whole album is one single track that GY!BE used to play live. It's not a bad track at all, yet the central part (2, 3) feels dragged too much for a studio album. In this way you also lose the the build up momentum that the drone part should serve to.
Anyway, the initial and especially the ending part of Behemoth (that was the track's original name) are really good and comparable to other pieces of GY!BE discography.
Surely, in a shorter version it could have been more ... read more

More or less the same of their previous release. Honestly I wasn't expecting anything much different to the Plan 76, that is Plan 75+1 basically. The one unit added, though, consists in a better integration of progressive elements, that is an element that I really appreciate in general and in this particular case as well.
Favourite song: Hattrick

So I'm starting to explore deeper the windmill scene sound, The Orchestra (For Now) were the one I chose as my first stop in this little world that originated around a pub in London.
Plan 75 is a solid listening that expresses a strong post-rock with jazz, progressive and noise rock influences. This is obviously nothing new and given the fact that I'm accustomed to Maruja's sound it doesn't sound as something never heard before. But here's the deal: being derivative ... read more

After the experimentation with Turn Blue, The Black Keys returned to their usual garage and blues rock sound. Even though they released some good songs like Shine a Little Light, Lo/Hi or Wild Child, none of the album released from 2019 on fully convinced me. They were by any means mediocre albums, that didn't leave much to the listener, pretty far away from the sound of the previous decade.
Although far from being a perfect release or a revolutionary one, Peaches! is an album that brings ... read more

[300!]
10,000 Days is less complex than Lateralus, instrumentally speaking, yet it is a more intimate and introspective album than the latter. This album focuses on the feeling of missing someone and features some of the best lyrics ever written by Keenan, who is emotionally involved in this album, especially in the songs that are about his mother.
Despite being an exceptional album that I could hardly criticize and perhaps because of the fact that I'm really attached and bounded to ... read more

Choosing between Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets it is a bit like choosing between mum and dad: it's impossible, because you love both for different reasons. Together they represent the most vivid example of the energy that thrash metal is able to convey and transmit.
If compared to Metallica's previous album, Master of Puppets stands out for the incorporation of progressive metal elements, that were less evident in Ride the Lightning. This fact alone is not enough to make ... read more