"Shadow Zone" is the third album from the now-established industrial/nu metal combo Static-X. Say all you want to say, but this is my favorite album from them. Yes, the debut album is very good and the follow-up's surprisingly solid but this is them at their peak. However, it's still one of the most misunderstood progenies of the genre.

I laughed when I saw the "fuck allmusic" tag on the popular tags because honestly what the fuck were the critics of the time ... read more

When I was getting everything ready to review the next 10-album batch, I firmly thought I hadn't reviewed Saint Asonia's "Flawed Design" yet: turns out, to my dismay, I had! And it was even a couple months after the debut's review in 2023! Time flies when you're listening to the middest rock imaginable. And frankly, the "-vert" duology is another slice of mediocrity whose biggest crime is to be deathly boring.

God knows when I'll tackle ... read more

Once upon a time, I was searching for more music through Encyclopedia Metallum's country feature. Out of curiosity, I decided to check what Faroe Islands even have in the metal area. To my surprise, two names stood out: Týr, a power metal band I didn't keep, and Hamferð, a Melodic Death and Doom metal group whose lead singer, Jón Aldará, as I later learned, is shared with Iotunn, one of the absolute best melodic death acts I've ever had the pleasure of ... read more

Slowing down to an hiatus at the end of the Day & Age Tour in 2010, The Killers' members worked on some side projects before coming back to their studio, Battle Born, where they worked on delivering a frankly forgotten fourth album.

While the album's name is the same as their owned studio (and also something written on the United State's Nevada's flag, where the band is from), this is an album I really never listen to. I never got the urge to sit down and listen to ... read more

Following up their debut album, the Australians swung with their second album, "The Unfinished Spanish Galleon Of Finley Lake", often abbreviated to just "Spanish Galleon". Named after its real-life counterpart, a "failed civic beautification project" according to musicologist Ian MacFarlane on an article written for Whammo, it's a shorter album, clocking in a little around the half-hour mark. With twelve tracks and a hidden one, this shorter release ... read more

Following their snappy jazz self-titled debut, the French Electro-swing gang worked hard to come out with a short EP in 2011 (which I'm not covering) and the year after their second album, "Panic". This one might be the one less talked about, as the album after completely overshadowed it. Of course, the singles here ('Rock It For Me' and 'Dramophone', especially) are what people remember the most and they were the tracks that got me into them in the first ... read more

From ripping off All Time Low to ripping off Falling In Reverse.

Now that the attention has been grabbed, Set It Off's newest album sees them release a self-titled by themselves. That's right: the Floridians have left Fearless and are now operating under themselves. This sixth album sees them abandoning the softer power pop in favor of a full-lean into alternative, nu metal with hints of metalcore here and there. But you know, for all their big show about changing styles and even ... read more

Don't go in the forest, lest you find an Avatar album worth listening to....

No but seriously, with every new album Avatar seemed to dull its senses and become lost in the sauce. This time around, releasing an album in Halloween, there's an unashamed and unabashed voyage into their wackier, folksier sound that albums like "Avatar Country" and "Feathers & Flesh". While they were once lauded as a triumphant symbol of modern Melodic Death through the amazing ... read more

After amicably parting with longstanding drummer Alex Bent and finding a suitable replacement in the form of Alex Rüdinger, the band has still one more gift from Bent to the fans in the shape of three-track EP "Struck Dead".

With a total runtime of 18 minutes, there's quite a lot of meat to gnaw on with this release, the first major one in four years. The opener 'Bury Me With My Screams' has that melodic metalcore edge others quickly compared to ... read more

Winter has come.

Cicada, the Taiwanese chamber music squad, has assembled eight tracks of deep introspection into the carefully drawn sheets of white amid frozen lakes. While they are no strangers to colder chamber music ("Hiking In The Mist" is a good example), I feel this one's better structured, notwithstanding the first half being very lengthy with four 6+ minute long tracks and thus, frontloaded.

But that's a minor thing, as when the title track opens the album, ... read more

It's been eleven years since Canadian R&B artist Kuba OMS was last active. Older, wiser and after a sting or two into acting and releasing the single 'It'll Be Alright' in 2016 on his Soundcloud that flew under the radar, a sudden urge to return to the stage materialized and took shape in 2022 when 'None Of Us Are Free' first came out.

Fast forward three years and four other singles released in quick succession, combining into one EP, "The Road". As ... read more

One of my more recent discoveries, Psychonaut - not to be confused with Psychonaut 4 - is definitely a very underrated, almost criminally so, progressive metal act hailing from Belgium. Inspired by Pink Floyd and Tool, not to mention other acts from their homeland, their fourth album "World Maker" has come out and it tells what I already knew: the band is incredibly talented but the world still does not recognize them as such.

As the Metal Hammer review mentioned, progressive metal ... read more

The thirteenth Soulfly album has finally come, and with it, a slight return to the roots. Whether I mean Sepultura's "Roots" or Soulfly's debut is up to you to decide, because either way, this album keeps the good release trend Soulfly has been in going for a couple more years. I always thought from "Dark Ages" onwards they had become staler and missing every shot they took, but "Archangels" managed to revert that state in my eyes. "Chama" is ... read more

200 followers! I am thankful for everyone that reads my reviews and comments on them. I couldn't ask for a better audience. Here's hoping the growth won't stop.

While there's no 200 follower special review, and despite having three albums that came out today (Soulfly, Psychonaut and Kuba OMS), I am expediting a regular review first. So that leads us to Ningen Isu's second release, and debut LP, "Ningen Shikkaku". I always had a soft spot for this album namely ... read more

Isn't it funny out of the three Australian bands I have, two are rooted in grunge? While Sick Puppies continued down that avenue, the New South Wales trio Spiderbait did not.

Formed in 1989, their first debut album (which currently comes bundled with the unpronounceable EP "P'tang Yang Kipper Bang Uh!") "Shashavaglava" came out in 1993, getting a later reissue when the band switched labels. This album reminds me a bit of Sick Puppies' debut EP ... read more

I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting this to be good, much less this great.

The moment I laid my eyes upon the cover art for this album, I was bracing myself for the worst. When "Tell Me I'm Alive" came out two years ago, it quickly found itself facing off "Last Young Renegade" for the title of worst All Time Low album. Even now I think my 65 score was too lenient considering how much I hate that album (though I can listen to 'Sleepwalking' still). ... read more

Eagerly awaited for five years, Kevin Parker's fifth album "Deadbeat" comes out to a lukewarm reception. The man, who sold his entire catalogue, past, present and future to Sony Music, comes out with one of the biggest disappointments of the year. Other user reviews have said it better: "Deadbeat" is an album whose sound matches the cover art; in the sense it's a dull, drab, colorless release (@NoSleepThug's review) or that the album is a generic EDM sounding ... read more

At last, we reach Crywank's third album and widely considered to be their greatest opus: "Tomorrow Is Nearly Yesterday and Everyday Is Stupid"; also colloquially called "Donut Dog". This album, while not the biggest in both runtime and total track amount (supplanted in both cases by their 2020 album), is still a magnificent journey through Crywank's original stylet. I guess this album was just so good they decided to become a bit more experimental going ... read more

Sooner than I had anticipated, we close the chapter on Darkher with her third and currently most recent release, "The Buried Storm". Six years of waiting after "Realms", Jayn Maiven adds to her company the drummer Christopher Smith. With the pair also joined by multiple cello players and a couple assistance in the guitars for one of the tracks, "The Buried Storm" is by far the dark folk / doom project's best work.

Starting off with 'Sirens ... read more

Recommended by @RemisReviews

AOTY's musical chameleon, the everchanging genre-testing ReMark is back at it again with a new single, this time venturing deep into his nation's roots and delivering a short 2 and half minutes of pure, unbridled Slovakian Hardbass. Similarly to my recent review of Tymek's 'Popularne' and a prior ReMark review of that same genre, Hardbass is another style that is a bit disconnected from my usual sonority. Not that I don't enjoy ... read more