May 20, 2008

The Great Deciever Life Is Wasted On The Living [3/5] Led by vocalist Tomas Lindberg, man of a hundred bands (Disfear, Skit System, At The Gates, etc.), and guitarist Kristian Wåhlin, aka Necrolord, man of a hundred record covers (Dissection, Emperor, the Black Dahlia Murder, etc.), Sweden’s the Great Deceiver prove it’s possible to combine...

Caliban The Awakening [2.5/5] Ever since making the leap from Lifeforce to Century Media (in North America) and Roadrunner (rest of the world) three years ago, Germany’s Caliban arguably have phoned in their last two releases and definitely failed to remain ahead of the metallic hardcore pack. What was once a mighty Euro-metalcore institution able...

The Agony Scene Get Damned [3/5] After releases on Solid State and Roadrunner, the Agony Scene bring their raging metalcore offerings to yet another metal giant in Century Media; and while the band have yet to make any fundamental changes to the sound we heard on their debut, each release has an added confidence that...

A Life Once Lost Iron Gag [3.5/5] Metalcore has become a maze of prosaic, mortality-related monikers, and A Life Once Lost’s name relegates them to a crowded realm, somewhere between the buried and those that lay dying. Instead of rechristening themselves, this Philadelphia-based band have gradually migrated away from the genre’s touchstones: Climactic breakdowns and...

Six Organs Of Admittance Shelter From The Ash [4/5] This much we know: Ben Chasny is a member of psych-blues soldiers Comets On Fire, has been name-checked by Devendra Banhart and has a copy of Misfits’ Walk Among Us stuck in his car stereo (true story). But does Chasny, aka Six Organs Of Admittance, shit...

House & Parish One, One-Thousand EP [3/5] In theory, House & Parish sound amazing: Members of the Promise Ring, Texas Is The Reason and Jets To Brazil get together and record a grown-up pop record with its feet firmly planted in the ‘90s emo scene. Unfortunately, while One, One-Thousand does have its occasional moment of...

His Name Is Alive Xmmer [2/5] The intersection of traditional styles like folk and blues with contemporary bedroom electro-pop is a curious place. It’s often bustling with beats and the noise pollution of guitar fuzz, or studied and quiet with pockets of calm in a storm of modernity. Songwriter Warn Defever has stood fast at...

Celebration The Modern Tribe [3/5] Imagine Siouxsie And The Banshees stripped of their scratchy, swirling six-string sonics and you’ll have a “For Dummies” explanation of Celebration’s aesthetic. It’s only half the story, however: On the Baltimore trio’s second album, the space between Katrina Ford’s yowl and drummer David Bergander’s tribal tattooing is amply filled...

Beirut The Flying Club Cup [3/5] “Cliquot,” the midpoint of blog-favorite Beirut’s second full-length, is everything the band do best: Over pan-European accordions and strings, frontman Zach Condon emotes about a lost love, asking-nay, pleading-for a melody that will bring her back, with a rousing chorus from his bandmates on each refrain. Like Arcade Fire’s...