January 21, 2009

Trash Talk Trash Talk [3.5/5] Trash Talk recall the halcyon days of the early ’90s when bands like Man Is The Bastard and Infest spewed hateful misanthropic outbursts of sheer terror and unholy noise. Melody was antithetical to their very nature as they embraced sheer velocity and musical squalor. Trash Talk revel in the bile...

Mamiffer Hirror Enniffer [3.5/5] There’s a special place in heaven reserved for record labels that refuse to let things like non-commercial potential and a complete lack of an audience deter them from putting out respectable records. Hydra Head, although responsible for some popular releases, has also lent great support to bands who can’t give away...

I Set My Friends On Fire You Can’t Spell Slaughter Without Laughter [0.5/5] Oh, for fuck’s sake. “Beauty Is In The Eye Of The Beerholder”? “Ravenous, Ravenous Rhinos”? “Reese’s Pieces, I Don’t Know Who John Cleese Is”? As if the “joke” song titles weren’t forehead-slappingly bad enough, this two-man band from Miami vomit up a...

The Haunted Versus [4/5] Versus, the sixth Haunted album (and third since original frontman Peter Dolving returned and the band signed to Century Media), is a powerful effort with all the melody, pummeling rhythms and furious vocals fans have come to expect. Like many Swedish metal bands, the Haunted know their strengths and hew to...

Gojira The Way Of All Flesh [3.5/5] With The Way Of All Flesh, Gojira explore the inexorable progression to the grave, producing their most hopeful, tuneful (well, for them) album in the process. When singer Joseph Duplantier shouts, “Death is just an illusion,” and “You have the power to heal yourself,” with rugged clarity, the...

Early Man Beware The Circling Fin EP [3.5/5] Now that the retro-thrash movement is in full mid-’80s force, the three-year-old Early Man seem like veterans in a scene festooned with bullet-belted dudes in skinny-fit jeans and gleaming white hi-tops who owe their every breath-and about half of their riffs-to Metallica’s Kill ’Em All. This Brooklyn...

Burst Lazarus Bird [4/5] Burst hail from Sweden, home of Refused’s dystopian punk and Cult Of Luna’s mystical prog-metal. Lazarus Bird splits the difference between those approaches, with gruff hardcore shouts and strident stop-and-start riffs yielding to soaring vocals (from Robert Reinholdz, the more melodic of the band’s two singers), jazzy rhythmic interplay, glassy keys...

Senses Fail Life Is Not A Waiting Room [4.5/5] Leave it to former hardcore kids from New Jersey to keep it real. While some of their peers were getting snazzy new haircuts and writing dance-pop jams, Senses Fail were working their asses off to become a better band. The group elevated themselves to an entirely...

The Sea And Cake Car Alarm [3.5/5] Over the course of seven albums, fans have come to expect a few things from Chicago’s the Sea And Cake (all of which must be dutifully listed in reviews of their albums): Post-rock inflections, electronic embellishments, artfully designed arrangements and time changes, and the sighing vocals and breathy...