Phil Freeman

Twenty years into their career, you probably think you know what Slipknot sound like. Corey Taylor’s roars of rage, savage post-death metal guitar riffing, blasting drums, beer-keg percussion and a few splashes of synth and turntable here and there. B...

Here Lies Man Here Lies Man FILE UNDER: Afro-Latin Acid Funk ROCKS LIKE: Brownout, Antibalas, Funkadelic WHAT'S DIFFERENT: Guitarist/vocalist Marcos Garcia (of Brooklyn-based Afrobeat ensemble Antibalas) is exploring heavy acid funk with this new project. Fu ...

Wear Your Wounds WYW FILE UNDER: Depressive Art-Rock ROCKS LIKE: Neurosis, Swans, Pink Floyd WHAT'S DIFFERENT: Wear Your Wounds is Converge frontman Jake Bannon’s new project. The songs started out as lo-fi home recordings, but have been filled out by Converge’s Kurt Ballou, the Red Chord’s Mike McKenzie, Trap Them’s Chris Maggio and Hatebreed’s F. Sean Martin. Most are between si ...

Obituary Obituary FILE UNDER: Swamp Death ROCKS LIKE: Cannibal Corpse, Bolt Thrower, Autopsy WHAT'S DIFFERENT: Obituary’s doomy, swamp-water-logged brand of death metal has always been as much about groove as grind. John Tardy’s unhinged vocals and his brother Donald’s thunderous, jackhammer drumming are bolstered by face-punching guitars and deep, gut-churning bass. There’s plenty of do ... Read

Darkness Divided Written In Blood San Antonio-based Christian metalcore family band Darkness Divided make their full-length and Victory Records debut with this 34-minute slab. Three brothers—vocalist Gerard, guitarist Christopher and bassist Joseph Mora—are joined by drummer Israel Hernandez for a crushingly heavy but also surprisingly moody album of frantic sweep picking, chugging Pro Tools break

Darkest Hour Darkest Hour After five albums on Victory, Washington, D.C.’s Darkest Hour signed with eOne for 2011’s The Human Romance. It was a strong effort, making positive changes to their old-school metalcore sound, but now they’re on Sumerian, with new bassist Aaron Deal and drummer Travis Orbin—and all the change seems to have once again juiced their creativity. “Futurist” includes cl ... Re

Crown The Empire The Resistance: The Rise Of The Runaways A young band’s second album is a big hurdle to clear. The music business cliché is that you’ve got your whole life to write your first album, and a year to write your second. Well, Dallas-base ...

Vanna Void Some bands shouldn’t use clean vocals, and Boston’s Vanna are one of them. The opening title track on their fifth album (and Pure Noise debut) is a grinding blast of pure rage, Davey Muise’s genuinely unhinged-sounding vocals perched atop jagged noisecore riffs. It promises a ha ...

Body Count Manslaughter Twenty-two years after their debut, rapper-turned-actor/author/philosopher-king Ice-T’s thrashcore band, Body Count, are back…with their fifth album. Some history, for younger readers: In 1991, Ice-T devoted a track on his O.G. Original ... Read More ...

Casey Crescenzo Amour & Attrition Let’s stipulate at the outset that writing a symphony is a Herculean task and any rock musician should be commended for taking it on. That said, just as rock bands should be made up of players who listen to a lot of rock music, classical music should be written by people who’ve listened to a lot of classical music, not just a shit-ton of Danny Elfman movie sou

The Bunny The Bear Food Chain The Bunny The Bear, the duo of screamer Matthew Tybor and clean singer Chris Hutka, are one of the most unique—and uniquely unsettling—acts on the modern heavy music scene. Their songs fluctuate between eerie, keyboard-driven verses and crushingly heavy metal choruses, occasionally heading straight for the dancefloor to inhabit that zone where the sweaty delirium of a

Ringworm Hammer Of The Witch Cleveland’s own Ringworm are easily in the running for Angriest Band On Earth. Their blend of hardcore primitivism (that bass intro to “Leave Your Skin At The Door”!), thrash riffing and the astonishing vocals of James “Human Furnace” Bulloch makes Hatebreed and Terror sound like Tegan And Sara. Hammer Of The Witch is their Rela ...

The Mongoloids/Broken Teeth Split EP It’s a four-song split 7-inch by two hardcore bands named the Mongoloids and Broken Teeth. What more do you need to know? Oh, fine. The Mongoloids are a straight-edge five-piece from New Jersey; their vocalist sounds like he’s in his late 40s and weighs about 400 pounds, though he’s actually an average-sized 20-something bro. The music is strictly ...

InDirections Clockworks Dallas-based quintet InDirections make their full-length debut with a thoroughly faceless slab of digitally stuttering, ultra-produced metalcore. The downtuned riffs are exactly as heavy as those of their better-known peers; the clean vocals have the requisite, piercing, nasal tone; the keyboards show up when it’s time to get deep and earnest; you know the drill. Ther ... R

I See Stars New Demons I See Stars kickstart their fourth full-length with a song that steals the synth riff from Baauer's “Harlem Shake.” Yes, it’s just one element tossed into the blender with their usual high-pitched choirboy choruses and not-quite-Emmure breakdowns, but the fact that it’s there says ominous things about the band, who’ve been making keyboard-slathered, dancefloor-friendly death

The 1975 The 1975 The debut album by this Manchester, U.K.-based quartet follows a series of EPs and includes re-recorded versions of several tracks (“The City,” “Sex,” “Chocolate”). Their sound is hard to pin down; while it’s primarily built around guitars, bass and drums, there are synths underpinning nearly every song, and the rhythms have a bounce lifted from urban pop—“Chocolate” has an almos

Born Of Osiris Tomorrow We Die Alive The fourth full-length (third if you think their barely-20-minute debut, 2007’s The New Reign, should only count as an EP) from Chicago-based sextet Born Of Osiris is, frankly, a disappointment in the wake of its two predecessors, 2009’s A Higher Place and 2011’s The Discovery. When you conside ...

Asking Alexandria From Death To Destiny Should a guy with addictions as well-publicized as Danny Worsnop’s really be starting his band’s new album with the line “You’re fucking crazy if you think that I’ll ever change”? Well, that’s the first lyric heard ...

Counterparts The Difference Between Hell And Home These five Canadians show that they’ve got what it takes to stretch hardcore’s boundaries on their third full-length (and second for Victory). Their sound is less knuckle-dragging than, say, Terror, and less metallic than Hatebreed, but The Difference Between Hell And Home is much heavier and more ferocious than its predecessor, 2011’s The Curren

Like Moths To Flames An Eye For An Eye Ohio’s Like Moths To Flames are sticking with what worked for them last time on the follow-up to 2011’s When We Don’t Exist. A pair of guests pop up (Shane Told of Silverstein sings on “Into The Ground” and Ahren Stringer of the Amity Affliction can be heard on “Lord Of Bones”), and each makes an impression, but the band’s core sound—huge breakdowns; fast,