The Dillinger Escape Plan
Option Paralysis
Party Smasher Inc
22 March 2010
by Raziq Rauf
For over a decade now, The Dillinger Escape Plan have been synonymous with thoughts of dizzying time signatures and seemingly superfluous technicalities rightly associated with mathcore. However, those who persevered with melted minds duly found comforting interjections of melody and sensitivity that served to soothe [...]

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Eluveitie
Everything Remains As It Never Was
Nuclear Blast
19 February 2010
by Tom Dare
Swiss folk metallers Eluveitie attracted a certain amount of attention with their song ‘Inis Mona’, the lead single for their last album, Slania. One of the finer examples of the folk metal style, it firmly established Eluveitie as more authentically ‘folk’ than most of their [...]

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Darkthrone
Circle The Wagons
Peaceville Records
8 March 2010
by Tom Dare
Legendary black metal pioneers Darkthrone began moving away from a conventional black metal style some time ago, and with Circle The Wagons, their fourteenth album, it could be argued they have stylistically abandoned black metal altogether. However, this would be a mistaken impression – because [...]

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Mnemic
Sons of the System
Nuclear Blast
18 January 2010

by Andy Parker
The release of The Audio Injected Soul saw Denmark’s Mnemic receive serious acclaim from the metal world. Released in 2004, for many it was the teat desperately needed since the demise of the industrial nipple that was Fear Factory. Similar characteristics appeared and with single ‘Deathbox’ [...]

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Ov Hell
The Underworld Regime
Indie Recordings
8 February 2010
By Tom Dare
Can we finally put the soap opera of the Gorgoroth name dispute behind us now? As interesting and legally important as the issue was, it is surely time to get back to the business at hand- making disturbing and evil black metal and generally upsetting people.

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What’s that you say? KISS? Playing to less than 800 people in London? Yep, and there was absolutely no way local longhair, Amit Sharma was going to miss the even that will one day be known as… KISSLINGTON.

When you think of seeing Kiss live, you probably envision four hairy men coated in make-up, singing songs [...]

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Here There Be Monsters
Inherent EP
Black Match Records
13 February 2010
by Lock Johnson
Genre-pigeonholes are the sad crux of the modern record reviewer. Can’t think of a decent opening gambit for your review of the latest record from Band X? Simple – just throw some half-baked tangent out there about whatever micro-niche you think you can shoehorn the [...]

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Van Canto
Tribe Of Force
Napalm Records
1 March 2010
by Tom Dare
To say that Van Canto are set to divide opinions yet again would be somewhat akin to describing a Cannibal Corpse album sleeve as “a tad bloody” – in other words, an understatement of galactic proportions, even before mentioning their latest Metallica cover.

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Barn Burner
Bangers
Metal Blade
16 February 2010
by Tom Dare
Canadians Barn Burner have delivered a debut album that does exactly what it says on the tin. What we have here is a collection of banging rock songs. What they want you to believe is that they present an original, unique rock vision. On this front, they fall well [...]

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While we were creaming it last Frday over Dillinger Escape Plan’s double-gig at the Barfly, Amit Sharma was just down the road watching Nebula playing live at a different dirthole. It looks like we had a better time of things.

Eddie Glass, creative core and driving force behind Nebula, hasn’t exactly had it easy at the helm of his [...]

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