This self titled release is decidedly mood based, as it makes use of droning beats and looping synths that sound like calm organ-led melodies to evoke a facsimile of Devotional music. Industrialized devotion.
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Dyssebeia – Garden of Stillborn Idols Review
Melodic Death Metal is truly a mixed bag of a genre. You often know what you will get when you press play. For every Carcass, The Black Dahlia Murder and Amorphis, there are thousands of At the Gates, In Flames and Insomnium clones. Are Dyssebeia also gardeners of eternal imitation?
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Nightmarer – Deformity Adrift: Reformed
The concept that the band might want to re-engineer and partially re-record such a well realized album before it is even a year old is at once intriguing and baffling. Can the deformity go even more adrift? Let’s see how well Nightmarer float with the anomalies.
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The Lion’s Daughter – Bath House Review
Bath House is a rawer experience that leans less on the synths, although they are still there – meaner, producing uneasy sounds that often recalls a wounded animal whining out its pain in the distance. The mood the combined elements strike is overall good and there are some hefty highlights here and there. Will Croque throw this album out with the bath water?
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Autarkh – Emergent Review
Emergent turns inward and outward at the same time. The beats and glitches take on an Industrial character and serve the story more than before. I am no longer disappointed but genuinely intrigued. Emergent quality.
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Obsidian Tide – The Grand Crescendo Review
I can hear the seeds of Obsidian Tide’s voice forming on The Grand Crescendo. That is not to say that the influences cannot be clearly heard on the album. On the contrary, the soft/heavy dynamic and transitions lean heavily on Opeth still, sometimes even sounding like direct quotes. Prog Monday, anyone?
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Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter – SAVED! Review
Hayter’s name change to Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter is about switching focus toward healing rather than pain, and supplies ample reason for that change even if the music is a stone’s throw away from the Lingua Ingota project. The Christian Hater returns!
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Myrkur – Spine Review
The elitist uproar about Myrkur’s debut was intense and a bit ridiculous, as even if the album is bad or not, it did manage to do enough to be called Metal. As in answer to this, Myrkur decided to prove all the naysayers right by transitioning into Folk songs on her subsequent albums. As Spine arrives, we should focus on what is important here: is Spine any good? Or is it spineless?
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Afterbirth – In But Not Of Review
The Post-Metal influence is dialed up a bit and the band again reaches into what I would call Relaxing Death Metal territory (RXDM is a term me and a colleague have made up to describe Death Metal that plays around with relaxing atmospheres and major key playing at the same time as being heavy, think bands like Sweven, Gold Spire and in part, this year’s Tomb Mold). But is In But Not Of in?
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Crypts of the Unknown: Lorn – Arrayed Claws
