Doom metal meets Trad metal. It sounds like the bastard child of Iron Maiden and Sleep.
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Yet more Black Metal (and yet again from Scandinavia). This is in its symphonic and cinematic form. It’s stirring and bombastic. Yet again it’s OK.
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With a name like that could this lot be anything else than stoner metal. It’s slow and its sludgy but has very little that makes it stand out from other purveyors of this type of music.
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21st album by the evergreen legends that are Deep Purple. There are some very good songs on here, which show that Ian Gillian et al. are still, fifty-one years in, a force to be reckoned with. However there are also a number of absolute duffs that feel dialled in and thrown together in fifteen minutes. This means that it ends up in limbo.
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Metalcore. It’s shouty, it’s got melodic bits, it’s (guess what) alright.
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Reanimated British thrash veterans give us their fourth album since they got back together in 2005. Maybe it’s the loss of original vocalist Sy, but it does not have the same level of energy or inventiveness.
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The highly prolific and well-regarded nu-folkers produced not one but two albums this year. The former was a solo outing for their leader John Darnielle and the latter so the whole band capture their collective love of the Cramps. Neither set my world on fire.
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There are those whose musical tastes I really admire that thought this was the bee’s knees (looking at you). However yet again I fail to buy into their angular punk. It sounds like an angrier Foals and whilst I admire the passion, I just don’t quite get what all the fuss is about.
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Debut album from a new outfit put together by four members of the now-defunct cult Dutch rockers The Devil's Blood. It’s more interesting than excellent and tails off about halfway through. Fabulously haunting vocals though from Farida "The Mouth of Satan" Lemouchi
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Spacey, otherworldly black prog. Yet again, I think I would have liked it more with more time allocated to explore its expanses.
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A veritable mancunian institution. They play the blues with a grin and huge lump of irreverence. Live, they are ace but sadly this just fails to capture their chaotic and cathartic beauty.
Polish Death Metal legends with album number twelve. It’s frantic, it’s raw and it will terrify small children.
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Udo Dirkschneider is a force to be reckoned with. He may be in his late sixties but the former Accept frontman shows no sign of slowing down. This is a concept album like no other as he has enlisted a 60 piece orchestra, namely the official Concert Band of the German Armed Forces (Musikkorps der Bundeswehr). This is not just heavy metal played with an orchestra, this is heavy metal written for an orchestra. The idea and the intentions are admirable, it just goes on and on and on…
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This is power metal with all the stops taken out. Decked up in furs, loin cloths and swords, telling tales of mythical creatures and Norse legends. They certainly are taking their art very seriously. It’s ridiculous, it’s fun but it’s all been done before.
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Big pulsating riffs, huge shaking slabs of white noise. There is something rather wonderful in here. I just don’t think I have found it.
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