Apparently they are trying to marry Black Metal with hardcore punk. The result is something that lack any of the traits or virtues of the two constituent parts. The whole thing feels abrasive for abrasive sake. Black Metal works because it has shades of subtlety, this is just nasty and objectionable for no real reason than the members decided that was a good idea. Pointless.
Read MoreNot even the fact that it has my beloved Bruce Springsteen singing ‘Highway to Hell’ can save this record. It is hotch potch of different styles and genres that fail to hang together in sort of cohesive way. It feels like scanning through the radio and getting blasts of completely different station. A complete mess.
Read MoreI am very much swimming against the tide here as this will be top of many people’s lists this year, but I just don’t see the hype. To my ears it sounds like an uneasy alliance of Post Metal and Hip Hop that just doesn’t gel. I get that it is radical and I get that it is challenging so many of Metal’s conventions, but I still expect some sort of cohesive whole. I just got no sense that there was anything here apart from someone raspy rapping over some noise.
Read MoreWhen did modern Indie become so measured, so well behaved and so dull. This is lacking that feeling of joyful rebellion. It just feels maudlin, self-absorbed and really really boring.
Read MoreThis is meant to be a loving homage to the garage speed rock n’roll of MC5 and the Stooges. What it lacks though is any real understanding of what made those acts so great. This is a soulless facsimile. It may be playing all the right notes, but the passion and conviction aren’t there. It comes across as very cynical bandwagon jump.
Read MorePut this in the category of appallingly bad and lacking any redeeming features. The men behind Alestorm and Gloryhammer (remember them) decide to turn their attentions to mythical Power Metal. I know that it is meant to be self-aware, ironic and has its tongue firmly in its cheek but Alestorm (and to a degree Gloryhammer) have built their careers on mixing that with a decent tune or two. This has none. It is all “ohhh look how pretentious we are wink, wink) without having one quality track. Turgid and utterly incredulous.
Read MoreMr. Clarke was in Guns N’ Roses for about five minutes in the mid-90’s (ok three years) and has traded on this ever since. He is trying to do good time boogie with some rock n roll flair but there is nothing here that we haven’t heard being done better elsewhere. It just doesn’t have the song-writing chops and instead the whole album feels staid and boring.
Read MoreWell this is a prophetic album title if there ever was one, as I am so done with this band. I have really tried as I truly believed that there was something quite different here. But they are now insisting on being difficult for difficult sake and I am out. I no longer think they are revolutionary or auteurs. I have seen through their emperor’s new clothes and decided that this is just intolerable white noise with no redeeming features or arty statements.
Read MorePotentially the thirty-eighth Hawkwind album but to be honest even Hawkwind’s rapidly rotating collective of members have lost count. This is prog by numbers, that has none of the other worldliness that made 70’s and even 80’s Hawkwind such an exciting prospect. It just plods and feels like they ran out of ideas about ten albums back.
Read MoreI don’t have anything against dance metal, but this is an utter mess. The electronic elements are woefully underbaked and its shifts in gear jaw rather than flow. It ends up feeling like a shunt job as opposed to a fully formed hybrid.
Read MoreThis just screams marketing ploy. It comes across as a cold and cynical move to create a USP for what is essentially rather dull run of the mill metalcore. “lets be a horror movie themed band” they will have proclaimed after a long protracted band strategy meeting and the record label executives will have rubbed their hands in glee. There is nothing new here at all. They have borrowed their cliches from Alice Cooper, Rob Zombie and Marylin Manson and they nicked their sound from the Black Veil Brides. Synthetic and soulless.
Read MoreVery much a case of love the politics and appetite for disruption but cannot get or connect with what they are doing musically. It is jumble of incoherent sounds that is meant to be edgy and discombobulating but comes across confused and disjointed.
Read MoreHow can an album that has had a ten year gestation period end up sounding so half arsed and rushed? It is full of unrealised ideas and bored cliches. It screams we pulled this together in our lunch hour, will it do? It lacks any stand out tracks or anything that is capable of capturing the imagination. Truly horrible.
Read MoreI love Saint Etienne and have done so since the early 90’s. Even during my metamorphose over the last two decades back into a fully-fledged metalhead I have taken their bright and breezy indie disco with me. But this record is nothing short of a travesty. It is understated, lilting and lacks anything you would recognise as euphoric pop. Their wonderfully catchy hooks are conspicuous by their absence, and it does not have a still song with the aptitude to fill a dance floor at an indie disco. Miserable, maudlin and just really really dull. By far their weakest record by a country mile.
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