New Periphery album on July 22

by Staff on July 6, 2016

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Article by Jon Faugustus.

Djent band Periphery to release new album, Periphery III: Select Difficulty, on July 22nd, 2016. This upcoming album further consolidates Periphery’s reputation as the leading non-metal hipster band.

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Standing out as an out-of-the-closet Pantera tribute band, Periphery has made a name for itself in the Pro-Tools community and the Mac users forum. The band has come to be known for their anti-establishment, anti-genre-classification, anti-gender-classification, anti-making-sense postures that sets them appart from anything in the rational universe, fitting perfectly in the make-believe world of millenials and the pampered liberal youth.

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Hate Mail (#4)

by Staff on June 25, 2016

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Article by Lance Viggiano

“T” left a comment on my recent Sadistic Metal Review of Xoth’s Hostile Terraforming :

Well, clearly you have no idea what a GREAT musician consists of. And you have no idea who these musicians are, how much they put into their performances and recordings, and how passionate they are. Pretty outrageous review. I don’t think I’ve ever read something so angry about a group of talented musicians. I’m curious… have you ever seen them live? Have you ever met any person in Xoth? I think not. Or you would have never written this disgusting and embarrassing review. (As in you should be embarrassed for writing something so dispicable).

The commenter couldn’t mount a defense of Xoth’s artistic merits; nor did it bother to point out where the review’s criticism was actually inaccurate. It makes me think that not even the band’s defenders think the band has any point worth pointing out. As usual, the responses are simply about the character of both the reviewers and the bands. “Xoth is a good guy who likes his music, therefore his music is good!” Okay, great logic T.

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Blood Incantation – Starspawn (2016)

by Staff on June 20, 2016

blood incantation star spawn

Article by Lance Viggiano.

Blood Incantation give birth to a star which rapidly dissipates its vibrant material into a pale dwarf by exhausting concise songwriting early in its lifecycle to leave only the raw core of extended jam sessions which cause the dead to be grateful for their passing. Each proper song begins with a clear objective but rapidly loses focus through descents into ill-fitting random pastiches of mosh riffs, doom, beer horn ready chug or atmospheric atonal ambience. By and large, the latter half of these songs are used to adroitly drift in the vacuum of purpose wherein it makes its residence. Unlike Altars of Madness which similarly abuses the listener by stretching the limits of tolerance towards virtuosity, this group lacks the voracious songwriting that is necessary to avoid wandering by achieving focus to force the captive into loving punishing bouts of self-indulgence.

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Sadistic Metal Review: Xoth – Hostile Terraforming (2014)

by Staff on June 17, 2016

xoth hostile terraforming

Article by Lance Viggiano.

Hostile Terraforming is the result of a lot of instrumental practice and absolutely no artistic or even musical ambition. Every moment is technically precise in the pursuit of puritanically banal phrases which fake variation by playing the same motif in a higher octave. Cyclical song structures allow the players to shred freely while never needing to establish an emotive core. The EP lasts only as long as it takes for the musicians to run through every show-off-in-a-public-space rite of passage stylistic flair which is recited in the most obsessively canned manner – essentially a musical diet of Doritos and Pepsi. Like all such outfits, the drums are produced to resemble a typewriter thus ensuring maximum clarity so the listener can hear every soulless tap and click as the performer slavishly follows the guitar around like a gimp-clad submissive. Yes, there are musical pauses to give the bass guitar its obligatory solo which has no purpose within a greater melodic arc of the song; not that the drunk dive bar crowd notices or cares.

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Denner / Shermann Ready Masters of Evil

by Daniel Maarat on May 7, 2016

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Michael Denner and Hank Shermann (the dueling guitar virtuosos behind Mercyful Fate) have announced that the mixing and mastering is done on the upcoming album from their technical power/speed metal project, Denner / Shermann. Hopefully Masters of Evil (to be released by Metal Blade Records on June 24th ) is better than their previous EP but don’t get your hopes up. Check out the preview track below:

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Ihsahn: New Emperor Album Would Be Pointless Disappointment

by Daniel Maarat on May 5, 2016

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Ihsahn has stated that if Emperor reunited, there would be “Absolutly no point” in recording a new album as “It would be a disappointment.” He claims any new Emperor work would be similar to his masturbatory solo material. Perhaps Ihsahn should have come to this conclusion over two decades ago; Emperor’s post In the Nightside Eclipse material after Faust and Samoth went to prison consisted of merely interesting black metal riffs arranged into one-note verse chorus verse songs propelled forward mainly by soft versus hard contrasts. Ihsahn is right that creatively bankrupt guitar magazine pandering is not worth Hessians’ precious time. Listen to the original master of In the Nightside Eclipse again instead:

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Dream Theater continues buildup for The Astonishing

by Gabe Kagan on December 2, 2015

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Dream Theater’s upcoming album is certainly high concept, although I don’t foresee the results being anything other than the usual technically accomplished vaguely progressive power metal they always put out. As part of the buildup to the scheduled 2016 release of The Astonishing, the band has released a ton of visual and conceptual material, and most recently put up the tracklisting for the album. Other commentators throughout the internet are being psychically assaulted by the sheer 34-ness of the amount of tracks listed; when they recover they often end up claiming that the album will either be excellent or a colossal trainwreck. I’m personally expecting something in the middle, although visual art fans might at least find something of interest in these supplementary materials.

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