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Music

Mastodon's 'Medium Rarities' Could've Used More Substance

Medium Rarities is the kind of album that will appeal mostly to longtime Mastodon fans.
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Music

Ecstatic Vision Declares That It's Time To "Shut Up and Drive" (premiere)

Ecstatic Vision's "Shut Up and Drive" challenges notions of heavy rock as it adds acoustic guitar and synthesizers to the spectrum.

Music

Post-Metal Outfit Pelican Returns with More Dark Moods and Inventive Instrumentals

On Nighttime Stories, instrumental quartet Pelican make the most out of working without a singer, proving that some narratives are best built without words.

Music

Torche Continue to Mine a Complex Brand of Metal With the Mesmerizing 'Admission'

Admission isn't an enormous change in the sound of Torche, but rather an affirmation that this band insists on forging new paths and confounding expectations.

Music

Faerie Ring Get Heavy, Psychedelic, and Fantastical With Debut LP, 'The Clearing' (album stream) (premiere)

Indiana fuzz merchants Faerie Ring take us back to the earliest sounds of underground heaviness while suggesting a brutal and bright future for this manner of sludge and spectacle.

Music

Eclectic Metal's Irata Prepare to Issue Latest Set, 'Tower' (album stream)

North Carolina quartet Irata owes as much to the classic era of grunge as it does to cannabis-infused sounds of contemporary stoner rock. Tower never offers up a dull moment.

Music

Stoner Rock Godfather Brant Bjork Explores the Power of "Oui" (premiere + interview)

Brant Bjork's long-lost instrumental album Jacoozzi has its heart in the improvisational elements of funk, soul and jazz. Uncontrollable dancing may result.

Music

Gypsy Chief Goliath Explores "Low Cost of Living High" (premiere)

Ontario-based stoner metal outfit Gypsy Chief Goliath presents the latest single from their upcoming fourth album, Masters of Space and Time.

Jedd Beaudoin
Music

Yob and Near-death Metal Experiences

Yob's Our Raw Heart topped PopMatters Best of Metal 2018 list. Here, Yob's Mike Scheidt meets with neurophilosopher Christopher James Stevens to discuss music and mystical experiences.

Music

Clutch Revisit the Past on 'Book of Bad Decisions'

Clutch can't escape the past on their newest release Book of Bad Decisions.

Music

Progressive Hard Rockers Ape Machine Move Our Ears "Into the Shredder" (premiere)

Reminiscent of some of hard rock's finest first generation acts, Ape Machine unleash a new single from upcoming album, Darker Seas.

Music

Queens of the Stone Age and Eagles of Death Metal Bring Rock Liberation to San Francisco

Queens of the Stone Age keeps the pedal to the metal with a high-energy set interrupted only by occasional interludes where Josh Homme muses with tidbits of hard-earned rock wisdom for a perilous world that's reached two minutes to midnight.

Music

Kadavar: Rough Times

Berlin heavy rockers Kadavar stuck in the morass of heavy rock's conventions.

Music

Mastodon: Cold Dark Place EP

This EP is essential listening for any Mastodon fans who've followed the band into the 2010's without an excess of griping about what the band used to be.

Music

Lecherous Gaze: One Fifteen

Lecherous Gaze continues earning its genre-jumping wings, one hyphen at a time.

Music

Lesbian: Hallucinogenesis

New singer, new concept: Lesbian gets higher and higher with latest release.

Music

Black Mountain: IV

Black Mountain blends the best of its heavy and progressive tendencies on a record that proves that space can also be sexy.

Music

Sweat Lodge: Talismana

The Sword aren't the only Austin band capable of kicking up a little 4:20-friendly riffology

Music

Demon Eye: Tempora Infernalia

The North Carolina outfit unleashes a furious, heavy record, but don't let that fool you into thinking this is a one-trick pony.

Music

Black Moth: Condemned to Hope

For headbangers who like to bash their heads really slowly, Condemned to Hope will do the trick.

Music

Dead Meadow: Warble Womb

Note to Dead Meadow… A 75 minute double album seems a bit self-indulgent and pointless when your fan base is not exactly known to have the lengthiest attention span!

Music

Golden Void: Golden Void

Less crunchy, more dispersed than some of its Northern California peers, Golden Void seeks out swirls and thickness, less febrile and more woozy, as its name promises.

Music

Indian Handcrafts: Civil Disobedience for Losers

As far as quality of riffs goes, most bands in 2012 ought to use Indian Handcrafts' Civil Disobedience for Losers as their standard.

Brice Ezell
Reviews

'Last Days Here' Leaves Us Sadder but Not Wiser

Another documentary about the ever popular tortured artist effect will break your heart and may cause you to wonder aloud why you're watching such a nightmare unfold.

Music

The Shrine: Primitive Blast

In the words of Southern Lord, "Behold: the power of the riff."

Music

Corrosion of Conformity: Corrosion of Conformity

Corrosion of Conformity may have changed a few members, but the band as a whole have not lost any of their muscle. With the band's venerated Animosity era line-up back together, the group's latest self-titled album has all the strength and integrity of their very best work.

Music

Lecherous Gaze: Lecherous Gaze

Punk-thrash-rock fusionists display a great deal of promise on this new EP.

Music

Dragontears: Turn on Tune in Fuck Off!!

When I first heard the closing numbers “William” and “Mennesketvilling”, which are sung in Danish, I honestly thought they were part of a Satanic incantation that would raise the dead in my neighborhood.

Zachary Houle
Music

Coliseum: House With a Curse

Is it hardcore? Is it stoner rock? Is it something else entirely? You won't figure it out by only listening to it once, that's for sure.


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