Iron Maiden - The Book of Souls review

Year : 2015
Genre : Power Metal, Heavy Metal
Label : Sanctuary Copyrights/BMG
Origin : United Kingdom
Rating : 9.99 / 10

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There is a huge amount of lore available already on how the practical and creative processes have been shaped and formed that finally brought this release into the position of being able to collide with some precious sunlight in your immediate area.

It is known that the band members have employed a slightly different creative strategy than they usually tend to rely on. Now they came to the studio - the studio in which they recorded "Brave New World", as well - with competent grasps on the musical building blocks that the outlines of the song ideas seemed to be demanding, but they did not spend excessive amounts of time chiseling out and perfecting microscopic details, instead remained intent at keeping the spirit and Eddie unleashed throughout the recording sessions - what could go wrong?

As result of this new found approach, and, given the experience the members have under their belt with live playing, the production characteristics of the disk are quite close to a live recording. It indeed reflects-, and even cherishes the miniscule amounts - and not more - of mathematical inconsistencies that the music is not just ready-, but even is happy to tolerate on the surface of this style of playfully heated, adventurous, oftentimes escapist tell-a-tale rhetorics, because the meaning behind a chunk or a sequence does not have to suffer any type of relevant harm as result of being "just" approximated with superb organic skills that are driven in real time, and not by unmistakably precise calculations. Read on to know more.

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Fear Factory - Genexus review

Year : 2015
Genre : Industrial Metal, Metal
Label : Nuclear Blast
Origin : United States
Rating :  9 / 10

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Following 2012's "The Industrialist", - see review, IF  - Fear Factory returns with a full length that showcases new found commitment towards the hallmark musical style that already have been visited - arguably: created - by the band throughout their memorable "Mechanize" outing, back in 2010.

In retrospect, it seems as if "The Industrialist" album has sought to represent the highly relative calm before the storm that is about to be finally unleashed with this fresh effort, as 2015's "Genexus" is a radically aggressive audio tour right out the box, streamlined and scientifically hyper-optimized to induce instant effects of inescapable cyberpsychosis, as was/is the case with "Mechanize", as well.

You are dehumanized.

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Motörhead - Bad Magic review

Year : 2015
Genre : Heavy Metal, Hard Rock with superb glam affections
Label : UDR Gmbh
Origin : United Kingdom
Rating : 8.2 / 10

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A fresh Motörhead album probably has no other dormant expectation to live up to than to deliver the same quality Lemmy Kilmister - "Did you Kill, Mister?" - and his collaborators have established themselves with on the primordial metal surface. Regardless of your other alleged fascinations, you would need to be quite biased to deny that this group is doubtless synonymous with the mere ethos of metal, and now that Lemmy is about 666 years old, the music that is pouring out of him - the same music, essentially, but there is nothing wrong with this - gets even more sinister. Sinister Kilmister, the frontman did not really lose anything of his charisma as a performer, and his pipes have started to reflect a lifetime of commitment towards the oh, so sweet primordial form of metal. This commitment is commendable, be it to anything.

From a production standpoint, there is no effect wizardry included on this release, and the agenda, not surprisingly, once again is the exploitative-, no-time-to-fuck-around deliverance of super-boomy sonic assaults, arranged into forms that all seek to reflect their original, out-of-the-naked-amp forms as closely as possible, yet no particular regards (snobbery) are given for the final results of their continuous collisions. This very limitation, which, at the same time, is central to the working mechanics of the disc, also equates with the eternal charm of this group. Read on to know more, because Lemmy knows where you live.

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Joe Satriani - Shockwave Supernova review

Year : 2015
Genre : Instrumental Space Bubblegum Blues Rock
Label : Sony Entertainment Music
Origin : United States
Rating : 7.0 / 10

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Joe Satriani once again emerges to declare his virtually timeless commitment towards a very particular wavelength of music which sounds to consist of a doubtless mature command of introverted/contemplative blues rock, combined with an insatiable thirst for 1980's family friendly science fiction TV series ethos.

Truth be told, a portion of Satrani's portfolio reveals a forward-pointing picture of eloquent silence massacre, as whenever he chooses to experiment with orchestrating thrilling collisions between the potentials of largely electronic musical genres AND his particular brand of fretboard acrobatics, then the resultant stimulus always exhibits relevant amounts of evolutionary paths covered, ensuring undeniable novelty for this artist's credit, on which the top of Satriani manages to stay relevant - and even deservedly so.

From these points of evolution onward, - after ensuring the audience that he can deliver true creative novelty IF he chooses to, - Satriani presumably is self-assured to be safe to "finally" utilize his most favorite types of constraints, necessarily and steadily forming to be the quintessential-LY constrained Satriani: the introverted, somber, stoic plastic toy-rock action figure sci-fi blues guitar guy, giving you his family friendly space tourism pinball machine highscore table music, with the immediately recognizable "Satch Touch" all over it.

His song, "Surfing with the Alien" - from the '80s - seems to have cemented a portion of Satriani's soul in said era, when he was both young, fresh and undeniable, with Emperor Palpatine sparks of electricity running on his fingers when playing daguitta' in his video clips - the amount of cheesefest is unprecedented to this day, Ladies and Gents - and later on, the fact and realization of: "shit, time harvests all, my childhood included!", brought fourth a musical element in his material that was/is/probably will be responsible for that super-evident morose tint and introversion that reigns rampant/evident on 99% of his "conventional" releases.

By "conventional", I mean releases he writes from the heart, as opposed of writing from the heart, WHILE demanding a simultaneous evolution from it. Why write anything for a stagnant heart at all? So, demanding a playful and creative heart, would be the optimum. The virtually complete absence of latter optimum stance is something Satriani is highly suspect of, but how can you rightfully criticize him for this, as 1. as noted, he has superb amounts of novelty on other releases, and 2. Yngwie, anyone? Not as if an even more pronounced example at a stagnation could pose as any type of excuse for Satch's questionable willingness to sculpt out a hyper-optimized legacy, that which currently reeks self-repetition.

The music on a conventional Satriani disc is never bad nor sloppy enough to radically criticize its perpetrator for, yet never contains enough stylistic novelty to fuel the enthusiasm of a music snob worth calling one. Whether someone admires this type of family friendly Satch-Touch family space tourism bubblegum pinball machine rock or not, is a question to be addressed by the individual, yet, seeing how Satriani chose to deliver yet another full length on the exact same register, now it is practically safe to say that more will follow, hopefully adjacent to periodic releases of deliberate evolution and innovation.

Read on to know more, though there isn't much else to, not this time.

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