Unisonic - Unisonic review

Year : 2012
Genre : Traditional Spandex Heavy Metal
Label : earMUSIC - Worldwide
            Marquee/Avalon - Asia
Origin : Germany
Rating : 7.0 / 10

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Unisonic is a traditional spandex heavy metal project from Germany with many illustrious members in its ranks. Michael Kiske, Kai Hansen, Mandy Meyer, Dennis Ward and Kosta Zafiriou are ready and eager to take you to the old school-, radio friendly side of the all-things-metal planet, as this self titled affair of the Unisonic ensemble is a larger than life flow of pretty continuous tributes towards the skirted Puma shoe and the VHS video clip ethos of the '80s.

The disc is an immediate recommendation for the Scorpions fan, and this notion on its own should give you a general idea of this music on exhibition : this is data with a highly noticeable verse-chorus-verse-intermission-huuuugehuge chorus affection served to the listener throughout, and I personally think that you need to give the record some tolerant facetime before dismissing it as a release solely dwelling on yesterday's music, though it undeniably does that, and nothing much beyond said and satisfied agenda. But there ARE pleasant surprises, and I don't mean the powerless James LaBrie sighs at the end of the sung lines. Read on to find out more about the delivery.

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Lega-c - DASH review

Year : 2012
Genre : Hip Hop with a smooth character
Label : Independent
Origin : United States
Official site : > - here - <

According to the official sum total of things, Lega-c has made a name for himself within the DC, Maryland and VA area. Starting out small and growing his team and fan base, he is now branching out on a national level. (As a start.) His debut delivery, DASH, and this here review of said full length declaration - that which is as fresh as ballistic dew is on the top of a tent on the Summer Himalayas - marks the firs major tactical operation of this ambitious agenda. Why not consort such a masterplan with exigency IF and WHEN you : can. Witness!! Lega-c actually gives you LYRICS in the digital booklet that comes with the album download.

The shape of hip hop on the debut places emphasis on a relaxed and smooth spiritual calibration that fuels 13 tracks that mostly are highly optimistic, humorous and passionate in nature. The subterfuge-intimidation of grimly realistic ghetto romantics is nowhere to be found on the disc, in fact, the LP openly embraces some ultra-fuzzy compositional strategies like cozily emotional - and great! - female singing and rhythm and blues hooks that tenderly and properly reek the vintage kind of Motown Michael Jackson grown up - quite literally - with. This is not at all to imply that DASH would be a soft hip hop release. Nope. It is "just" smooth. But not at all criminal. Read on to find out more about this elegant debut.

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Tha Sleepwalkers - Sub-Conscience review

Year : 2012
Genre : Hip Hop Mixtape
Label : Independent
Origin : United States
Official site : > - here - <

Kei-Shon Son is the primordial Dr. Octopus behind Tha Sleepwalkers Hip Hop Collective, and I must say that the Sub-Conscience mixtape of said ensemble channels the high quality sense of straightforward contemporary ghetto rap as I know it. It is safe to say that the grooves the tame rants are packed on are finely constructed sonic entities with never less than four or five layers of continuous happenings to them.

Modal variation and sober limitation is maintained throughout the nine rap-track-rojectiles coming your way on this mixtape, even better : they turn after you in mid-air if you are a dodgy type, and won't hurt you in the process at all. This - surprise, surprise - is peaceful ghetto hip hop. The release reeks authenticity an honesty supported by a muscular, soberly controlled synth pop vibe as musical backdrop. Read on to find out more about this mature hip hop delivery.

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Wretched - Son of Perdition review

Year : 2012
Genre : Deathcore with Melodic Technical and Groove leanings
Label : Victory Records
Origin : United States
Rating : 8.0 / 10

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Wretched's Son of Perdition is 38 minutes of colorful audio data that primarily is unrelenting - I suppose? - "brutal" deathcore, interrupted and spiced up smartly by groove and instrumental segments throughout its sober length. Conforming to the seemingly untold rules of the trendy-, recent day death metal album production ethos, you are free to skip the first track entirely, because it is the just-so-usual intro section that has absofuckinglutely nothing at all to do with the actual music of the release, and which you probably don't really give a shit for at heart, I know I don't. Dramatic church chorus and organ. Oh really. Reverend! Set yourself on fire and GTFO, I'll video.

The primordial direction the band is keen at taking is death metal bordering on melodic and technical death metal in parts, especially during the highly chaotic segments. Don't expect the disc to maintain the obscenely and beautifully super-complex form with such hardcore persistence as Spawn of Possession or Gorod or Blotted Science demands its unconditioned submission with, but the intent is there to offer a tribute for the more crazed inspirators here and there. Read on to find out more about this decent release.

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Anathema - Weather Systems review

Year : 2012
Genre : Walt Disney Lion King Rock
Label : KSCope (EU) The End Records (US)
Origin : United Kingdom
Rating : 3.0 / 10

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Anathema's latest sounds to be the direct spiritual continuation of 2010's We're Here Because We're Here. I want to tell you right off the bat that the record, in my opinion is highly annoying and contains perplexingly narcissistic music. Anathema seems to have constructed an in-house song generator that is capable to produce smarmy songs, exclusively, as every single piece on this 55 minute affair exhibits the same premiere core characteristics and compositional tactics. I will get into those traits with ruthless efficiency later on. The disc shows constant preoccupation with the establishment of compulsive discomfort-elimination. This Anathema record is here to make you feel OH!, so special, you cosmic schmuck. Luckily, the cosmic schmuck who is writing this, warns you about this dangerous fact. Listen to this music, but know that it is a fragile lie and is designed to make you feel : - surprise! - ssssssssssssssspecial. But "you" are not special, "you" are "only" the expression of an unrelenting process beside an infinite number of other ones, and only this process that gives you the capacity to delude yourself into such ridiculous notions, IS special. It is consciousness medium, looking for lower entropy states. As for Anathema, they are looking for money for assuaging your fears. (Which is the same thing in a physical universe, funnily enough.)

In Anathema's domain, the only bird is the swan and the three colors that are most fervently encouraged to be used by everyone are blue and white and green. Your wasp is not allowed. Boosh! Boosh! Yellow, black, evil, stingy, evil! Boosh! Boosh! This is relentless Nazi music in the sense that it is arrogant enough to assume that the listener is retarded enough to not be aware of the fact the she/he is being fed the same daaaaayuuuumn trick for the 32423423rd time. This is Nazi music because it wants everything to be OH!, so peaceful and OH!, so eloquently and pretty much disgustingly and homogeneously beautiful. Like those posters with the dolphins and the naked ladies and the sunrise from the early '90s. Your receptors are in a constant harassment to submit to the limited/fabricated toy-beauty the songs actually reflect. Their capacity to entertain is vastly constrained by a self-congratulatory artistic behavior and related techniques that the music is forced to vomit out sugar-overdose accessibility for. This is an attempt to commit the slaughter of beautiful music. I adore beautiful music, I "only" demand it to be made from heart to heart, as this Cynic release sounds to me as. This is not the case at all with this baby, designed to sell good in the family friendly section of the record store, right next to Disney's Lion King. You are expected to be affected and be satisfied by very cheap and predictable patterns and methodologies. Read on to find out more about this vastly predictable pink plush toy music that secretly sucks immense demonic alligator dick in putrid anxiety-hell when you are not watching.

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Lord Mantis - Pervertor review

Year : 2012
Genre : Blackened Sludge
Label : Candlelight Records
Origin : United States
Rating : 9.0 / 10

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Lord Mantis' Pervertor LP sounds like a huge, bubbling cauldron resident in hell, and you are the very next entity on a collision course with it. This brave release breaths in sulfur and exhales larger than life comic book hatred and dramatic disillusionment, coating you-, enveloping you into an atmosphere that is super-reminiscent to the cover art of Justin Bartlett. The release is the embracement of all antitheses of positivistic assumptions, immediate private comfort and feelgood belief systems, it denies and executes these sentiments in an attempt to make you feel grateful when you are freed from its clutches, given a chance to reinvent yourself with the soul hack implemented in you. Because this disc wants to hack your soul, have no doubt about that. (Music that does not seek to hack the soul is not worth to take a shit on, by the way.)

This LP, called Pervertor, fortunately is not "stock" disillusioned music that seeks to circulate everyday average existentialist misery. The delivery instead shows the superb quality of seeking to entertain, primarily. The disc is very disciplined throughout, exhibiting very mature production work. The genre of the game is a blend of sludge and black metal, and the premiere flow of things is that of the cauldron-character I have been telling you about. The down-tuned - seriously? - guitars from abyss most often show and deliver a constant wall of sound structure that emanates a vile kind of lethal sonic heat to lock the psyche in from 360 directions around it, and they show readiness to interrupt this black metallic behavior with the splashy/lazy/arrogant patterns of sludge music, too. This record, as surprising the following might sound, is deeply melodic in its festered anti-heart, and it never trades entertainment in for harmful, self-centered misery-arrogance. Guys, let's talk about the music.


The tracks show great consistency with their faithfulness and nice sense of balance maintained towards black and sludge, leading you into this temper of music so efficiently and relentlessly that the treatment leaves no other choice for you than to admit that you found it pervertedly refreshing, no matter that it just cooked you as a side effect.

The flow of the sonic stuff is well varied, I dare say puristically "pure riffistic" on occasion, like in the opening track : the rhythmic complexity and the riffcraft in the song borders on extremely vile banshee-groove metal, and the sludge splashes bring a profound sense of relentless/restless and unavoidable turmoil. This track and the next do a good job representing the favorite mechanics of the disk, as the strict rhythmic emphasis between drums and guitars that starts out from around 3:30 in the fabric of the first track, is one method the album is fond relying on. The consecutive track utilizes it with great success, as well. In this second track, called "Septhichrist", the organic unison connection between the vocals and the pulsation of drums/guitars is quite efficient and frightening. A set of support-guitars create an impenetrable wall of sound structure that imprisons you with the lethal heat it conveys, - an insect-swarm analogy comes to mind, too - and the vocalist and the solo guitar both ride on an evil central melody that promises no good whatsoever. The song in question is able to offer relevant twists and narratives in its fabric even at the peak and at the climax, I just wanted to give you a brief summary of how intricately stacked and planned the compositions are, and I feel that the elements I have been telling you about are of essential ingredients on this contribution.

The very next track, "Vile Divinity" is pretty much groove metal in character in its start section, later on relying on the great insect swarm wall of sound methodology, spiced up once again by the organic, unison rhythmic emphasis expressed through the simultaneous declaration of guitars, drums, and vocals. This track ends with a pretty unfriendly and well sculpted white noise that comes to violate existence to the core. Good luck with that.

The next track, "Levia", is more black metal in character at the start session, the black metal in which decay is tinkering and feels jolly good about that, too. The middle section is more sludgy with a riff idea that even Meshuggah could have come up with, in my opinion. Later on, the black metal idea comes back to claim the leftovers, in order to feed them to the Meshuggah sludge idea. No worries : such a sludge idea eats everything you give to it.

"Ritual Killer" is very reminiscent in its temper-, in its anatomy to the second track on this disk. In the verse structure, Lord Mantis rips off Lord Mantis. GG! This one is the longest delivery on the album, and I like how the wall of sound entities show varied dynamics in it throughout the "quasi-chorus". Though a second take on an idea that the release already has offered in its beginning, I find this variant enjoyable, too, as result of two additional segments that show up later on, channeling almost a progressive vibe. Then, the central idea comes back. "I. Deny. My. Life." Progressive blackened sludge. Bitch, please.

The vocal delivery is worth mentioning separately. It is a mildly effected deranged rasp, and it has legit punch. It reminds me greatly of the vocal rhetorics of Indian, an aggressive sludge band. The drummer of Indian, Bill Bumbgardner, is the drummer on THIS disk, too. There are some pretty sick vocals on display herein, as I will now demonstrate.

Quote from the comment section of this particular "At the Mouth" YouTube video :
"At a minute twenty seven the vocals start spewing putrid howls infected with deathly perversions like I've never heard before."

SledgeGrayMatter9611

Indeed.

To conclude this Pervertor review, I will say this : the stimuli definitely maintains the black metal vibe, yet the pacing of the happenings-, the mere sonic domain the tracks occupy, belong to mammoth sludge. This is a sibling that makes perfect sense in my opinion, and it compliments both directions very efficiently. Courtesy of routes being open and free to take all the time both towards black and sludge, let alone the sessions the disc spends most time on, which is a middle ground between the two, this Lord Mantis LP weighs in AND emerges as a perverted monument created of assembled corpses and it is scanning the scenery for you to add your hide to its anatomy. Now is the time to learn to fly or to look for a jetpack. Or both. Just to be safe.

Rating : 9.0 / 10

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Pharaoh - Bury the Light review

Year : 2012
Genre : Power Metal Progressive Metal
Label : Cruz Del Sur Music
Origin : United States
Rating : 9.2 / 10

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Pharaoh takes its power metal so lethally AND progressively serious that the inherent will is sufficient to enslave the respective spirits of both elegant subgenres, which is not something you frequently witness from the majority of peers, as other-, orthodox power metal ensembles tend to remain occupied revealing unrelenting pathos on the tail of a fight related chorus. This prestigious American enterprise feeds from the power metal fields that are not necessarily available for the risk-freely eloquent, not without creating the character of this music using more flamboyant ingredients than "just" the primer-, super-orthodox components of power metal. A key thing that differentiates this delivery from a - with a term dressed in a hint of spite - generic power metal, is that there is nothing generic about it at all. Pharaoh's Bury the Light LP is power metal from the bottom of the meeeeeeetal heeeeeeart, - rubber heart WTF?? - showing no character similarities to your average live fantasy soundtrack of cheesefest unlimited. Read on to find out more about this exquisite full value spin.

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