No Time To Bleed Review

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(More customer reviews)I am a fan of the more extreme side of metal, and after reading many great reviews of this album and seeing it on several "Best of" lists, I picked this up. Maybe it's the whole deathcore thing that I don't get, but I find this album almost unlistenable. It's loud and fast and aggressive, but there's not much as far as groove, and the songs are quite forgettable. I guess I'm more of a progressive metal fan (Mastodon, Gojira, Meshuggah) and this is just not for me.

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2009 sophomore album from the American Deathcore Metal band.Suicide Silence, an astonishingly well-developed five-piece from Riverside, CA, are a true product of the always thriving underground, a band single-mindedly focused on creating rabidly heavy and aggressive music. Unlike their previous album, The Cleansing, No Time To Bleed was tracked in the studio as opposed to being recorded live in the studio, straight to tape.

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For Aeons Past Review

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(More customer reviews)If I do say so myself...2010 is turning out to be quite a year for metal. Despite a few regrettable tragedies (Dio, Peter Steele), the actual music being released is some of the most exciting since the boom of the summer of 2008. New albums by Dark Tranquillity, Kalmah, and Nevermore, among others, have shown their quality, with many more, including by the likes of Soilwork, Symphony X, and Iron Maiden on the way. And with all these established bands there have also been a few new arrivals, the most promising of which in my book is the Swedish/Finnish supergroup Solution .45. Best known for their lead vocalist, the much revered former Scar Symmetry front man Christian Alvestam, the release of Solution .45s debut has been the subject of much hype for Scar Symmetry fans as well as the melodeath/prog metal communities in general. My expectations were high, and I'm proud to say they were surpassed. For Aeons Past may be the album of 2010.
S.45 is sometimes criticized for being too reminiscent of Scar Symmetry, an understandable criticism considering the connection between the two bands as well as being the most well known and stylistically similar of Alvestams post SS projects. Like Scar Symmetry, this is definitly the "21st Century" model Scandinavian melodeath in the Soilwork tradition - clean and harsh vox mixed, atmospheric keyboards, a neoclassical bend in the guitar playing and an overall epic song construction - all elements one can indeed find in Scar Symmetry. However, upon closer inspection S.45 do set themselves apart. While Scar Symmetry tended be a bit more straightforward, S.45 ventures more obviously into prog metal territory. Shifting time signatures and general more technical arrangements are present. At the same time, like Scar Symmetry, there is an excellent cohesiveness of song that is highly commendable. Perhaps this is the direction people were expecting from Scar Symmetry to follow up Holographic Universe...nonetheless, the album is excellent. And in addition to Christian, all of the members are at the top of their game. The riffs are rock solid, the solos are mindbogglingly technical and beautifully melodic, and the drums are tight and punishing and the bass...is inaudible most of the time, but it is clear that Alvestam put together a worthy group of musicians, none of which I had been aware of before, but are definitely worthy of backing him up in this venture.
As far as the songs go, every single track on "For Aeons Past" is solid and unique in its own right. Its very difficult to pick a favorite, but the absolute highest achievement of the groups potential is unquestionably the 16 minute epic album closer "Clandestinity Now"...like the Symphony X or Edge of Sanity epics, it is a track that despite its length and branches of arrangement remains consistently cohesive and at no point tempts one with the skip button. Every other song on the album is great in its own way though, no doubt. The only complaint I could possibly give the album is that it does get a bit homogeneous at times, but especially considering this is a debut this is a minor cause for concern. Given Alvestams known resistance to touring I'm not getting my hopes up for an American Solution .45 tour, but they definitely have the potential to be metals "next big thing", and they certainly live up to the hype they've generated in the underground. Any fan of forward thinking and innovative metal should not be without "For Aeons Past".

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For Aeons Past , is Sweden s Solution .45 s impressive debut album; a mix of brutal riffs with unparalleled melancholic atmosphere and epic, heavy progressive song structures. Recorded over a grueling three months, For Aeons Past features lyrical contribution and guest vocals from Dark Tranquillity s mainman Mikael Stanne, and stunning artwork from Pär Olofsson (Immortal, Exodus, The Faceless). "For Aeons Past" is an impressive achievement in modern Metal!

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All Hope Is Gone (Special Edition CD/DVD) Review

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(More customer reviews)Updated on 12/27 with a slightly more objective comments.
Disclaimer: If you are a music fan whose listens to a particular genre (i.e., metal ) you are going to feel disappointed. Specifically, if you are one of the Slipknot fans who consider Iowa to be Slipknot's best album you will definitely hate this one. However, if you like rock music in general (For example, I listen to anything from Radiohead to Slayer) then you will really appreciate this album.
Although I'm hard pressed not to pick sides and choose a favorite album, I can say that I've been listening to this album as much as I did with their self-titled debut (the one that made me a Slipknot fan to begin with). Everyone has different musical preferences and tastes, so I can understand why people who predominantly listen to "metal" would prefer Iowa (given that it's currently the band's heaviest release). Given that I listen to a much more larger scope of music genres, I found Iowa to be be on the one-dimensional side. To the dislike of many fans, with Vol. 3, the band made a drastic change in their music, incorporating solos, adding more melodic choruses, and varying the tempo of the music in the whole album and within songs. At the time of its release I was a bit shocked at the new direction of the band. However, now I understand that it was all part of the natural evolution of the band and a stepping stone to All Hope is Gone. With the new album, Slipknot has been able to capture the best elements of all their previous albums while maintaining flow/structure through all the songs. They have continue to expand their sound and grow musically, which any music fan in general should greatly appreciate.

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Special Edition includes bonus tracks and a DVD featuring the making of All Hope Is Gone. After over 5 million albums sold in the US, Slipknot returns with their most powerfulstatement yet - All Hope Is Gone. Filled with the fury people have come to expect fromSlipknot as well as some extraordinary surprises, this album is the culmination of theband' s 9 unique members, three platinum albums and their 10 year journey at the topof the Hard Rock genre. Kicked off by the powerful crescendo that is Execute andGematria (The Killing Name) and ending with the blistering track All Hope Is Gone- the album is a cohesive statement about the world today and truly cements theband as one of Rock' s heavyweights. The lead single Psychosocial will propel the newalbum to match and exceed the success of the last album, Vol 3: Subliminal Verseswhich produced numerous Top 20 songs at Rock radio including a Top 5 track at Active andModern Rock radio.

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Reinventing the Steel Review

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(More customer reviews)It is my theory that Pantera released this album in spite of nu-metal. I think this not only because Phil Anselmo was publicly outspoken against nu-metal, but also because Pantera always went against the grain; they were never been the flavor of the month and they always made music they wanted to make. During a time when bands like Limp Bizkit and Korn were at the height of their career, Pantera release the heaviest album of their career. Just a straight forward, heavy as f*ck metal album that speaks for itself. Love it or hate it, you've got to give Pantera props for not jumping on the bandwagon. They didn't add rap to their metal, and they sure didn't shave the edges off their sound or go through a more alternative phase (a la Metallica's "Load" and Megadeth's "Risk").
Now, to all you reviewers who said this album was a sell-out: I'm confused. This album doesn't have a hint of melody to help increase album sales or get radio play. How is that a sell-out?
Highlights include:
"Hellbound" is a personal favorite and a great song to listen to when you want to get pumped up. The verses build well, leading into the incredible chorus, which is an absolutely brutal breakdown. The double kick drums and screeching guitar make a "boom-boom" sound, and Phil shrieks like he's being burned in the fires of Hades. Every time I hear this part of "Hellbound," I think "Oh, hell yeah!"
"Godd*mn Electric" features lead guitar played by Slayer's Kerry King. This song also has a galloping beat, with pounding drums and a wailing guitar solo.
"Revolution is My Name" is the single, and probably the catchiest song of the batch. Crunchy guitars, catchy drum rythms, and two winding guitar solos. Phil howls throughout most of this song, but near the end he says one spoken word: "Revolution".
"Death Rattle" is as brutal as ever before. It has fast, bobbing guitars which grind and throb. It begins like most of the other songs on this record, but ends with grinding guitars that chug and churn. Meanwhile, Phil changes from a guttural howl to a growl. I also enjoy this song because whenever Phil sings "death rattle shakes," his vocals sizzle, echo, and hiss like a rattlesnake.
"We'll Grind that Axe for a Long Time" surprisingly doesn't grind, but it's still a great headbanger. The song has three speed changes, and the chorus is a skipping beat.
"It Makes them Dissappear" and "I'll Cast a Shadow" are both pretty good songs, and "It Makes them Dissappear" has a good, long guitar solo (which lasts almost thirty seconds), but both of these songs don't really go anywhere; they could use a brutal breakdown.
Now, I can understand why you wouldn't like this album at first, because every track is as hard as the last one, and every track is a kick to the head. Yes, most of these songs do sound the same and yes, this entire C.D. is harmony deficient...it's supposed to be! Pantera made it this way as part of the "Revolution" against modern popular music. Or maybe it's just apart of the band's evolution: Pantera started out as a heavy metal band and got heavier with each release.
This C.D. may take some getting used to, but it is worth it. It's essential listening for metalheads, but, then again, true metalheads should have all of Pantera's C.D.s.

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No Description AvailableNo Track Information AvailableMedia Type: CDArtist: PANTERATitle: REINVENTING THE STEELStreet Release Date: 03/21/2000

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