 Written by: Continuous Thunder
When I learned that The Devil Wears Prada was going to release a sequel to their Zombie EP, I was equally excited and apprehensive. It’s no secret that I consider the Zombie EP to be among the band’s best releases and that it might very well be their best release overall. Returning to the subject of the zombie apocalypse is an intriguing prospect, but the sequel has big shoes to fill. The concern is compounded when you consider that the last release from the band was The Act in 2019, where the band made a significant shift in their sound towards an allegedly more mature post-hardcore. While that album received almost universal acclaim from critics, it wasn’t all that exciting to me, personally and it was ultimately disappointing. Would ZII (read “zee two,” or “zed two” if you’re from any country other than the US) return to the undead wasteland and observe it through this new, breakdown-less lens, or would the band try to go back 11 years and recapture the blistering fury of the original?
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 Written by: Continuous Thunder
Over the course of 20 years and 10 studio albums, Demon Hunter have established a tradition of including at least one lighter or slower song on each release. Now, you might imagine that these wouldn’t be the most popular songs in their catalog. Nobody listens to an alternative metal album excited to hear the ballads, right? While that is the case with a handful of these tracks, some of them became fan favorites and even managed to get on some Christian music charts. Partially because of the lack of harsh vocals, but also because Demon Hunter has a knack for writing slow songs that don’t suck, and likely because they choose to go for more melancholic themes rather than sappy ones. For their 11th release, the band has re-recorded many of these slower songs from their catalog with acoustic and orchestral arrangements, further emphasizing their gloomy tones. 
Written by: Continuous Thunder
For Los Angeles industrial noise rock band HEALTH, the album cycle has two distinct parts. First, there’s the studio album with all-new material, and typically it will be different from the last one, but a lot of the major HEALTH components will be there. Then, a year or so after the studio album comes another album with the word “disco” in the title. This will have remixes of the tracks from the studio album provided by other artists such as Crystal Castles, Toxic Avenger, Tobacco, and Purity Ring. The band followed this pattern for three albums, but for the fourth cycle, they decided to change it up. Rather than remixes, DISCO4 contains entirely new tracks created in collaboration with all the contributing artists. 
Written by: Continuous Thunder
When it comes to doom and sludge metal, I’m beginning to notice that a lot of the bands I tend to enjoy have very few members; often no more than three. I mean, think about it, bands like Sleep, Conan, BlackLab, and Bell Witch all have only two or three members. There are very few exceptions to this rule, and with their latest release, Norwegian duo Hymn stands to reinforce it even further. Yes, while their logo and album artwork might lead you to believe that they are a black metal band, Hymn is, indeed, a sludge metal band. Breach Us is their second full-length album and their first with Norwegian underground label Fysisk Format. It’s a relatively tight album for the genre with only four tracks clocking in at 38 minutes. But it becomes quickly apparent that this is a case of quality over quantity. And since there are only a few tracks, I think it’s best to break this album down by going over them one-by-one.  Written by: Continuous Thunder
Like a wizard, my wanderings often take me outside the gates of our little town. And while I always intend to return, the exact time of my reappearance is unknown, even to me. As I have once again found myself shuffling through the streets of this somnolent hamlet, I decided to prove to our dear Administrator that I am still a productive citizen by giving myself a relatively easy assignment. So let us take a look at what I believe to be one of the finest metalcore releases of the last decade. 2009 was a good year for The Devil Wears Prada. Metalcore was reaching its commercial peak and production techniques had finally caught up to more effectively capture the band’s specific take on the genre. They released their third album, With Roots Above and Branches Below, one that would perfectly capture that specific moment in the heavy music scene and solidify TDWP’s place in it. It was clearly the highest point in their career at the time. But little more than a year later, they would surpass Roots by leaps and bounds with only 5 tracks.
And now for something a little different, both in format and in sonic content! To adequately assess the latest offering from Slow Draw, two Village-dwellers--Continuous Thunder and The Administrator--took up the pen to express (complimentary) views, making for a somewhat rare double review 'round these parts. Without further ado:
Written by: Continuous Thunder
I’d like to start this with a bit of a disclaimer that I went into this album with no previous knowledge of Slow Draw or Stone Machine Electric (something I will be correcting immediately). I just saw the drone tag and I hit play. Drone can mean any number of things, but as this was a drone project of a member of a stoner band, I went in with expectations of good vibes and ultra-long riffs. What I didn’t expect was just how sparse the arrangements would be. Seriously, there’s little more than an electric piano, synths, and a guitar at any given moment on this album, and it lines up more with ambient music than drone. Sparsity in music can be a blessing or a curse. On one hand, it strips things down to their bare elements, removing any fluff or embellishments that distract from the core of the composition. On the other, it reveals just how strong or weak a composition actually is. I think back to the last album from Earth where they dialed back the fuzz and reverb and had to lean on their riffs more than the atmosphere. Gallo does the same thing but to an even greater extent. The guitars are (mostly) acoustic, buzzy synths only serve as a backdrop, and there is very little, if any, percussion. 
Written by: Continuous Thunder
I first got into heavy music in my mid-teens, and by “got into heavy music” I mean found music that not only appealed to me, but also bothered my parents. (What’s the point of heavy music if it doesn’t cause your parents genuine concern?) Anyway, way back in the mid-’00s, when I was just a distant rumble, the heavy music of choice for the youths of the day was screamo and metalcore. CD players and primitive iPods were full of the sounds of bands like Underoath, The Used, From First To Last, and The Devil Wears Prada. Jeans were tight, lips were pierced, and hair was long and dyed black. These genres and styles fell out of favor right around the end of the decade, but screamo has had a bit of an underground resurgence in recent years. Infant Island, in particular, are a relatively new band that may prove that the genre isn’t entirely dead. 
Written by: Continuous Thunder
I’m pulling something from the deep recesses of left field for you today. But when you’ve listened to as much music as I have, left field can provide welcome, refreshing, if sometimes puzzling breaks from the norm. (There’s a reason music critics praise experimental music so highly.) The harsh sounds of heavy metal’s more extreme sub-genres make them excellent sonic palettes for experimental artists. The best artists will recognize the similarities in different styles of music and bring them together, or they will contrast two very different genres that otherwise would never mix. The latter can be found in Fire-Toolz, who juxtaposes the clean, hazy, and nostalgic sounds of vaporwave with the harsh and oppressive sounds of black metal, noise, and other extreme genres. 
Written by: Continuous Thunder
In the world of heavy psych-rock, the majority of influences often come from the rock bands of the ‘70s, and if we’re honest, the modern bands more resemble hard rock and early heavy metal. Ultimately, this is understandable; modern heavy psych likely comes from a desire to trace heavy music back to its roots, and the origin of heavy metal is often, though not without contention, considered to be Black Sabbath’s 1970 self-titled debut. As such, many of the sounds and aesthetics emulated in heavy psych come from the time period immediately before and after that key event. You rarely hear modern bands going for the sound of the true psychedelic rock of the mid-’60s, and that’s why The Sonic Dawn is different. Hailing from Denmark, The Sonic Dawn completely embrace original psychedelic rock in ways few modern bands do, right down to the floral shirts and mustaches. 
Written by: Continuous Thunder
If you told me at the beginning of the year that one of the best sludge metal albums I’d hear in 2020 would come from two Japanese girls… I’d lean in closer and ask you to tell me more. I don’t know about you, but in my experience, when women are involved in making hard rock and metal on the doomy side of things, it tends to be pretty damn good more often than not. Some of my favorite albums from the past couple of years have been from bands like Windhand, Castle, and Electric Citizen. And this year we’ve already had great albums from Konvent and Lucifer. Well, get ready to add BlackLab to the pile. As mentioned, BlackLab is a doom and sludge duo from Japan, made up of guitarist and vocalist Yuko Morino and drummer Chia Shiraishi. Abyss is their second album. Being a duo in the doom metal world requires some sonic creativity to get your sound sufficiently heavy and thick. I’m not sure what witchcraft Morino has employed, but her guitar tone is freakin’ huge! And these riffs aren’t just fuzzy, they’re downright filthy. We’re talking trve slvdge, Houdini-era Melvins levels of nasty. Along with down-tuning, a sub-octave can be heard filling out the bottom end. I don’t know if Morino dubbed in a bass guitar or if she split her signal into an octave pedal, but there is certainly no lack of low end here. She’s also the kind of guitarist who uses feedback to her advantage. |
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We provide thoughtful reviews of music that is heavy, gloomy...and loud enough to wake us from slumber. Written by a highfalutin peasantry!
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