BAD TASTE! LOUD RIFFS! TOO MUCH CUM!
Ensiferum
Ensiferum’s second album sharpens the production and delivers major anthems, though it lacks some of the debut’s raw surprise and cohesion.
No Cure
A vicious hardcore record whose physical intensity is stronger than its emotional and structural range.
Corrosion Of Conformity
Corrosion of Conformity sound grounded and heavy, but this sprawling record confuses accumulated mass with sustained purpose.
Crying Steel
Agent Steel delivers sturdy traditional metal, but its strongest hooks are separated by too much routine material.
End All
HAIL MIND combines sharp modern-metal production with energetic structural shifts, though several songs confuse constant motion with development.
Dimmu Borgir
Grand Serpent Rising offers scale without urgency, burying flashes of menace beneath an overextended and emotionally distant design.
Orga Mecha
Humanity.exe has flashes of conviction, but too much of its metallic attack lands without a clear identity.
Mork
Mork’s Monolitt carries old black-metal frost into a focused modern record, though its midsection occasionally settles into routine.
Crippled Black Phoenix
Crippled Black Phoenix turn a long runtime into a coherent descent, balancing progressive structure with genuine emotional pressure.
Converge
Converge remain emotionally exacting, but Hum of Hurt sometimes circles familiar devastation without finding a sharper new wound.
Vomitory
Vomitory turn thirty-seven minutes of death metal into a relentless, sharply written assault with hooks hiding inside every blast of violence.
Headhunter D.C.
Rise of the Damned delivers disciplined old-school death metal, but its strongest riffs are too often trapped inside predictable structural cycles.