I want to preface this list by admitting a few things. I believe that this year is somewhat of a recovery from the non-stop awesome that was 2007. Last year was a prog year, and this year is clearly a metal one. There are many albums that I heard maybe once or twice and enjoyed a great deal but did not include on this list simply because I don’t know them well enough (Ihsahn, Testament, Arsis). There are other albums that I never got a hold of that probably would have made it on this list…

Before I begin reviewing the real substance of this album I’d like to tell you a bit about my road to becoming a fan of metal music. I, like many others in my age group, started off as an ardent fan of nu-metal. I gravitated towards the aggression that the genre hinted at (and in reflection never showed) and I was young enough to find the more overtly pop parts to be “emotional” and “relatable”. Five years or so later you can find me worshiping at the altar of Neurosis and offering human sacrifice to Celtic Frost in order to…

There is only one audible mistake on this album. Near the beginning of the first track, Blake Richardson botches one of his fills in a way that’s hardly noticeable to any one except a drum nerd such as myself. This says a lot about this cd/dvd collection, and about the band playing on it. Between the Buried and Me are flawless musicians. When they were starting up they routinely outplayed the bands they were opening for until they ended up on tour with the fathers of modern virtuoso themed metal, Dream Theater. If COLORS_Live does nothing else, it certainly…

Bleeding Through’s fourth album finds the band in the college stage of their coming of age story. Their previous three albums are still firmly cemented in their personality and sound, but they’ve taken the concepts from those records to the next level. They’ve also begun to indulge themselves in the more open-minded culture of their surroundings, most likely prompted by their roommates (they’d toured with bands ranging from AFI to Cult of Luna at this point in their career). What this means musically is that The Truth is very much the successor to This is Love, This is Murderous…

Aaron Turner is a very busy man. When he’s not writing, recording, and touring with post metal giants Isis, he can be found running a record label, doing commissioned album art for bands, and playing in side projects ranging from sludge to black metal. As such I’d imagine that the other members of Aaron’s main project often have oodles of free time on their hands. Nova Lux is most likely the result of these spans of down time in between Isis album cycles.

In many ways, MGR’s debut is exactly what you’d expect a solo project from a…

I'm going to start putting my reviews from www.metal-archives.com up here. Should be fun.

Mon 11 Aug – Thrash and Burn Tour

There was no Thrash, and Nothing was burned. But besides that, I had a ton of fun at this concert. because there were so many bands that played, I'm going to split .

The Good:
Abigail Williams put on a great show. I don't know who their new drummer is but he ruled, despite having absurd amounts of triggering on his kit. One of the problems with the early show is that the sound wasn't that great, so I couldn't really hear the guitars.

Arsis were even better, despite the sound still…

It's that time of year, and I'm starting to clean up my iTunes library. There's a ton of music that I either haven't listened to forever or just haven't listened to enough to justify my owning. I'm running through some of the albums that I've neglected for a test listen to see if I should keep it or not. So if you see anything on my last.fm page that seems extremely un like my taste, that's why.

(expect a ton of metalcore)