Darkest Hour – Page 3 – Wonderbox Metal

Fathoms – Lives Lived (Review)

Fathoms are from the UK and play Metallic Hardcore. This is their début album.

The band play modern Metalcore with gruff, angry vocals and plenty of beatdown guitars.

The songs feature twisting, distorted guitars that are halfway between Djent and Hardcore, with more Metal influences sneaking into the mix on occasion.

It’s passionately played and delivered, and none could fault the band’s convictions. This comes across in the songs and the impressions they make.

The heavy riffs are performed with energy and enthusiasm. They seem to thunder out of the speakers and land causing furious damage.

Lives Lived is not all brutal riffs and angry intent though. The band do flirt with a melodic edge sometimes, and the shouted vocals even give way to some more melodic cleans on occasion. These moments are kept relatively infrequent however; enough to make an impact when they are used but not enough to become commonplace or boring.

Incorporating aspects of bands like Dead to Fall, Martyr AD, Martyr Defiled and Darkest Hour, Fathoms have created a very enjoyable début release that hits the spot like a lot of US Metalcore did in the mid-00s, before the style became mired in mediocrity and generic copying.

Highly recommended.

Iron Reagan – The Tyranny of Will (Review)

Iron Reagan are from the US and this is their second album. They play Metallic Crossover and feature members of bands such as Municipal Waste, Darkest Hour and Cannabis Corpse.

I have enjoyed Iron Reagan’s previous work so I was expecting good things from this album. It doesn’t disappoint.

Iron Reagan play Hardcore and Thrash mixed in a blender and shat out at escape velocity. It’s highly aggressive and kicks your door down looking for a scrap. There’s no hiding.

The songs are short, heavy and usually exceedingly violent. Iron Reagan have a nice malevolent streak to some of their riffs that keeps things gritty.

The band play tight and fast, and some short, sharp guitar solos are also included in their spiky package.

Vocally the shouts straddle that rarely seen line where you can imagine them being transposed into either an 80’s Thrash band or an 80’s Hardcore band with equal ease. They inhabit both worlds flawlessly and effectively represent both.

A quality album. 24 blasts of anarchy in just under 32 minutes. Play loud.

Ilsa – Intoxicantations (Review)

Well, isn’t this the proverbial hidden gem. Filthy, dirty sludge Metal with elements of thrash and death ‘n’ roll mixed in. Quite simply this is brilliant.

The overall feelings and structures of the songs are composed in such a way that this is a very complete album. Each song easily identifiable from the rest and together forming one of the most enjoyable albums I’ve listened to in a while. I haven’t been able to stop listening to this the last few days.

Very insipid; the riffs crawl their way into your subconscious and refuse to dislodge. The production miraculously manages to sound both dirty and clear at the same time. The guitar tone in particular is strong and powerful. Crushing in fact.

Each track has its own character and personality, comprising of top-shelf riffs and attitude. There is no filler here; each song is its own entity and more than capable of standing on its own merits.

Snarling, vicious vocals accompany the metallic mayhem and perfectly suit the musical vision of the rest of the band. As a reference point they are sometimes reminiscent of the Darkest Hour vocalist and have the same level of passion and legibility. The singer of Ilsa gives an excellent performance in all ways.

This album is first-rate. If you are a fan of metallic sludge and like plenty of depth and longevity in your music then this will certainly be a must for you. So far, alongside the first album by Morality Crisis, this is a very strong contender for album of the year as far as I’m concerned.