This is the fourth album from US metallic hardcore band Turian.
Blood Quantum Blues contains 38 minutes of music that mixes together punk, metal, and hardcore, with electronics and progressive elements thrown in for extra flavour and texture. Turian have produced an album that rages and snarls, but does so with skill and ability. Continue reading “Turian – Blood Quantum Blues (Review)”
Protosequence are a Canadian technical death metal band and this is their debut album.
Bestiary contains 33 minutes of technical mayhem that’s unusually variegated. After enjoying Protosequence’s 2020 EP A Blunt Description of Something Obscene I was looking forward to hearing this, and it has not disappointed. Quite the opposite in fact. Continue reading “Protosequence – Bestiary (Review)”
Bear are a progressive hardcore/metal band from Belgium and this is their fifth album.
When the promo blurb states that an album is recommended for fans of bands such as Dillinger Escape Plan, Botch, and Norma Jean, how can you not check it out? Besides, I’m already a fan of Bear’s work, as both 2017’s /// and 2020’s Propaganda were very enjoyable slabs of angular heaviness. Continue reading “Bear – Vanta (Review)”
Kehlvin are a progressive hardcore band from Switzerland and this is their third album.
Holistic Dreams contains 35 minutes of material. Kehlvin’s style is a progressive form of hardcore that also has post-hardcore and sludge metal flavours in it. For lack of a better description, imagine a mix of Knut, The Dillinger Escape Plan, and Mastodon, and that will give you a rough starting point for Kehlvin’s sound. Continue reading “Kehlvin – Holistic Dreams (Review)”
Cult Leader are a progressive hardcore/crust band from the US and this is their second album.
A Patient Man gives us 48 minutes of dense, chaotic violence and intensity, but also much more than this. Continue reading “Cult Leader – A Patient Man (Review)”
This is the second album from Finnish hardcore band New Waters.
Experience is suitably titled, leading the listener on an…ahem…experience, lasting 36 minutes. As you travel through the band’s internally-forged landscapes, you get to…ahem…experience their charismatic and aggressive form of hardcore. It’s definitely an…ahem…experience. Continue reading “New Waters – Experience (Review)”
As We Draw are from France and this is their second album.
As We Draw have developed over the years from a noisy Hardcore band to their current incarnation, which is a combination of Post-Hardcore and Post-Metal. They still have the heavy, angry side to their sound but this has become more expansive and the songs on this album are more varied and atmospheric than ever before.
Their longest song opens the album and it’s a good microcosm for the album as a whole. Aggressive screams ring out over Post-Hardcore music that develops over time to create an angular piece with both aggression and restraint, heaviness and light.
The band appear to have set out to challenge themselves and the listener on this album by creating dark, heavy music that’s no longer confined to the older restrictions that they used to place on themselves by sticking to a more restrained genre than the more woolly one they now work in. Whether you term their music Post-Hardcore, Post-Metal, Progressive Hardcore or whatever, the key thing is that the band have become bolder, bigger and better because of it.
The songs on this album are a joy to listen to and they are the sound of a band embracing their potential and living up to it remarkably. The older As We Draw material was always very good but Mirages is something else. The band truly have taken themselves up to an entirely new level.
This is not to say, of course, that fans of their old material will find this album unrecognisable. Far from it. They’re still the same band; it’s just that now they have turned a corner, so to speak, and they’ve become more than they once were. The foundations that they laid with their previous work have been built on, added to and enhanced. Mirages is the resulting creation and its time is now.
Impressive and far reaching. Fans of stand-out heavy music take note.
Wonderbox Metal 