Hemelbestormer are a post-metal band from Belgium and this is their fourth album.
I rate Hemelbestormer highly, and you should too. 2016’s Aether, 2018’s A Ring of Blue Light, and 2021’s Collide & Merge are all massive slabs of instrumental post-metal/doom, and I heartily recommend them. The Radiant Veil is cut from the same cloth, providing the refined listener with 66 minutes of expressive and atmospheric music to explore. Continue reading “Hemelbestormer – The Radiant Veil (Review)”
This is the debut album from Belgian heavy rock band Killjoy.
Killjoy have an engaging sound that embraces a few different influences and fuses them into a very engaging form of modern rock. Across 34 minutes, elements of electronica, screamo, progressive rock, punk, and post-metal are all swallowed up and spat out in the form of seven charismatic tracks that hit the spot. Continue reading “Killjoy – Dream and Violence (Review)”
This is the third album from UK post-metal band The Grey.
The Grey blend post-metal with stoner doom riffery and post-rock grace. Kodok spends 42 minutes building a variety of sonic soundscapes that are immersive and absorbing. Stylistically, we’re in the territory of acts such as Pelican, Red Sparowes, Mountain Caller, Russian Circles, Bossk, and similar, at least as a rough starting point for Kodok. Continue reading “The Grey – Kodok (Review)”
This is the fourth album from UK post-metal band Telepathy.
What do we have here then? The promo blurb Pelagic Records recommends Telepathy for fans of Tool, Deftones, Russian Circles, and The Ocean, which, coupled with the fact that it’s on the ever-interesting Pelagic Records, meant I couldn’t pass this by without checking it out. Let’s get stuck in then. Continue reading “Telepathy – Transmissions (Review)”
This is the debut album from Scottish post-metal/rock band Beneath a Steel Sky.
The promo blurb recommends the 40-minute Cleave for fans of bands such as Isis, Cult of Luna, Russian Circles, Cave In, and Mogwai, which should give you a good starting point for Beneath a Steel Sky’s material. This is good stuff, and worth your attention. Continue reading “Beneath a Steel Sky – Cleave (Review)”
Another year, another Damnation Festival. As always, the organisers are to be commended for putting on one of the UK’s premier metal festivals. I’ve been coming here most years for almost two decades now, and I’ve never yet had a bad day.
There are three stages. Two smaller stages that clash with each other, and a main stage that clashes with nothing. Continue reading “Damnation Festival 2024 – BEC Arena, Manchester – 02/11/24 (Live Review)”
This is the debut album from Australian post-rock/drone band Black Aleph.
Here we have a compelling work of post-rock and drone, one that’s enriched with doom elements and has a dark atmospheric weight that’s enthralling. Now, with that sort of description you might be expecting a monstrous record of sprawling song lengths from Black Aleph, but you’d be mistaken, as Apsides is a mere 29 minutes long. Continue reading “Black Aleph – Apsides (Review)”
This is the second album from Pijn, a post-rock/metal band from the UK.
From Low Beams of Hope is a four-track, 45-minute affair that merges elements of post-rock, post-metal, ambient, drone, and doom into an expressive whole. It’s an instrumental release, and should find great appeal with fans of acts such as Mogwai, Briqueville, Explosions in the Sky, Years of Rice & Salt, A Burial at Sea, Russian Circles, Red Sparowes, Pelican, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, etc. Continue reading “Pijn – From Low Beams of Hope (Review)”
This is the fifth album from Canadian post-metal/sludge band Sumac, (who boast current and ex-members of bands such as Baptists, Genghis Tron, Isis, Old Man Gloom, Russian Circles, and These Arms Are Snakes in their ranks).
It’s been a while since I caught up with Sumac – 2018’s collaboration with Keijo Haino in fact, as well as their full length from the same year, Love in Shadow. I even had the privilege of catching them live in 2019. Apparently they also had an album out in 2020 called May You Be Held, which I somehow completely missed, which is a shame. All of which brings us to the immense 76 minutes of material on The Healer. Continue reading “Sumac – The Healer (Review)”
This is the debut album from UK sludge/post-metal band Urzah.
The Scorching Gaze contains 42 minutes of material delivered in a charismatic hybrid metallic style. Urzah combine elements of sludge, post-metal, progressive metal, doom, and hardcore/metalcore into an exemplar of heaviness that feels timeless. Continue reading “Urzah – The Scorching Gaze (Review)”
Wonderbox Metal 