Strangeways
AGE OF REASON

Vocalist Terry Brock can sing his ass off. I mean, seriously, he’s as good as it gets. He’s right there with the greats of Album Oriented Rock music as far as voice goes. Steve Perry, Jeff Scott Soto, Kevin Chalfant – pick a name that is synonymous with that genre, and you will find Terry Brock to be, at worst, of equal caliber to that singer. This just goes to show that no matter how good a singer is, he can’t turn a shitty album good. While Brock may sing as good as he has ever sang before here, ACT OF REASON is one of the most boring, tepid releases of the last year.

Meshuggah
KOLOSS

Meshuggah is a band that has a category all their own. I’ll call them Aspirincore. There’s only a few bands out there that play Aspirincore; Meshuggah, Dillinger Escape Plan, Converge, Candiria, probably a few more. With a term like Aspirincore, you might take that as an immediate negative, and you would be wrong. It’s just that these kinds of bands will give you a headache if you listen to them for too long at any point of any day. Their odd timings and even odder timing changes make them simply hard to follow along with.

A Sound Of Thunder
OUT OF THE DARKNESS

With each and every press release that comes down the pike with the term “female fronted metal band”, I find that title generally slides to the back of my “reviews” playlist. I won’t lie. What they are calling “female fronted metal” these days bores me. I hate Nightwish, and I hate the 2nd and 3rd tier bands spawned from Nightwish that much more. There’s a small handful of female fronted metal bands/acts that I truly like. Benedictum is probably the best. Doro is up there. I loved the first Otep album SEVAS TRA a lot. And yes, there’s the occasional tune from Arch Enemy that’s cool. That’s pretty much it. I’m sure there’s others that I have enjoyed from time to time, but not too many.

Donnie Vie
WRAPPED AROUND MY MIDDLE FINGER

I'm one of those guys that just worshipped the work Donnie Vie did with Enuff Z'nuff. Even now, where I've actually hosted shows where Vie was a drug addled embarrassment to the point where I regretted having the name of my radio show tied to his performance, I never stopped appreciating the enormous musical talent that Vie has. I have all those Enuff Z'nuff albums on my IPod and they get regular play in my ears.

Cannibal Corpse
TORTURE

Ahhh...another lullaby for my sickened soul! The masters of horrific death metal are back once again. Here's a surprise - this is heavy and fast! Stunning, right? Honestly, this is one I could probably have written without ever hearing a note of the album. It's heavy. It's fast. It kicks all kinds of ass if you are into this type of thing.