Rating: 4/5
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‘StormDragon’ has a strange balance of traditional black metal production quality and inventive melodic modernity, utilizing both progressive harmony and a few heavy metal hooks.

Zebulon Pike, Morkobot, Animals as Leaders, and Abnormal Thought Patterns!

Patterns, yay! I think the end of the year is making me crave shorter albums and greater efficiency—so yes, expect more of these in threes. Here’s “Evermore Darkly”, “Carbon-Based Anatomy”, and “Dromomania” for intensifying your holiday season.

Reviews for “Time Never Lasts”, the eponymous Hammer Fight, and “Solar Plexus: Part One” …all more or less self-released, too!

Rating: 4/5
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Despite some choppy moments, “Escape Velocity” is a solid album with great production, and a loving homage to classic sci-fi/horror greatness. Metalheads, cyberpunks, and krautrockers alike can all find something to enjoy in Zombi.

Four Worlds Media releases Killing Joke (with all original members) and Thin Lizzy (with lots of newer dudes), while Niji Entertainment Group reacquaints us with The Elves (before they became Elf).

Rating: 4/5
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“True Traitor, True Whore” serves as a welcome comeback for America’s best one-man black metal project.

Rating: 4/5
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Experiencing Lord Silky firsthand is a lot like banging a cheap hooker: dirty, dangerous, and aided by alcohol.

Rating: 3.5/5
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Faces of Bayon could have gone further with the sound that they displayed on the first half—reminiscent of a more sinister Om, and sometimes a softer Black Sabbath. Perhaps for the follow-up to “Heart of the Fire”, they could consult other divine monuments like the moia statues of Easter Island.

Rating: 4/5
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Upon first listen, my imagination conjured colonial Massachusetts and myself as a member of the infamous Salem witch hunt.