Rating: 5/5
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Should I even allow myself to post this review? I have so completely fallen in love with the fifth album from the San Franciscan sextet, it may be difficult to objectively criticize. The band was off my radar until last year, when Metal Blade scooped them up and decided to reissue their last four albums. Brad Barratt tackled all of those, so I decided to cruise down “17th Street” myself.

Rating: 5/5
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Black is the new black. The darkness seeps and seethes through modern metal, and I welcome it. Intrigued by bands adept at genre-bending, they must be sought. In my experience, bands named after birds are largely instrumental—like Pelican or Red Sparowes—but Cormorant is latest on my list, and barely sound like either of those. They originally struck me as similar to Seattle’s Lesbian, but truly live in their own atmosphere.

Through poisoning and perseverance, MetalMattLongo wrenches two reviews from France.

Rating: 5/5
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Does “Fables of the Sleepless Empire” hold up to “In a Flesh Aquarium”, a nigh perfect opus? I like the guitar and violin work better, though the production feels slightly weaker or overdone in parts, but the compositions are quirky, complex and ultimately awe-inspiring. The answer: yes, they still hold the torch.

Rating: 5/5
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If you are strictly a metalhead, I cannot recommend this album to you. However, if you have a more open mind to stuff that lacks any and all aggression, I would, at the very least, give this record a chance. After all, I like it enough to give it my first 5/5 of 2011. Don’t be surprised if it ends up high on my year-end list.

Rating: 5/5
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At its core, Decapitated is still a brutal, in-your-face explosion of death metal, but “Carnival is Forever” offers more—a solemn nod to the past and a fierce charge forward for the reformed group. I think Vitek would be proud of his big brother.

It took a damned month, but I finally gathered my thoughts on the 30th Anniversary Ozzy reissues. They still feel kinda scattered, but here nonetheless.

Rating: 5/5
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“The Wretch” is an album that people will be talking about for the next 20 years and should surely inspire the young hellions of today to carry the mantle.

Rating: 5/5
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This is the purpose for which rock ’n’roll was intended. Not to be background music in the local Target or to be recited soullessly by an army of never-ending American Idol contestants, but to remind us of what visceral chaos lives just below the surface of our pristine, orderly world.

Rating: 5/5
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Indeed, the doomed shall stride boldly and carry big axes! It doesn’t take 100 eyes to see that.