heavy metal
Guy Oddy
Rapper, actor and occasional media celebrity, Ice-T’s heavy metal band, Body Count have been around since the early ‘90s and have turned out some fine albums along the way – most notably their self-titled debut and 2014’s Manslaughter. Unfortunately, their latest offering, Merciless is unlikely to be viewed as a career high point, as it sees Ice and his buddies hit a musical dead end with some considerable force.At its best, Body Count’s sound is loud, antagonistic and seriously heavy but gritty and with a sly sense of humour that frequently leans into machismo without lurching into idiocy. Read more ...
Tom Carr
The return of Linkin Park has been a long, winding path. The seven years since Chester Bennington's passing have swirled with speculation over what the long term future for the California nu-metal icons would look like.The picture suddenly became clear in September as a 100-day countdown ended (after mysteriously counting back up for another week), revealing a five-hour livestreamed event confirming the bands return, new vocalist, new drummer and new album: From Zero, the band's eighth overall.With the introduction of Emily Armstrong as a new vocalist, an air of contention has followed since Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The music of Brit alt-rocker Cassy Brooking, AKA Cassyette, comes from the emo school of pop-metal. Her 2021 debut single was, appropriately, called “Dear Goth”, she’s much-hyped by Kerrang, and has been tour support for both Bring Me the Horizon and My Chemical Romance. All these are apt reference points for the music on her debut album which is feisty, occasionally spicy, and – contradictorily – very precisely produced to suggest a gnarly aesthetic.The songs flip about between crunchy sampledelic wodges of metal riffage, Prodigy-ish electronic hammering, and howled, but polished vocal angst Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Ever since their 2013 album Now What?! hard rock veterans Deep Purple have been on a roll, both creatively and commercially. They’ve seemed a revitalised force. An album of covers aside, their output since has also sold/streamed multitudes. Not bad for a unit that’s been going for 56 years, with a stable line-up for well over 30. Their latest album is more enjoyable and feistier than cynics might imagine. It’s business as usual, of course, but Deep Purple wear their heritage with aplomb.Deep Purple, at their best, have always combined widdly guitars and hefty riffs with a pop sensibility, Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Orange Goblin have been flying the flag for exuberant biker rock for the best part of a generation. Yet, somewhat incredibly, their latest and 10th album, Science Not Fiction may come to be viewed as a career high for these hard rock lifers.Coming on like the soundtrack to a thundering berserker raid, Orange Goblin’s incendiary riffing and boisterous grooves tip a hat to iconic rockers like Motörhead or Venom at their most rabble rousing with man mountain and vocalist Ben Ward leading the charge. Indeed, while Science Not Fiction may not be especially original or inventive, it’s seriously Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Towards the end of the encore, Deap Vally bring on their friend Solon Bixler. Frontwoman Lindsey Troy hands him her guitar. Despite this being their farewell tour, these two songs, she tells us, are new. The duo, now briefly a trio, go ballistic, a punk rock explosion ensues. Drummer Julie Edwards attacks her kit like Animal from The Muppets, Troy stomps like a glam rock loon before rolling about the floor, and Bixler scissor-kicks his way to stand aloft the bass drum.They’re burning with the right stuff. They have been all night.If life was fair, which we all know it isn’t, this month I’d be Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Skirting along the peripheries of doom metal, unbeknownst to almost everyone, there existed a band called Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard. Hailing from Wrexham, Wales, they created four albums that stand alone in their originality, combining massively bonged-out sludge-riffing with Cocteau-Twins-ish vocalising and Seventies space rock vibes.They sounded magnificently like no-one else. Now their lead singer, Jessica Ball, reappears with her new band, EYE. The good news is that they righteously match and expand on what came before. MWWB, as their name was eventually abbreviated to, are now on Read more ...
Ellie Roberts
Sum 41 honour their 27-year career with Heaven :x: Hell, a 20-track double album, due to be their final, without a single skip. Harking back to their widely acclaimed debut All Killer No Filler, the album that gave us “Fat Lip” and “In Too Deep”, the band have maintained their commitment to making every track count with Heaven :x: Hell.“Waiting On a Twist of Fate” opens Heaven with as much energy as you can cram into 2 minutes and 46 seconds, and the early-2000s Pop Punk summer nostalgia does not falter in the 19 tracks that follow. Although Hell aims to dive deeper into heavy metal than Pop Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Back in 2013, fuzz-heavy space cadets the Telescopes headed off to Berlin and then back to Leeds to record an album of intoxicating tunes that were written as they were recorded while relying on “the heightened instinct of being entirely in the now”. However, things came to a grinding halt due to a crashed hard-drive and the project was unfortunately abandoned.Ten years later, some long-forgotten back-up recordings of the sessions turned up and the band’s main man Stephen Lawrie decided to dust down and polish up seven of the original tracks of raw and trippy sounds for release as Growing Read more ...
Joe Muggs
It seems like time flows differently for J Mascis. He’s now not far off 60, it’s 40 years since he founded Dinosaur Jr, and he’s been involved in untold musical project from the most rarefied of abstract psychedelia to guesting with Lemonheads and Nirvana, but within his own core output he is tapped into exactly the same wellspring as he was all those years ago.And I mean exactly. His solo material might be mellower than Dinosaur Jr on the whole, but nonetheless, play any of these songs next to more low key early Dinosaur classics like 1985’s “Repulsion” or 1987’s “The Lung” to an unfamiliar Read more ...
Tom Carr
Where 2022 threw a personal surprise Album of the Year with Maggie Roger’s dancey indie-folk blend on Surrender, 2023 was more of a return to business, with a range of my regular listens all popping up with solid-to-supreme listens.From Queens of the Stone Age’s dark-witted return with In Times New Roman, to Enter Shikari and Spiritbox each both surpassing their solid pandemic releases with A Kiss for The Whole World and The Fear of Fear EP respectively – though I had enjoyed the new delights from Mitski and Hozier, in the end it was the familiar faces that carried me through. Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Welcome to the annual seasonal one-off, in which theartsdesk on Vinyl dives into festive releases, as well as the boxsets and reissues that will make fine presents. Grab a glass of something and dive in!CHRISTMAS VINYL OF THE MONTHVarious Stax Christmas (Craft)Who’s going to argue with a new collection featuring Stax artists tackling festive fare, mostly dating from the late 1960s and early Seventies? That it features a previously unreleased and impassioned version of “Blue Christmas” by Carla Thomas, as well as an alternate take of Otis Redding’s “Merry Christmas Baby” only adds to the Read more ...