Hull -- 'Sole Lord' [review]

Hull - Sole Lord
The End Records (5/26/09)
Metal

Following in the footsteps of Crowbar, Mastodon and Down, with Sole Lord, Hull has crafted a heavy, foreboding slab of down-tuned metallic bliss. The entire album is sludgy, crushing and punishing.

From end to end, the band just grinds along at such a deliberate pace, drifting from the heavy-as-hell grind of metal to an almost ethereal nonchalance in a couple of spots. It could almost give you an anxiety attack waiting to hear what gear they'll shift into next.

Candlebox -- 'Alive in Seattle' [review]

Candlebox - Alive in Seattle
Image Entertainment (9/2/08)
Hard rock

Recorded in 2006, Alive in Seattle captures a band with something to prove. After more than a few years under the radar, Candlebox regrouped for this tour, and the ensuing energy is through the roof (no doubt aided by the hometown crowd).

The set opens with raucous versions of “Arrow” and “Simple Lessons”, and the electric atmosphere is tangible. Even when the band slows it down a little with “Change”, the crowd overpowers the band during the chorus in which you can’t help but smile for Candlebox, knowing so many fans are still out there.

The band tears through a bunch of hits and lesser-known tracks over the next hour. “A Stone’s Throw Away” and “Understanding” sound great, but the band really shines on the melancholic “Blossom” (the crowd is great on this track, too). And they just destroy “Best Friend”—already one of the group’s fastest, heaviest songs, bludgeoning the crowd with it (in a good way), with so much energy that Kevin Martin almost struggles to keep up with the vocals.

But it’s the hits that shine brightest here. The second the tell-tale opening riff of “You” hits, you can feel the energy shift in the room. The guitar work, which was always good on the studio version, is stellar toward the end of the song as everything starts to derail. Then, closing out the set, an intense rendition of “Far Behind” and a welcome surprise encore of “Cover Me”.

While a fair share of forgettable live albums have been released over the past decade or so, Alive in Seattle impresses in every way. The band sounds great, the set list has a nice mix from the band’s first three albums and the energy is phenomenal throughout. In addition, the release features a DVD of the set, including “Rain”, which doesn't appear on the CD.

First a fantastic new album (Into the Sun) and now a great live album—2008 is shaping up to be a great year for Candlebox.

PlayRadioPlay -- 'Texas' [review]

PlayRadioPlay! - Texas
Island Records (03/18/08)
Pop / Rock / Alternative / Electronic

PlayRadioPlay! falls into that genre of music that merges hook-filled, pop-ish, alternative music (say, mellower Saves the Day or maybe Straylight Run) with a decidedly electronic background of beats and melody, to create this mish-mash of music that is as much about atmosphere and experience as it is about content (think Idiot Pilot or Postal Service and the like).

The results are pretty enjoyable. Not completely outstanding, but enough to hook you in and entertain. The melodies are simple and catchy, the lyrics are just quirky enough that you’re captivated without rolling your eyes and the vocals are actually the high point of the entire package. Daniel Hunter, who alone initially made up the band—though he has put together a full band for touring, and I did notice, I believe, a female vox in a couple of spots on the album—oozes this faux innocence in his delivery, but is commanding enough to drive each song on the strength of his vocals, meshing with the music.

Eyes Set to Kill -- 'The World Outside' [review]

Eyes Set to Kill - The World Outside
Break Silence Records (6/2/09)
Metalcore / Post-hardcore

Music reviewers have taken the idea of the sophomore album and turned it into a tired cliché over the past decade or so, as if a band’s follow-up album could make or break a promising career. How many acts have you read about, “avoiding the sophomore slump,” only to burn out and fade away?

The reality is that any album could make or break a band. The good ones continue to exceed from project to project. The great ones build up a strong enough fanbase so that, when the time comes to shift outside the comfort zone, a less than stellar release won’t completely destroy the goodwill that took years to stockpile.

Eyes Set to Kill exploded out of the gates in 2008 with Reach, a fun little album that saw the band melding rock, metal, hardcore and melody into a seething beast of emotion. And the biggest thing the album had going for it was the raw passion that each band member brought to the table. There was this slight air of inexperience hovering throughout the proceedings that brought an added sense of urgency to each song.

Now, just a year and a half (or thereabout) since that full-length debut, Eyes Set to Kill returns with a vengeance. One wouldn’t think so much could change in that short amount of time, but on The World Outside the band hits each peak, each emotional high, each beat with such precision that you’d think this was its fifth or sixth album. Bands this young aren’t supposed to sound this good, are they?

This time around, Eyes Set to Kill have utilized a more balanced use of the melodic female vocals balanced out with the harsher, screamed male vocals. The listener is almost taken aback as album opener “Heights” unfolds without singer Alexia Rodriguez’s familiar tones being front and center.

It would appear that the band front-loaded this album with the more aggressive material, as the aforementioned “Heights”, “Hourglass” and “Deadly Weapons” show the band still drawing inspiration from the likes of Atreyu and Avenged Sevenfold, at least in some regards.

After that hard-hitting trio, the band flexes their genre-bending muscle, first with the haunting, piano-based “Interlude”, which bleeds into the title track. (The use of a piano interlude shows up again, later, on “The Hollow Pt. 1”.)

The beauty of the music that Eyes Set to Kill are beginning to craft is in the juxtaposition of the various elements continues to mature. Whether it’s the dual-vocal approach, the quieter piano moments sandwiched between stutter-stop riffing and thunderous groove, or when the parts pull into one mass attack (executed to perfection on “The Hollow”), the band never seems to get lost or overdo it with the individual elements.

And the most striking improvement over Reach is the lyrical content hidden on The World Outside. The band bares its collective soul, so to speak, on the album’s strongest tracks, to great effect. From the title-track’s homage to life on the stage (“The world outside; its changing me, changing me; to whom I’m afraid of / I can’t confide in anything”), to tales of broken love on “Wake Me Up” (“It’s not my fault that I dug a grave so deep / Lying at the bottom, and I’m looking up; She’s all I see”), to the crushing letter to an absent father on album closer “Come Home” ("There’s never an ounce that I breathe without thinking about who I could have been with you").

Eyes Set to Kill had a hit with Reach. So make it two-for-two with The World Outside, which is easily one of the year’s best...

Odium -- 'At The Bottom' [review]

Odium - At the Bottom
Year of the Sun Records (3/17/09)
Metal

Odium has taken the blueprint of melodic metal from Sweden’s In Flames and tempered the attack with a hint of Killswitch Engage to create a sort of Canadian leviathan. The result is At the Bottom, an album chock-full of ambition even if the band ultimately chooses emulation over innovation.

That’s not to say there isn’t a hell of a lot on this album to satiate metal-heads the world over. Every song is a brutal dose of metal, filled with melodic riffs with a little synth or keyboard popping up on the rare occasion.

Odium is at its best when the band is just tearing through songs, like the blistering "Population Zero" or album opener "Oblivion's Gates", where each song is just turgid with meaty riffs, thunderous double-bass and blast beats, and a nice mix of growling, demonic vocals with the melodic, clean reprieves. (The band does a nice job with this recipe on the slower-paced title-track, too.)

That’s pretty much the approach Odium takes with each song, sometimes going a little heavier (“Frailty” or the nearly seven-minute “Need to Exist”) or more melodic (“The Failure” or the syrupy album closer “The Abyss Stared Back”). In a rare misfire, the band seems to channel Chevelle on “Serenity’s End”, opting for almost completely clean vocals. At least tracks like “It Goes Cold” or “Lifting the Veil” have a built-in sense of urgency to them.

Canada is turning into a breeding ground for solid metal outfits (just look at label mates Cradle to Grave or Misguided Aggression); If Odium is able to break out and reach a wider audience, the band could really make a mark on the scene and probably grow a lot, too.

Black Label Society -- 'Skullage' CD/DVD [review]

Black Label Society - Skullage
Eagle Records (4/21/09)
Metal

Skullage is the much-warranted career retrospective for one of metal’s living guitar gods, Zakk Wylde. The set offers up a glimpse of 12 years of recording; from the once-obscure Pride and Glory days (Wylde’s first band which recorded its only album in 1994) all the way through to BLS’s 2006 release Shot to Hell, there’s a little bit of everything on here.

Presented in chronological order, the album is a compendium of riffs, metal anthems and melancholic bliss. It opens with Pride and Glory’s “Machine Gun Man” and immediately shifts gears into “Dead As Yesterday” (off Wylde’s solo offering Book of Shadows, which featured material much different from the usual BLS fair).

It’s a good set, to be sure, though it does seem to lean a little heavily on the later, more popular releases—three songs from The Blessed Hellride (“Doomsday Jesus”, “Stillborn” and “Won’t Find it Here”) and Mafia (“In This River”, “Fire it Up” and “Suicide Messiah”)—and only touches on the oft-overlooked 1919 Eternal (“Bleed for Me”) or the lesser-received Shot to Hell (“New Religion”). Skipped entirely is the acoustic Hangover Music, Vol. 6 and the BLS debut Sonic Brew. However, the acoustic set “Slightly Amped”, recorded back on the Blessed Hellride promotional tour, is on here, and it does feature a killer version of “Spoke in the Wheel” (off the aforementioned Sonic Brew) so... perhaps that was a two-birds-one-stone type of deal.

Skullage is also available with a DVD set, which features a bunch of live footage, a handful of music videos, the aforementioned “Slightly Amped” set, and a half-hour piece with Wylde working out, goofing off, jamming and talking about the inspiration for some of his songs. Of note is an insane version of "Spoke in the Wheel" (which looks like it was recorded on the Mafia tour), the "In This River" video and some fun footage of Wylde messing around with the late Dimebag Darrell (talking about the "In This River" video and inspiration during an interview).

The set, on the whole, is killer, and metal fans really can’t miss with Wylde, but die-hards will miss a couple of things. With what was presented on the accompanying DVD, it would have been easy to omit songs like “Fire it Up” or “Won’t Find it Here” to include stuff like “Battering Ram”, Wylde’s sick version of “America the Beautiful”, his insane cover of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “I Never Dreamed” or another track off of Book of Shadows for the CD side of things.

Nonetheless, Skullage is a must-have for BLS fans and metal-heads in general.

Misguided Aggression -- 'Hatchala' [review]

Misguided Aggression - Hatchala
Year of the Sun Records (3/17/09)
Metal

Misguided Aggression may just be the Great White North’s answer to Lamb of God. On Hatchala, the Ontario quintet serves up a slab of brutal, in-your-face, fist-pumping metal.

Eight tracks clocking in at just over 26 minutes might lead one to think that te band took a single-minded approach to the recording, offering up quick blasts of metal with little variation. Such is not the case. Instead, Misguided Aggression uses the chug-a-chug template and folds in elements of groove, clean vocal melodies, slight hints of hardcore (think Unearth) and prog-based breakdowns (earning the band comparisons to Meshuggah). (And you can blame the short running time on a couple of instrumental interludes, the opening title track and “The Palamnaeusus Fulvipes”, which acts like a coda for the preceding track more than a stand-alone song.)

There are crushing head-bangers (“Pigs in the Market” and “Our Kingdom Come”) and more expansive, complex opuses, too (the systematic dirge of “Mustard Gas & Roses” which features one of the most blood-curdling howls this listener has heard in some time, and “Flesh to Gold”).

But the track that truly stands out from the pack, and one that will probably ultimately be one of the best metal anthems of the year, is “Faces of Abomination”. The track utilizes the best of what Misguided Aggression has to offer: sick breakdowns, unbridled groove, thick riffs and glorious howls. The song marks the only time the band opts to throw in the slightest clean, melodic vocals (dropped way down in the mix), and also features this nice little trick of slowing the song down to an almost-standstill, adding to its urgent feel.

At 26 minutes, the whole trip is over far too soon, and you’ll soon find yourself reaching for the repeat button. Bands like this sometimes like to overstay their welcome, but Misguided Aggression should have no fear with exploring this metallic soundscape again and again. Highest recommendation to fans of straight-ahead metal.