Post-Millennial's Guide To Metal (And Some Other Stuff)

I do not enjoy listening to bad music. Granted, “bad” is an objective term, and what some may find intolerable, I find beautiful and vice-versa. But regardless, the act of listening to music that one does not want to can be a challenge, and what a task it was listening to supergroup Life Right Now 's debut, Avant Garde . Melodic metalcore sure isn't my genre, and the tag "partycore" should not exist, yet Attila and many others have really rubbed in that stain enough to make it an actual subgenre. Look, I saw Of Mice & Men open for Slipknot years ago, and I had a quick two-week phase of repeatedly listening to 'Second & Sebring' and 'Bones Exposed', but we all go through that with some genre or another. However, I would rather listen to any of the worst cuts from that band than any “great” song from this album. Without having a single experience with this despicable genre other than "classic" melodic metalcore and 'About T...

Sweden's A Swarm of the Sun is a two-piece post-rock band that has been slept on by me this year. I initially heard their third and most recent full-length effort, The Woods , far earlier in the last 8 months, where I appreciated it greatly for its mix of melancholic and isolating atmospheric rock with churning post-metal riffs. However, similar to many January releases, it was lost to me in the back catalog of my massive spreadsheet of albums I push myself to listen to this year.  When I finally revisited this album, I was very glad to be doing so. Each of the three thirteen minute tracks on this release is a spiraling and grueling experience made up of a lonely and depressing descent into the band's mind. While not as direct in its approach to sadness as An Isolated Mind 's 2019 release (which we reviewed and can be read here ), it is similarly emotional to the listener's core. I'm Losing Myself is chaotic, abrasive and conflicting in sound, The Woods ...

Welcome to the very first EP Extravaganza!, where I, PMMetalGuide, will highlight three extended plays that have been released at some point this year and take a more brief--yet critical--view of releases from artists holding the highest record contracts to the penniless Bandcamp bedroom projects. This format is merely for experimentation currently, and the normal reviews are not going away. This week, an EP was released that I felt would not constitute a full review, so I had the brilliant idea to make a compilation piece of other EPs in order to create a full post. Now that logistics are out of the way, let's jump right into Episode 1: Ouroboros! Metaportal - Wormed Stereogum's 'The 40 Best Metal Albums of 2016' opened my eyes as a less seasoned metal listener. The vast amount of albums from bands I had not heard was breathtaking; so much quality metal music and I had missed basically all of it! As I was grinding through the list, I came across the br...

Perhaps more than any other style of music, metal and its adjacent subgenre bear a long and complicated history with religion, specifically Christianity. If you asked most people on the street what they knew about metal, the probable most common answer would include “noisy” and “Satan” or “The devil”. Historically many artists have been content in using cliché imagery and variations on the phrase “God is bad, Satan is good” for a simple yet effective denouement of Christ and his followers. Since the genre's inception, this has tended to be the case. With Bible Songs 1, New York-based math noise veterans The Austerity Program provides a more nuanced take on their critique of the Bible and the teachings it preaches. Each of the six tracks on Bible Songs 1 offers a modern retelling of some of the darker passages from the Old Testament. Justin Foley, vocalist and guitarist for the group, spent over three years reading the Bible in preparation for the bands most recent release...