Review: MACHINE HEAD – ‘Catharsis’ [Official Video + Track Stream]

 

Throughout their 24 year career, the modern metal colossus that is Machine Head have seen their fair amount of love, hate and skepticism. A band who change with the times, not necessarily with the trends, they have shown especially interesting senses of progression most recently through adding string sections, choral chants and a bigger sense of scope to their crushing brand of metal. Fans have been kept on their toes in other words and the Machine Head brand is not easily painted into a corner. So when the band’s new record, ‘Catharsis’, was unveiled and its mission statement was to be a major statement for rock & metal music in 2018, one can’t help but let curiosity take over and see what the Cali boys have concocted this time. ‘Catharsis’ was recorded with Zack Ohren (Fallujah, All Shall Perish) at Sharkbite Studios in Oakland, California and will be released via Nuclear Blast on January 26th, 2018.

 

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Review: ASKING ALEXANDRIA – ‘S/T’ [Offical Video]

“I might be lonely, but I ain’t alone here, so I keep on pushing the limits of what makes me” is one of the lines Asking Alexandria vocalist Danny Worsnop belts in the kick-off of the band’s fifth, and self-titled album’s opening track; “Alone In A Room”. It’s also the most definitive line of the entire record in that it describes Danny’s willingness to continue to expand himself in multiple unexpected directions as a musician. For a man who has dabbled in sonic equivalents of both love letters to the 80’s glam rock he grew up adoring and tell-all emotional country, it might come as a bit of or maybe no shock at all that he opens this record with a swaying vocal style that recalls more Usher and less Sammy Hagar. And if you think that’s his lone hat trick on this excursion, you are quite mistaken. Continue reading