Eagle Twin - The Thundering Heard

Since their debut full-length The Unkindness of Crows in 2009, Eagle Twin has quietly been one of my favorite bands.  ...Crows was like nothing I had ever heard when it came out; the band's shamanistic take on doom is weird and adventurous in a way that too little music is.  That weirdness was somehow pushed even further on The Feather Tipped the Serpent's Scale, the band's 2012 follow up, resulting in an album that still rewards listens with the discovery of something new.  Now, six years later, Eagle Twin has returned with The Thundering Heard (Songs of Hoof and Horn); after such a lengthy slumber, can Eagle Twin muster the same thundering weirdness that made them so hypnotically intoxicating?

Neolithic - Cult of Ignorance EP/The Elephant Parallax - Loam & Sky

I guess right off the bat it would be good to tell you that there really isn't any through-line between the two releases I'm reviewing today.  Both are EPs, sure, and I had never heard of either band before listening to these two albums, but outside of that, the music contained within these EPs couldn't be more different.  But the Durfette and I just moved from Chicago to Idaho, and I've found myself going back and forth between these two releases while unpacking and building compost bins, so I decided to review them together.  The Elephant Parallax is a progressive trio out of LA, and Loam & Sky is their third release following a demo and EP.  Neolithic is a death metal/hardcore quintet out of Baltimore.  Different coasts, different sounds, similar amazing listening experiences... let's do this shit!

Judas Priest - Firepower

The following is my personal journey with Judas Priest from beginning of fandom to today. I found the path toward Firepower to be a therapeutic journey seeing as Judas Priest is one of the bands most responsible for who I am as a music listener today. So here goes nothing.

Conjurer - Mire

The "post-" genre seems to have taken on a life of it's own in the past few years.  When I began listening to metal intently over a decade ago, it felt like "post-metal" was reserved for living legends Neurosis and ISIS (RIP), and then "post-hardcore" was bandied about for bands like Thrice and Thursday.  Now? It seems like everything new is getting "post-"ed.  It feels like a catch-all of sorts, as though when a band has a sound that doesn't fit neatly into a predefined genre, it becomes "post-whatever genre."  I bring this up because in listening to and reviewing Mire, the debut full-length by the UK's Conjurer, I am incredibly tempted to label the band post-something, and I feel that doing so would take away from the magnificence of this album.

Exclusive Interview - Tommy Rogers (Between the Buried and Me)

Today marks the release of Between the Buried and Me's eighth studio album, Automata I. As is reflected in our review of it that was posted earlier this week, Automata is an exclamation point on an already decorated career. With this new release, the band remains steadfast in their pattern of never staying in one place stylistically. Amidst all of the new album buzz, I was lucky enough to catch a few words with lead vocalist/keyboardist Tommy Rogers.

Read the interview after the break!

Between the Buried and Me - Automata I

 In the world of contemporary progressive metal, there are few names bigger than Between the Buried and Me. Ever since 2005's Alaska, the band's sound has continued to evolve by pushing itself into more ambitious directions. Their previous effort, Coma Ecliptic, took a more operatic approach, forcing more of their experimental quirkiness to the forefront. And while it was an enjoyable listen, it doesn't hold a candle to the material from Colors through Future Sequence. With Coma not having delivered a track that could stand toe to toe with the likes of "White Walls", "Swim to the Moon", or "Silent Flight Parliament", my expectations for the band's material moving forward were certainly tempered. By taking the hard-hitting elements of their earlier material and weaving it together with the discernable effort to not remain pidgeon-holed, Automata's first half acts as a bridging of two very distinct phases of their career.