Fast, brutal Black Metal from Finland. Rarely do you hear a Black Metal band so relentless in barbaric attack, yet still retain a memorable edge. Expect no gimmicks, this is pure Old School hellfire-raining-from-the-sky Black Metal with bleak melodies at breakneck speed. Very similar to old Dark Funeral, but a bit more primal. The production is just right. Not over-polished, but far from tin can restraints. Certainly nothing you haven’t heard before, but definitely something you’ll appreciate for all the same reasons.

Blinding fury and dizzying musicianship the likes our shores haven’t produced since the dawn of Angelcorpse. Few US Black/Death outfits are able to effortlessly muscle you into submission with just speed and shred alone, but Austin, Texas’ corpse-painted horde can and will. Ominous, competent melodies played at breakneck speed, just trying to follow the guitars alone will produce an intoxicated state. The sheer, menacing brutality of Advent Parallax takes many twists and turns, but is relentless in attack. Only through repeated listens will you survive this sonic maelstrom. You can have Nachtmystium. When it comes to the undisputed reigning kings of US Black Metal, I’ll take Averse Sefira.

Probably the best band ever… from Lebanon that is. A total Impaled Nazarene rip-off in just about every way. Believe me, I understand their admiration, and they do have the chops to pull it off, but do we really have time in our short lives for second-rate Goat Worship? Nonessential as can be, unless you just absolutely have to own every Metal album ever made.

Raw, filthy Darkthrone/Burzum worship from Sweden. The old cult feeling is alive and well on this album. Bitterness, hatred, guitars, and drums. A mid-pace Black Metal assault worthy of midwinter forest homicide. The only thing I would lose is the occasional high-pitched girly scream. It’s unnecessary and sounds out of place. Other than that, this rules. Grim to the brim.

The folks at Century Media clearly warn all scribes right off the bat. “You could waste a lot of time, breath and adjectives trying to pinpoint what Architects sound like,” reads the first line of the bio. This holds true. Architects are an extremely difficult band to describe. But god damn it, I have to try! How about “boring to the point of ceiling tile counting?” “Completely void of style or anything even remotely memorable sounding?” “Unappealing to anyone who prefers their music good?” “The antithesis of musical excitement?” “A blur of a dozen boring musical styles into one boring musical style that really sucks?” Stop me if you like any of these. “Bland, stale, anti-cool Post-PooPooKaKa?” “Trying so hard to not sound like anything, that they don’t sound like anything… good?” “So not trendy it’s trendy?” “Sleepy Core?” “Dull Rock?” C’mon, guys, this is really quite easy after all. You just have to think hard and try. “Attention span escape artistry?” “Water-flavored Kool Aid?” “A Death Metal addict’s sleepy time?” “Emotional music but, oops, I forgot the emotion?” “An all-white painting?” I think I just pinpointed what Architects sound like exceptionally well considering the difficulty.

Wow, this Light Rock faggot band successfully blends shitty, Hard Rock radio gayness from the ’80s, ’90s, and today. Most happy little bitch groups like this can only trendfuck one single era. Safe, soft, harmless, parentally approved heaviness. Oh, and they’re Christians, too.

My apologies in advance to trendfuckers with a 3-second attention span, I’m going to be using the term “Deathcore” a lot here. I know it’s, like, so 2007, but I actually like the term. Shit, I’ve been using it in reviews for over a decade, so by today’s standards I invented it. I fucked it, fed it, and drove it to school, bitch. It just seems to so perfectly describe a band with Death Metal and Hardcore elements. Get it? Death-Core. Why am I on this tangent? It’s because when I first heard Oakland’s All Shall Perish centuries ago (2003), I had never heard a band so perfectly embody the term. The gut-wrenching brutality and heaviness of Death mixed with the groove and urgency of Core. Two albums later it appears that All Shall Perish are one of many who are sick of the term and of being associated with it. I’m not saying it’s a complete overhaul, but the breakdowns are in slim supply and the overall heaviness and groove have seemingly been swapped for speedy Thrash and Gothenburg melodicism (which apparently no one ever gets sick of, ever). Power Metal even rears it’s gay head on “Black Gold Reign,” and there’s a plethora of clean-vocals-for-the-sake-of-clean-vocals and instrumentals. There’s, like, 17 instrumentals on this album. Instrumentals are, like, so Spring of ‘08. In all seriousness, this isn’t a terrible album. It’s just that it’s the weakest of All Shall Perish’s young but respectable career, and I hate people. Some gems in the rough: “When Life Meant More,” “Never Again,” and “Until the End.”

Aborted should change their name to Adopted. That’s all they’ve really ever done concerning other bands’ styles. Don’t get me wrong, I love this band and always have. In fact, I’d be willing to bet I liked them way before you did, so don’t get lippy, bitch. It’s just that after repeated spins of Strychnine.213, I miss the days when they’d rip off Carcass and Cannibal Corpse as opposed to the full fledge Metalcore troupe they’ve become over the last few years. I recall it didn’t bother me at all at first. In fact, I believe my exact remarks to a close friend after hearing 2005’s Archaic Abattoir were, “Fucking holy fucking shit, dude! The new fucking Aborted has motherfucking breakdowns! Fuck yeah, man! Fucking mosh!!” Or something along those lines. Well, what a difference three years and now two cleaner, watered-down versions of Archaic Abattoir have made. My immediate reaction to Slaughtered & Apparatus you might ask? “Is this fucking Shadows Fall?” And to this album I say, “I think I’ll have a beer and go listen to Engineering the Dead.” In all honesty, this really isn’t that bad. But it really isn’t that Aborted either.

I have always defended Metalcore. When it was a fresh, budding genre, I was just as excited about it as I was in the early ’90s when Death Metal changed my life. Early albums from the likes of Poison the Well, Eighteen Visions, and Heaven Shall Burn couldn’t be removed from my stereo with a crowbar for the majority of the last decade. Haters were hating from the get-go, and I raised my middle finger high in devout defense. That being said, even I am getting tired of the shit. When you consider the mind-numbing plethora of Metalcore/Deathcore bands to surface of late, which have caused many of the genre’s giants to abandon ship, one has to wonder if the limits have been stretched to the point of being torn to shreds. Take Switzerland’s A Thousand Years Slavery. Good band, good breakdowns, good Swedish Death melodies, great brutal vocals, great clean vocals… not enough. It’s been done to death and thensome to the point where doing it well is just not enough anymore. More like a thousand years too late.