My idiocy regarding In Flames has been well documented. I gave up on the band in 2000 when Clayman came out. I thought they’d completely wussed out. Come to find out, I didn’t know it all at age 21. Fast forward a decade later and my favorite song by them is the near-Country ditty from Reroute to Remain (“Metaphor”). What I’m trying to say is that I was wrong and I have no problem admitting it. I love newer In Flames. They have a unique, memorable, instantly identifiable sound and pull it off live to boot. Now that I think about it, I probably haven’t listened to the Mikael Stanne-fronted material since the age of 21. So with my confessional out of the way, let’s get to what is both wrong and right about this poorly titled new release, which is also the first without original founding guitarist Jesper Stromblad. The good: big choruses. It’s their strength. Even the second-tier tracks are sure to have massive choruses that are catchier than hepatitis. The cream of the crop being “Where the Dead Ships Dwell,” which is by far the album’s best song and best lyrics. The production is also stellar as usual. The bad: a bit more filler than expected from them. Tracks like “The Attic” and “Jester’s Door” are pointless and lull the album’s energetic vibe to sleep. Anders Friden is also getting somewhat more adventurous with his vocals from time to time. Those of you familiar with the album’s first single, “Deliver Us,” know exactly what I mean. Certain spots here and there on many other tracks also reveal Friden trying to channel his inner Barry Manilow, and it just doesn’t work. So a slightly flawed album, but still a good one. It just happens to be a moderately weaker link in a chain of super high quality albums that date back… to the beginning really. But the next one may tell the real tale of just how much Stromblad will be missed.

When it comes to Gothic Doom Metal of the female singer/male growler variety, Draconian are about the last band standing. Most of the quality bands of this ilk from the past (Theatre of Tragedy, Within Temptation) could not resist the urge to go the trendfucking route and ended up sounding like Wilson-Phillips. Not so for these Swedes, in fact quite the opposite. They actually refuse to change, having not done so one bit since their 2003 breakthrough full length, Where Lovers Mourn. Same style, same record label, same lineup (save for revolving bassists and keyboard players early on), same, same, same. Call them the AC/DC of Gothic Doom if you will (but please don’t). I’m not complaining, I respect stability and consistency. I admire it and strive for it myself. If it isn’t broken why the fuck fix it? I just find it hard to believe they’ve been able to achieve this level of it for eight years with a woman in the band. Just kidding, ladies! (Well… not really). And it definitely isn’t broken. Lisa Johansson and Anders Jacobsson’s beauty and the beast attack still sounds great, the music is still heavy yet dripping with melancholy, and the band still owe enough of their sound to Katatonia to keep me loyal (the main drum beat on “End of the Rope” sound familiar?). Still, I’m beginning to wonder if they’ll ever top 2005’s Arcane Rain Fell. Again, stylistically no different from what A Rose for the Apocalypse has on display, but that album had an air of perfection about it. It is their magnum opus, their Turn Loose the Swans, their Gothic. Ah, the heartbroken “Daylight Misery”… Fans of this style curious to seek this band out should probably start there first.

Sometimes wishes do come true. Mat motherfucking Bruso is back on the mic for Bury Your fucking Dead. This is how these guys were meant to sound. No more wretched Sevendust vocals as Myke Terry, who replaced Bruso in 2007 and completely wiped his ass with the band’s reputation over the course of two albums, has left to pursue a solo career. Good luck with that, buddy. It’s so nice to have the hardest Hardcore band of all time back and kicking ass like the good old days. By that I mean 2004’s Cover Your Tracks, arguably the heaviest Hardcore album ever made, its influence still echoing today. As much as I’m sure they’d like to deny it, Deathcore probably wouldn’t exist without these guys. The Emmures and Acacia Strains of the world might also sound much different. I’m overjoyed to report that Mosh ‘n’ Roll is basically Cover Your Tracks 2 (or part 3 if you want to count 2006’s solid follow up, Beauty and the Breakdown, as part 2). Don’t let the silly name fool you, this album is as serious as death by blunt force trauma. The band just like to have a bit of fun naming things. All of the song titles from the aforementioned 2004 masterpiece were Tom Cruise movies. This album they’re named after Kurt Vonnegut books, which is worth a perfect score by itself if you ask me. For the uninitiated, Bury Your Dead songs are essentially little more than collections of pulverizing, massive breakdowns. Simple, monstrous, diamond-hard, Godzilla-heavy breakdowns that serve as the perfect vehicle for Bruso’s venomous, hate-filled, bitter, foul-mouthed, smart-ass lyrics. The band create the heaviest grooves imaginable and even inject depressing melody where need be, as found on haunting crusher “The Sirens of Titan.” There simply are no flaws to be found on this record. The band wisely never step outside their comfort zone, doing what they do better than anyone else can. The only bad thing I can say is that I may have to sue them for whiplash as I cannot stop headbanging. As always they finish off the album with their signature stamp, the trademark eponymous gang vocal anthem (listed as the title track this time) which is always hard to resist singing along to. It will be even harder to get this out of my stereo any time soon, as I now have my top contender for album of the year. Now my only wish is that all fans of Sludge, College Doom, and Pirate Metal listen to this album and blow their fucking brains out with a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun. “Your tombstone reads the lies that your body couldn’t sell while you were alive.”

Make no mistake about it, Salt Lake City Deathcore sextet Chelsea Grin are a pure Suicide Silence clone. However, you can check my recent review of The Black Crown and discover I don’t necessarily find that to be a bad thing. In fact, this album’s show-stealer, vocalist Alex Koehler, might even have Suicide Silence frontman Mitch Lucker beat in the tortured scream department. These are seriously some of the most agonizing high-pitch screams ever recorded. Seriously, I thought my larynx was bleeding just from hearing it. These guys also come at you with a very potent, Whitechapel-style triple guitar assault. Fitting then that frontman Phil Bozeman makes a guest vocal appearance on crushing album closer, “All Hail the Fallen King.” Fit for an Autopsy’s Nate Johnson also contributes a vocal cameo on “Calling in Silence,” which incidentally might be Koehler’s most crazed, demon-possessed performance on the record. My only real complaint, and it is a minor one, is the instrumental, “Kharon.” While it serves as a pretty breather, it seems a bit pointless. Especially compared to the instrumental on their 2010 debut, Desolation of Eden, the mesmerizing “Elysium.” I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t my favorite song on the album. If Deathcore isn’t your thing, this won’t be the band or album that changes your mind. My Damnation is pretty much straight up by-the-book. Heavy, breakdown-fueled, melodic, brutal, raging, even the 2011 standard Zeuss production is present. But if you already serve at the altar of Deathcore, you just might have a new favorite soundtrack to all this summer’s mischief.

Folk/Black Metal is another cup of piss I don’t partake of too often. I usually find its uptempo songs and clean sung male vocals irritating more than anything else. Fortunately, for the sixth full-length record from this long running Irish band, their blend is decent. Truthfully this is the first album I’ve heard from Cruachan and readily admit that Ychoril would have a better background to review it [if only he hadn’t disappeared into the mists! -Editor]. Regardless of the fact that I’d rather be reviewing a new Abaddon Incarnate LP, I can still do this… pass the Jamesons! Blood on the Black Robe starts off with a deadly intro of what I presume would be early Celtic soldiers marching to battle. The first song is uptempo, almost to the point where I want to push the stop button, yet I forge ahead because the vocals aren’t clean. The next song, “Soldier,” is the perfect Irish war anthem and then “Thy Kingdom Gone” has violin passages that will make you do an Irish whiskey-fueled victory dance… of war! It’s a fiddle sound straight off of Silent Stream of Godless Elegy’s Behind the Shadows, which occasionally fills my cup. The rest of the tracks fall in line, but it’s really the strength of the aforementioned songs that kept me listening to the rest of this album. Not fucking bad after all!

I’ll be honest, I haven’t given much of a shit about these guys since 1998’s semen-al classic, Gore Metal. So, that makes 13 long years since Exhumed have really done anything for me. However, something told me this album was going to be good. Call it a hunch (back), a (six hundred and sixty) sixth sense, a gut (ted) feeling, or ESPN, I just felt that after an 8-year hiatus that Matt Harvey would be hungrier than Billy Milano at a Ponderosa. You know, it’s a damn shame I don’t gamble more, because I was right as rain. This album is more than just a return to form, it’s a cumming of age. The old stuff felt like quality ’70s Hammer Horror, but consider this album a gory psychological thriller (where Natalie Portman finally gets naked). These sickos have come light years musically. Just listen to those Maidenesque melodies on “Your Funeral, My Feast.” Not to mention all the top notch Swedeath-style guitar solos on this cut, and throughout the entire album for that (fecal) matter. If someone’s written a catchier Death/Thrash anthem than “Through Cadaver Eyes” this year, I’d like to hear it. “But I thought Exhumed played Grind,” said the poseur. Feast your ears on “Distorted and Twisted to Form” and “Necrotized” then, pussies. It’s actually how professionally this record is stylistically amalgamated that puts it over the top. Some songs sound like vintage Brutal Truth on meth, others are like Carcass genetically spliced with Bonded by Blood-era Exodus. Then other tracks do sound like Harvey & Co. circa ‘98. The album is just solid. Well designed, multi-layered, and multi-textured, just like my last bowel movement. A few moments of embarrassing vocal weakness by Harvey, probably just a little rust, are all that keeps this from perfection.

The first new full-length from this Grindcore supergroup in 9 years isn’t exactly end-of-the-world-party worthy, but how the fuck can we resist? After all, this is essentially Napalm Death with Tompa singing. What more do you need? Granted, they’ve never been the most memorable supergroup, and Necropolis Transparent doesn’t exactly break that tradition. This is one of those albums you pop in the car, you’re driving along, you’re digging it. After what seems like only a few minutes have gone by, you look down at your stereo and notice that you’re on track seven already. Holy shit, the songs changed? Then you suddenly realize that you’ve killed several pedestrians, but that’s a story best saved for later. Tragically departed original guitarist Jesse Pintado’s replacement, Anton Reisenegger (Criminal, Pentagram, Inner Sanctum), does a more than serviceable job filling those legendary shoes. He brings a lot to the table, as the most noteworthy moments of the album are when the jackhammering Grind assault comes to a screeching halt and Reisenegger drops an Old School Death Metal riff atom bomb. Wicked, crawling riffs very reminiscent of when… well… when Napalm Death started writing real riffs. May that time period be to each their own. Still, for all its extremity, this album lacks a certain something. It really does go by in a blur. So much so that after a half dozen listens, I still have yet to pinpoint the guest vocal contributions from Jeff Walker (some band called Carcass) and Lock Up’s original throatsmith, mastermind Peter Tagtgren. Which really speaks to this album’s mind-wandering trappings, because I should be able to pick out Tagtgren’s voice during a tornado, and Walker’s all over this fucking thing. Could it be the drumming of Nick Barker? Sure, he’s a speed demon, a blast monster, but I honestly think it could be his lack of anything else that makes this album feel like the same song over and over again. Whatever the case, it’s good to have Lock Up back, especially during this quality Grind drought we are suffering through. Hopefully further spins will reveal more texture.

Italy’s Regardless of Me is an odd band. At times, Pleasures and Fear gets pretty close to being straight-up speedy, modern Death/Thrash Metal, with raw/raspy (male) vocals, and an absolutely stunning, flawless production that is both crystal clear and tremendously powerful. Then Pamela Manzo jumps in with her silky-smooth, but energetic, lead vocals (which are stupidly distorted/modified in parts of “Dispositions”). And occasionally she brings along a non-Metal beat from the drum machine, too, or a piano solo, just to make sure we know that this is “art.” Pamela has a strong voice, but this can sound like two completely different bands fighting with each other in a mash-up war. When the riffs are good (which is not anywhere close to always - some in “From a Darkened Sky” are especially clunky in a Nu-Metal way), and they tone down the weird-for-the-sake-of-being-weird elements, and everything else lines up correctly, this band can produce seriously enjoyable music. But not often for very long, although the last few tracks seem much stronger and more coherent than the first several. Oddly, the cover of Madonna’s beautiful “Frozen” seems to be the best blending of styles (and signals the shift to the start of the better songs), although a crazy choice to Metalize, as the original is delicate and ethereal. I can’t remember the last time I thought, “That’s awesome!” and “What the fuck are they doing?!?” so many times while listening to an album. When Regardless of Me wants to kick ass (“Made of Steel,” “Never Lose Myself”), they do easily. I think that they’re just trying too hard to be “different,” and occasionally get a bit off course.

Sometimes when you hear just one song from an album you know you’re going to like all the songs. Such was the case for me when I first listened to the mp3 “Mater Lachrymarum… Mother of Tears” on Moribund’s website in advance of the debut full-length from Singapore’s Psycho. Yeah, it’s not the infamous Boston, MA Grind band from the early ’90s, and even I made that split second mistake while clicking the link. Was I tricked? Not at all, and instead I was surprisingly treated to a cool-as-hell track of blackened Thrash Metal. Since that initial introduction, I’ve listened to Pain Addict Pigs in it’s entirety a dozen times or more, and the whole album has given me the same hospitality with each visit. The coolest aspect for all the songs, after the intro, is the audibility of the bass lines. Phil Rind would be proud! Other reviewers have recommended this release for fans of early Bathory or Sodom and that’s certainly accurate. However, I’m going to venture out on a limb and say if you like early Sacred Reich (Ignorance or The American Way) yet with Black Metal vocals and horror lyrics then you’ll receive that coveted king size candy bar. All you need to do is knock on the Old Goat’s door.