Where did I go?

If you've stumbled into this page, I can only imagine that you're likely lost among the glittering ruins of the world wide web. But just in case you're actually looking for the guy who used to write music reviews here on the regular, I thought I'd update.

First, I'm pretty busy writing books and stories these days, so I'm writing fewer music reviews. I've got quite a few fantasy and horror stories and one middle-grade novel out there right now, with more on the way in the very near future. If you want to check out what's available, you can visit my Amazon page. You can also find me at fredwritesfantasy.com. If you see something you think you'd like and want to pick it up, that would be awesome.

I am still writing the occasional music review or article. They come a little less frequently, but they're still coming. I'm collecting those, along with my book reviews, updates on my stories, and the occasional random thought over on my Fred Rants Substack. If you're still interested in keeping up with my ramblings, please subscribe there.

I can't say for sure that this page will never come back. It's faded and been resurrected a number of times since I started doing this back in the mid-1990s, and I'll never say never. But I do believe that it's unlikely. I will leave the library of past reviews up, so feel free to browse those, and if you like what you see, come join me on the Substack.

Best of 2024: Hard rock and metal

Though there were some fantastic releases by a few classic bands in 2024, I didn’t feel that it was, overall, nearly as strong as some other years in recent memory for hard rock and heavy metal. The year also brought a few notably disappointing highly-anticipated albums from bands who have been very dependable in recent years, like Zeal & Ardor or Ad Infinitum.

While a few surprises are scattered among my 15 favorite releases of the year, I’m struck by the lack of newer and younger bands in my picks. A few debut albums show up on the list, but most are at least partially made up of veterans that I’ve been listening to for years. I’m willing to admit that maybe with everything going on in my life that 2024 was perhaps a year of musical comfort food for me.

Here are my thoughts on the year in hard rock and metal:

METAL MOMENT OF THE YEAR: Metal got perhaps its biggest global stage ever in 2024, being featured in the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics. And we’re not talking a glorified pop act with a few heavy guitar riffs. No, it was progressive death metal band Gojira offering up an epic performance of “Mea Culpa (Ah Ca Ira),” a take on the song “Ca Ira” from the French Revolution. Complete with shooting towers of flame and a finale with streamers that resembled spraying blood, it was not what most of us expected to see at the Olympics, but it was awesome. I’ll admit that I mostly ignored everything else about the ceremony and the games, wasn’t even watching live when it happened, but I jumped online just as soon as I heard to find the clip. It was a bit of vindication for an old metalhead who has, for the most part, seen the heavier end pushed into the dark corners.

Best of 2024: Country and Southern Rock

 For some reason, 2024 brought a lot more country and Southern rock to my playlist than usual. There’s always some mixed in, but at least according to Spotify, three of my top five bands and four of my top five songs of the year were country or Southern rock – and I can’t deny that the genres produced two of my absolute favorite albums of 2024. I’m still a metal guy through and through, so I’m sure there’s some great stuff out there that I missed that will leave the true aficionados of country shaking their heads, but here’s a look at my favorites for what it’s worth:

No. 10. JOHNNY BLUE SKES – PASSAGE DU DESIR: I’m firmly in the camp of folks who wish that Sturgill Simpson would return to the traditional country of High Top Mountain or even the psychedelia of Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, but I guess we just have to accept he’s not going to do that. The things he’s done since then have been a mixed bag, some I liked and some I really disliked. Now comes his alter ego Johnny Blue Skies, a mix of country, blues, blue-eyed soul and at least one song that has some ’80s pop leanings. While I like it, Passage Du Desir is very much a mood record for me and not something I’d listen to regularly. I’m still more drawn to the songs here that lean to the country side of his sound.

Standout songs: “Scooter Blues,” “Who I Am,” “Mint Tea,” “One for the Road”

Review: Zeal & Ardor, "Greif"

Inevitably when you have a unique band that is truly creative, there comes a time when they want to step away from what they've done in the past and try something very different. Sometimes that new direction is really good, more often it's not so great. That moment has come for Zeal & Ardor on Greif, and it leaves me with really mixed feelings as they seem to have dropped many of the things that I loved about their previous records.

What's hot?

Zeal & Ardor continues to push boundaries, but this time those boundaries may challenge fans of the band's previous work. There are still a few really nice examples of what they do best. "Hide in Shade" stands out as one of those. And some of the newer touches to the music are interesting, if not quite as heavy or catchy as I'd often like.

Review: Wage War, "Stigma"

Overview

Normally, I'm a fan of bands with identity crises, but I find Wage War to be pretty frustrating. On the one hand, they'll deliver an awesome heavy tune like "Death Roll" from their 2021 album Manic, then they'll turn around and give you one of the most generic and uninteresting radio rock tunes that you've ever heard. I find it hard to believe that anyone can enjoy both sides of the band equally, but apparently, they're out there. Stigma is no different in that I find myself really enjoying about half the album.

Review: Dominum, "Hey Living People"

Overview

Pitches at Napalm Records must be crazy.

Band: Our gimmick is that we're not musicians, we're actually ...

Napalm: Say no more. Here's a contract.

I joke, but pirates, werewolves, dwarves, gladiators, dinosaurs, and apparently, now zombies.

Dominum is an artsy power metal band with a zombie gimmick and an interesting sound that sets them a bit apart from the pack with flavors of Savatage, Queen and others.

Review: Kiuas, "Samooja: Pyhiinvaellus"

 

Overview

Kiuas was one of my favorite mid-2000s discoveries. They had a sound that was really all their own at the time -- a blend of power, folk, and death metal, with occasional forays into thrashier territory or blackened realms (though there's really none of the more extreme end here). They released four great albums on Spinefarm Records, including two fantastic ones in their debut for the label Spirit of Ukko and their 2008 album The New Dark Age, then after 2010's Lustdriven, they disappeared.

I was surprised a few months back to see an unfamiliar song from them pop up as a recommendation from Spotify, and I immediately clicked on it to find that they had released a new EP, Samooja: Pyhiinvaellus, which translates to Samoa: Pilgrimage. I was thrilled to hear new music from them again.

Review: Blackberry Smoke, "Be Right Here"

I consider Blackberry Smoke’s 2012 album The Whippoorwill to be one of the greatest Southern rock albums of all time, and yet I haven’t listened to it in years. It was a record that arrived in the darkest hour of my life and seemed written for me.

I identified with nearly every song on it, and I’m not being dramatic when I say that it played a huge role in helping me survive the turmoil and return to the land of the living again. And therein lies the problem. While I’ll still occasionally rock out to “Sleeping Dogs” or “Shakin’ Hands with the Holy Ghost,” some of my favorite songs from The Whippoorwill – like “Ain’t Much Left of Me” and the title track – are too tightly tied to that darkness for me to comfortably revisit. They hold emotions and feelings that are better left in the past.

For years now, I’ve wished that Blackberry Smoke could release another album that hit the way that The Whippoorwill did so I could enjoy it in better times. While I’ve liked most of what they’ve done, it’s never quite reached that pinnacle. But Be Right Here may be the record that I’ve been waiting for them to make.

Review: Durbin, "Screaming Steel"

Overview

After years of trying to cash in on his "American Idol" fame with more radio-friendly rock fare, James Durbin turned to his passion for 1980s metal on his 2021 album The Beast Awakens. While the style is not likely to land him on top of the charts, it did seem like he was having more fun. He's continued that on the follow-up Screaming Steel, wearing his influences on his sleeves and basically writing another love letter to classic metal.

What's hot?

The record is a treasure trove of Easter eggs and inside references for fans of classic metal. It starts in the title track, where Durbin throws out references to classic bands and songs almost non-stop. Is it campy? Absolutely. Do I care? Not at all. I'm banging my head and shouting them out along with him. The strongest performance on the album, in my opinion, though, is one of the shortest tracks here, the Dio tribute "The Worshipper 1897." I love the whole delivery, and it makes me wish that Dio was still around to maybe do a guest shot on it. 

Best of 2023, Part 2: In Flames, Avatar, Metallica, Nita Strauss, Overkill

Continuing my list of top 20 albums of 2023:

No. 10. NITA STRAUSS – THE CALL OF THE VOID: The long-time Alice Cooper guitar slinger delivers her second solo album, this time shaking things up with a whole host of guest artists (including the boss), as well as some incredible instrumental pieces. The songs with guest stars do tend to take on the flavor of the guest’s band, but that’s honestly not a problem at all as it brings great variety from the melodic death metal influence of “The Wolf You Feed,” featuring Arch Enemy vocalist Alissa White-Gluz, to the quirky nu metal of “Dead Inside,” featuring David Draiman of Disturbed, to the all-out hard rock of “Victorious,” featuring Dorothy. But it’s not just guest vocalists that Strauss brings on as we get a shredder's dream collab with Marty Friedman on “Surfacing,” to close the record. Call of the Void is a solid album that should appeal not only to guitar fans, but fans of great rock songs.

Standout songs: “Summer Storm,” “The Wolf You Feed,” “Victorious,” “Winner Takes All,” “Kintsugi,” “Surfacing”

Best of 2023, Part 1: Icon of Sin, Extreme, Texas Hippie Coalition, Burning Witches, Gloryhammer, Angus McSix

This was another surprisingly good music year for me. Perhaps not as strong as 2022, but still solid enough to produce a Best of 2023 list that includes a lot of very familiar faces and a few newcomers:

No. 20. GRYMHEART – HELLISH HUNT: There were several albums competing for this last spot on my list, including solid new efforts from Prong and Spirit Adrift. In the end, though, Grymheart’s debut album was just too much fun to deny. From the first time I stumbled across “Ignis Fatuus,” I knew this was my kind of band – a blend of folk metal, power metal, and extreme metal with some super addictive melodies. The lyrics are, at times, pretty awful, but since the only Hungarian words I know I learned from Alestorm, I really can’t knock them for their English lyrics.

Standout songs: “Ignis Fatuus,” “My Hellish Hunt,” “Fenrir’s Sons,” “Monsters Among Us”

Review: Metallica, "72 Seasons"

Metallica’s 72 Seasons will, no doubt, be one of the most loved metal albums of the year. It will also be one of the most hated.

That’s the spot the band has found itself in with every album released since the early ’90s. (Except maybe St. Anger, which is pretty much reviled by most.) You could make the argument that it goes back farther than that. There are fans that will say … And Justice for All was the beginning of the end because they did a music video for “One,” and I’ve heard arguments at one time or another as to why every album since Kill ‘Em All has sucked.

I’m guilty, too. I was furious when the self-titled Black Album came out in 1991, and all of a sudden people who had been making fun of me for listening to Metallica for years were driving around blasting “Enter Sandman.” I felt strangely betrayed. I dislike the song immensely to this day, though I did eventually come around to the album with time. Since then, it’s been a mixed bag for me.

Review: Ward Davis at the Louisiana Grandstand (March 3, 2023)

When Ward Davis’ solo acoustic performance at the Louisiana Grandstand theater was announced, I almost decided to skip it. I’d just seen Davis with his full band back in the fall and had a heavy concert slate for 2023 already. I logged in on the day tickets went on sale, and it just so happened that there were still a couple of front row center-section seats left at a price less than I paid for one upper deck ticket to see his friend Cody Jinks a week later. I couldn’t pass that up, and it was a fortuitous turn of events because I really would have hated to miss this show.

This was my first visit to the venue, and you kind of have to know what you’re looking for. It’s a historical-looking unmarked red-brick building with white columns, and if not for the valet parking sign pointing around to the side, I would have wondered if I were in the right place. Walking in, the building has the feel of a place that country greats might have played back in the 1950s. Two staircases to either side of the entrance lead to the upstairs theater, about a 500-ish capacity place with wooden auditorium-style seats, a smallish stage and red curtains. It definitely had the feel of a place where you could have seen Hank Sr.

So, it’s already a cool venue, and for my money, Ward Davis stands as one of the best songwriters out there right now. That’s a perfect pairing.

Best of 2022, Part 2: Ozzy, Zeal & Ardor, Whiskey Myers, Parkway Drive, Amon Amarth, Alestorm, Skid Row

Continuing my Best of 2022 list with the top 10: 

No. 10. OZZY OSBOURNE – PATIENT NUMBER 9: Who’d have thought that an Ozzy Osbourne record would ever crack my Top 10 again? This one really kind of hit home for me despite some questionable production choices. The title track with Jeff Beck is the best thing that the Prince of Bleeping Darkness has done in ages, and there’s plenty more to like here with guest shots from Tony Iommi, Eric Clapton, Zakk Wylde and Mike McCready. Though it doesn’t quite capture the classic Ozzy energy, there are certainly shades of all of his incarnations to be found in the songs here, and it’s probably the first Ozzy album that I’ve truly enjoyed since 2001’s Down to Earth. (And yeah, I know most people dislike that one, too, but I don’t.)

Standout songs: “Patient Number 9,” “Immortal,” “No Escape from Now,” “One of those Days,” “A Thousand Shades,” “Evil Shuffle,” “Mr. Darkness”

Best of 2022, Part 1: Blind Guardian, Megadeth, Soilwork, Ward Davis, Disturbed

If there was one good thing that came out of the misery of 2020, it seems that a lot of artists used their lockdown time to create fantastic albums that trickled out through the year. For me, 2022 was an embarrassment of musical riches that featured some rock steady releases, some fantastic returns to form and even a couple of new discoveries.

The year wasn’t without its disappointments, and some of them were tough ones. The much-anticipated return of King’s X after a 14-year absence, for example, just didn’t connect with me the way that I’d hoped. But those were anomalies this year and certainly not the norm. I can’t remember the last time that I had 20 albums that I wanted to talk about at the end of the year, but here we are:

No. 20. HORIZON IGNITED – TOWARDS THE DYING LANDS: The second album for Finland’s Horizon Ignited was my introduction to the band. What they deliver on this first Best of 2022 honoree is not ground-breaking, but it’s very well-done melodic death metal in the vein of Soilwork and In Flames. Unfortunately for them, they were competing this year with a new record from Soilwork and four incredible songs from In Flames’ upcoming record, due in early 2023. That said, Towards the Dying Land is still a very enjoyable 40-ish minutes, and “Reveries” remains one of my favorite songs of the year.

Standout songs: “Reveries,” “Beyond Your Reach,” “Towards the Dying Lands,” “Servant,” “Eventide of Abysmal Grief”

Review: Skid Row, "The Gang's All Here"

 I didn’t see this coming.

Like many fans, I’ve longed for a reunion of the original lineup of Skid Row. While I enjoyed some of the band’s work with replacement vocalist, the late Johnny Solinger, it never quite stacked up with their earlier output. It’s become pretty clear, though, that the chasm between former vocalist Sebastian Bach and the rest of the band is too wide to bridge. So, I never expected to get a new Skid Row record that I considered on par with those first three albums.

Enter Erik Gronwall, former vocalist of the band H.E.A.T., a lifelong Skid Row fan despite being born only a couple of years before their debut album. His version of the band’s hit “18 and Life” on a Swedish TV singing competition helped earn him the nod from Skid Row after they went through a series of replacement vocalists for Solinger, including Tony Harnell (TNT) and ZP Theart (Dragonforce), and they seem to have made the right choice. Gronwall breathes new life into the band. He sounds enough like a young Bach to hit old guys like me right in the nostalgia, but he also brings enough of his own sound to not give off the tribute vibe.

Review: Ward Davis, "Live from an Undisclosed Location in Hays, Kansas"

The story behind Ward Davis’ latest live album is almost as entertaining as the record itself. Back in 2017, he and his friend, fellow underground country singer Cody Jinks, were playing a show in Hays, Kansas. The previous night, they had played in Colorado, so they were well stocked on, um, herbal remedies.

After the show, Davis was hanging out by his van behind the venue while his bass player was inside the van partaking of said herbal remedies when one of Hays’ finest (alternately “Officer Asshole” and “Officer Tough Guy” in Davis’ words) knocked on the door of the van. The bass player threw the doors open while lighting up, the van was searched and Davis and his bass player ended up being put in cuffs for possession of just under an ounce of marijuana.

As Davis and his bandmate were being marched the full block from the venue to be booked at the courthouse, Jinks emerged from the building and proceeded to cuss the cops all the way to bailing Davis out, much to the chagrin of Davis and one of Jinks’ band members who were attempting to calm the situation. Davis ultimately ended up with a good story and some unsupervised probation. That’s the short version. It’s definitely worth reading Davis’ version, though.

Review: Ozzy Osbourne, "Patient Number 9"

I gave myself a few weeks to sit with Ozzy Osbourne’s Patient Number 9 before rendering an opinion on it because I didn’t want a knee-jerk either way. I initially liked it a lot. With repeated listens, I still think it’s some of Ozzy’s best work in quite a while, though I’m not nearly as excited by it as I was a few weeks ago.

Let’s get my big complaint out of the way up front, and it’s the same as on the last album, Ordinary Man: Andrew Watt’s production sucks. There’s no nice way to put it. It’s not quite as horrible here, but it’s still bad. It’s over-compressed, muffled and muddy, and there’s this god-awful buzz that he seems to love, because it shows up all over the last two records. To me, it sounds like a busted speaker.

In places, I almost think he’s trying to give it the lo-fi sound of Ozzy’s early albums, but even if that’s the case, it falls flat – quite literally. It’s a real shame because a clear, quality, dynamic sound could have elevated both of these albums a couple of notches.

Review: Whiskey Myers, "Tornillo"

Whiskey Myers has never been shy about letting their roots show in their music, but on their latest release, they put them on display like a piece of fine art in a museum.

Tornillo takes the listener across the landscape of American music. There is, of course, plenty of their rowdy traditional Southern rock, but they also get a little funky, take a trip to the country, roll around in the blues and even dip their toes into arena rock – albeit very twangy arena rock.

I have to admit to being slightly disappointed with the band’s 2019 eponymous album2019 eponymous album, which was, at times, a little too much rock and not enough Southern. But the lead single from Tornillo, “John Wayne,” immediately announced that while we’d see a few new tricks with this latest evolution of Whiskey Myers, it would be well grounded in where they come from. The song opens with a funky, thumping bass line from Jamey Gleaves before vocalist Cody Cannon joins in on harmonica, kicking off a Southern groover with plenty of flash from the horns and female backing vocals that are both new touches.

Still Spinning: Pantera, "Power Metal"

The announcement of a Pantera “reunion” tour in 2023 leaves me with a lot of mixed feelings. Obviously, a true reunion is impossible, and I really hope that they ultimately spin this tour as a tribute to guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell and drummer Vinnie Paul Abbot rather than a return of the band. While I’m a huge fan of guitarist Zakk Wylde (Ozzy Osbourne, Black Label Society) and drummer Charlie Benante (Anthrax), they’re not the late Abbot brothers and this is not Pantera. That said, it would be great to hear those songs live again, and, yeah, I’ll probably go. But the announcement brought to mind another record that I’ve meant to write about for a long time, the album that featured the debut of vocalist Phil Anselmo: 1988’s Power Metal:

Normally, when I write in the Still Spinning series, they’re records overlooked by fans – but in this case, it’s a record that was buried by the band itself. In the 1980s, a very young Pantera released four albums. Their first three, Metal Magic (1983), Projects in the Jungle (1984) and I Am the Night (1985) featured vocalist Terry Glaze, with Anselmo joining for the fourth. When Pantera made its major label debut on Atlantic with Cowboys From Hell in 1990, it was with a much heavier and thrashier sound than the previous four records, which ranged from glam rock to Judas Priest-influenced heavy metal. With their newfound following of heavier music fans and the hair metal scene of the 1980s waning, Pantera did their best to cover up and ignore the existence of those first albums.