Review: Nightwish, "Showtime, Storytime"

I’ll make a confession at the top of this review that will invalidate my opinion in the eyes of many Nightwish fans, but I didn’t really like the band with Tarja Turunen.

I didn’t dislike Tarja, and in fact own a couple of Nightwish albums from that era — Once (of course) and Wishmaster — but I just couldn’t go all in for the band with those soprano vocals. Turunen is a fantastic singer, and no one can deny that, but at times I thought those operatic tones were, perhaps, a bit too pretty for a metal band.

My opinion of the band started to change a bit when Annette Olzon came aboard. She had a bit more of a rock ‘n’ roll voice that I believed fit the music better and certainly appealed to me more. In fact, the band’s last record Imaginaerum is my favorite and ranked high on my best-of list for 2012.

That brings us to the Showtime, Storytime concert film, recorded at the Wacken Open Air Festival last summer, the band’s first official recording with new singer Floor Jansen. And Wow. Just Wow.

Review: Death Angel, "The Dream Calls for Blood"

Death Angel stands as one of the most underrated acts from the second tier of the 1980s San Francisco Bay-area thrash movement. Though not often mentioned, the band's first three albums are as solid as anything that you'll find from that era and show a great deal of musical evolution between the aggressive The Ultra-Violence in 1987 and the much more varied Act III in 1990.

The band broke up after that third album, with some members going on to form a short-lived outfit called The Organization, named for a song on Act III, that built on the influences the band had shown on that record.

Review: Powder Mill, "Land of the Free"

On its fourth studio album, Powder Mill delivers a rough-around-the-edges, nasty, gnarly blend of Southern rock and country that will certainly remind fans of fellow Ozark rockers Black Oak Arkansas.

Through the course of the 11 tracks on Land of the Free, the Missouri boys go honky tonking, show plenty of pride in where they’re from, get rowdy and even display a sensitive side.

The album and journey begins — where else? — but prison. “Letters from Jail” opens things with a definite old-school country flavor and both that sound and vocal delivery of Jesse Charles Hammock II put me in mind of the late George Jones. It’s a fun way to get things going. I also dig the little circus music lick right before the guitar solo, and the chicken picking inside the solo.

Review: Soil, "Whole"

I was a big fan of Soil’s breakthrough 2001 album Scars, with its infectious hit “Halo.”

As much as I liked that record, though, the band seemed to fade quickly for me. I picked up the follow-up Redefine, but don’t remember much about it, and I haven’t given the band much thought since.

When I heard that original singer Ryan McCombs was returning after a stint in Drowning Pool, the first thing that ran through my head was the chorus from “Halo,” and that pretty much sealed the fact that Whole was going to at least get a chance with me.

Musical times have changed, naturally, and much of what sounded fresh in 2001 has become a stale staple of rock radio. While there’s not much different about the Soil’s sound on Whole than there was on Scars, they’ve still delivered a pretty solid hard rock record with their reunion.

Review: Hank III, "Brothers of the 4x4"

When Hank Williams III finally got out from under his contract with Curb Records in 2011, most fans were expecting another album along the order of his landmark Straight to Hell record.

We assumed that his last few Curb albums had been uneven because he was sandbagging his best stuff. He certainly had plenty of material for fall 2011, when he released four albums — the country/Cajun double album Ghost to a Ghost/Gutter Town, a decent doom metal record under the name Attention Deficit Disorder and the completely bizarre and head-scratching blend of thrash and auctioneer cattle calls entitled 3 Bar Ranch Cattle Callin’. Perhaps our hopes were too high, but it was largely a disappointing mess.

Review: Annihilator, "Feast"

There may be no more underrated musician in thrash than Annihilator guitarist/founder/bandleader Jeff Waters.

Of course, Waters himself may hold some of the blame for that. The band’s debut album Alice in Hell is one of the finest examples of the genre that you’ll find, and the follow-up Never, Neverland, featuring Omen vocalist Coburn Pharr, is almost as good. After that, though, things become spotty for the band.

There’s some great music to be found in the rest of their catalog, but a revolving door of musicians and some occasionally bad ideas — like the programmed electronic drums on 1997′s Remains — diluted the power of those first couple of records and allowed Annihilator to slip out of the minds of many fans outside their native Canada.

Review: Carcass, "Surgical Steel"

Surgical Steel, the first record since 1996 from reunited English death metal legends Carcass, is probably one of the most anticipated of the year for many metal fans. I can’t really say that I was among them.

I only own one Carcass album, 1993’s Heartwork, which is really the only record by the band that I like. 

Death metal, in general, is a hard sell for me. My collection of it is small for a few reasons. I don’t like feeling like I’m being bludgeoned over the head with a snare drum. Blast beats can be quite effective, but often it seems to me that’s the only weapon in many death metal drummers’ arsenal.

Then there are the death growl vocals. Like the blast beats, they can be done well, but so often, particularly when paired with those blast beats, they make the music seem monotonous and lacking emotion.

Review: White Wizzard, "The Devil's Cut"

There are those bands that are downright frustrating. They release one fantastic album that makes you an instant fan, and then they never can quite seem to hit that high note again.

For a while, I was afraid that White Wizzard might become one of those. The band’s first full-length album, Over the Top, hasn’t left my playlist since it came out in 2010. Songs like “40 Deuces,” “High Roller” and “Iron Goddess of Vengeance” still get a big crank of the volume knob every time they come on.

One of the regular criticisms of that record was its campy, old-fashioned nature. For me, that was one of the selling points and a big part of the record’s fun factor.

Review: Jackson Taylor and the Sinners, "Crazy Again"

For some reason, Jackson Taylor seems to fly under the radar on the underground country scene.

You don’t hear as much about him, but he’s released a solid string of hell-raising, good-timing, rowdy country albums. His latest, Crazy Again, continues that line.

The Texan’s sound mixes equal parts of the late-1970s outlaw country sound, the red-dirt alternative country scene and crunchy ZZ Top-style blues rock with an occasional dash of punk attitude or even more modern country sounds.

Though he does, every now and then, take a swim in the deeper end of the pool, it’s not really Taylor’s style. He’s more the guy that you hire when you’re ready to get the party cranked up around the pool. For that job, he’s the perfect person.

Review: Philip Anselmo and the Illegals, "Walk Through Exits Only"

Phil Anselmo is angry. And he’s going to scream at you until you get it. That’s the general gist of his first solo album Walk Through Exits Only.

The record opens with a nearly two-minute intro track, “Music Media is My Whore,” which is dissonant, choppy and uncomfortable as he announces his intent to make a type of music that’s never been made before. I’m not quite sure that he achieves that lofty goal, but the eight tracks on this record are certainly different.

There are portions of the album that are like a hard slap in the face or a baseball bat pummeling you over the head. They’re ugly, gnarly and beastly. But nearly every time, those passages are balanced by others where you find yourself bobbing your head and locking into the groove, the way you would with a Pantera or Down record.

Review: Amon Amarth, "Deceiver of the Gods"

I remember once reading a review that said something to the effect that to not like Amon Amarth was to not like heavy metal. I wish I’d written that because I wholeheartedly concur.

Amon Amarth represents all that I love about the raw power of the genre. It’s ugly, it’s gnarly, it’s brutal, but at the same time there’s a great beauty in what these Vikings do. It speaks to some primal instinct in me, makes me want to pound my chest and gnaw a little bloody meat right off the bone. It’s why when I get ready for a workout, the playlist is filled with their stuff.

On Deceiver of the Gods, the band doesn’t change up a whole lot. Amon Amarth at its best combines a death metal intensity with the grooves and melody of classic heavy metal. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Review: Queensryche, "Queensryche"

Round Two of the Queensryche wars arrives with the eponymous new release from the Todd La Torre-fronted version. As expected, this lineup dips back into the history of the band, pulling out the more metallic and progressive sounds of the 1980s.

On first listen, Queensryche struck me as on OK album with a couple of standout tracks, but I have to admit that, the more I listen to it, the more the songs began to creep up and grow on me. A perfect example is the first real song on the record, “Where Dreams Go to Die.” I really liked the opening of it on first listen, and the big guitar riff from Michael Wilton leading into the verse is great, but I wasn’t crazy about the slower verse and bridge of the song. About three listens in, though, I had to admit that the song had me. It’s not quite what I expected, but there’s enough of that early Queensryche sound there to draw me in.

Review: Sturgill Simpson, "High Top Mountain"

Sturgill Simpson’s brand of country is undeniably old-fashioned, dripping with honky-tonk spirit, but don’t expect him to try to cash in on it by singing about what an outlaw he is.

That’s made clear on the album opener, “Life Ain’t Fair and the World is Mean.” The song starts with a record executive telling him what to do to sell more records. In response, Sturgill sings, “The most outlaw thing that I ever done was give a good woman a ring. That’s the way it goes, life ain’t fair and the world is mean.”

The practical streak shown on that song follows through the rest of the album as Simpson rambles across the country landscape visiting the bluegrass of his Appalachian roots and the Texas honky tonks with heartfelt ballads and just good, old-fashioned country sounds.

Review: Black Sabbath, "13"

There’s a bit of genius in the layout of Black Sabbath’s long-awaited reunion album 13, which just became the band’s first U.S. No. 1.

It’s a pretty safe bet that with 13, we hold in our hands the final studio album in the career of Black Sabbath, which makes the choice of the first and last tunes on the standard eight-song version of the album so great.

It opens with “End of the Beginning,” which features, early on, a riff that’s designed to put you in mind of the title track from their eponymous debut album — the song that started everything. Then, as eighth track “Dear Father” fades out, we get the thunder, bells and rain sounds that open that album. It brings the career of Sabbath full circle in a very nice touch. It’s a simple, but powerful moment that leaves fans with a bit of a wow.

Review: Fifth on the Floor, "Ashes & Angels"

Fifth on the Floor’s 2010 release Dark and Bloody Ground stands as one of the absolute best Southern rock albums of this generation. It rocked with rowdy party anthems, but also featured some very strong and soulful heartfelt songs.

Welcome to the follow-up, which could be described in very similar fashion.

The show gets started with “Whiskey,” a hell-raising party tune if ever there were one. The boys get the energy kicked up, and singer Justin Wells — one of the strengths of this outfit — belts out the lyrics in his best smoke and whiskey-laced drawl. The very next song changes things up a little bit. Guitarist Ryan “Matty” Rodgers offers up some very Lynyrd Skynyrd-like slide work on “Shotgun,” but the song itself is certainly not copycat. The tune swings with an almost jazzy feel as Wells sings about folks in a town where “ain’t nobody leaving, but dammit everybody’s hellbound.”

Review: Tom Keifer, "The Way Life Goes"

A 10-year long journey for Cinderella frontman Tom Keifer came to fruition with the release of his first solo album, The Way Life Goes. A long time in the making, the album is probably the most varied effort of Keifer’s career, and covers a wide range of feelings, emotions and life events during that time.

The album starts, really, where it has to with first track “Solid Ground,” a hard-driving rocker that would have been right at home on a Cinderella record — Long Cold Winter, perhaps. After that, though, it takes a more personal direction, with styles ranging from heartfelt ballads, to pop pieces, to blues rock, to even some country-flavored numbers. There’s a lot of Stones, a lot of 1970s Aerosmith, some Cinderella and a little bit of twang, too.

Review: Flotsam and Jetsam, "Ugly Noise"

After 1995′s Drift, Flotsam and Jetsam seemed to do just that — drift off the musical map — with a series of disappointing records and a couple of long hiatuses between records. Then came 2010′s The Cold. Though it didn’t grab metal headlines or vault the band back to popularity, it was most definitely a return to form and the best material they’d released in 15 years.

If the band’s latest release, Ugly Noise, doesn’t put them back on the radar, there are a lot of metal fans out there who need their ears cleaned out.

The album, which was released to fans who helped fund it in December and got an official release on Metal Blade Records last month, finds the band refocused and re-energized.

Review: Skid Row, "United World Rebellion, Chapter One"

After a very uneven first album with new singer Johnny Solinger and a second album that was full of jokey novelty tunes, I didn’t hold out much hope for the future of Skid Row.

Until now.

United World Rebellion Chapter One, the first in a series of EPs that will make up their new album, is easily the best thing released under the Skid Row name since 1995′s Subhuman Race.

The band gets right down to business on the first track, “Kings of Demolition,” which sounds like it was ripped straight from the Slave to the Grind recording sessions.

Review: Gloryhammer, "Tales from the Kingdom of Fife"

Christopher Bowes may be on the verge of becoming a new musical hero of mine. First he gave us Scottish pirate metal, now Scottish epic fantasy metal, and it’s just as much fun.

If you’re familiar with Bowes’ other band, Alestorm, it will be no surprise that Gloryhammer’s music is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but it’s no joke. Yes, Bowes and his cohorts dress as wizards, warriors and elves, and they skewer some of the tropes and conventions of the power metal genre with some laugh out loud moments. But when it comes to the music, it’s no laughing matter. This outfit is tight, and they play the style much better than some of the “serious” power metal bands out there.

Review: Suicidal Tendencies, "13"

Most metal fans are probably looking a little more forward to another album titled 13 later this year from a barely known band called Black Sabbath. Me, too, but I was also quite intrigued by Suicidal Tendencies’ album of the same title.

I was a big ST fan in the 1980s, both the energetic hardcore punk of their self-titled debut and the thrash sounds of their later albums in the decade, like Lights, Camera, Revolution. The 1990s were a bit shaky for the band, though, with the very commercial The Art of Rebellion (which I haven’t revisited in quite a while, but seemed anything but rebellious to me at the time), the more metallic and underrated Suicidal for Life and a couple of uneven albums in Freedumb and Free Your Soul … And Save My Mind, both of which had their moments, but were fairly unmemorable.