The second full-length release from Ireland’s Altar of Plagues is an achievement that builds upon (and surpasses) their first album in almost every way. White Tomb was (and still is) a fantastic album, but Mammal is the product of a band with a more unique identity and more matured skills.

An awesome debut which points towards even bigger things, I can’t recommend this album enough.

The fact that the much-ballyhooed debut album by Blood Revolt is generating vehement reactions from the metal world shouldn’t be much of a surprise. And you know it’s the kind of reaction Alberta black metal mainstays C. Ross and James Read wanted when they formed a trans-Atlantic artistic partnership with Primordial proselytizer Alan “Nemtheanga” Averill. One one side, you’ve got underground metal scenesters who can make neither heads nor tails of all that damned singing atop the scorching backdrop of raw black metal provided by the two members of Axis of Advance and Revenge. On the other side are the Primordial fans that are so starved for a new album that they’ll listen to anything Averill lends his voice to. Needless to say, hearing the man contribute to something so unflinching, so confrontational had to have been the last thing they expected. Where are the 6/8 time signatures, dammit!

If All Empires Fall is meant to close a certain chapter of the band’s history, we have every reason to believe the next one will be even more exciting to witness.

By Navjot Kaur
Venturing into the turbulent realm of Celtic meets traditional black metal (streaked with essential melody) is Primordial. None too surprising, as the group’s re-released debut album, Imrama, translates roughly into “voyage” or “rowings about.” In a country like Ireland, where English has become the mainstream language, the band asserts its roots by sticking to Irish lyrics, a steely individualism that is equally palpable in the music they’ve continued to churn out for the last 23 years. Steering into the present, the band put out a twelve-track re-release of …

With the band’s notable lack of corpse paint and the absence of beloved horror show theatrics in its sound, White Tomb emerges as a debut that contributes to a growing subset within the wider black metal sub-genre.

Are You Ready? is an interesting visual document of Thin Lizzy during what is one of the lowest periods of their original run. While the band was still a good live act and a decent draw, by the time they released their Chinatown album in 1981 there were many cracks in the machine that spurred the band on. Filmed live in Loreley, Germany by WDR for their Rockpalast program, one of the coolest live music programs on the planet, this nineteen song set is good but not great.

Released in 1978, Thin Lizzy’s Live & Dangerous is considered essential. An about-face to the band’s hit-and-miss studio output of the time, that offering boasts a tight, almost untouchable act. Therefore, news of a follow-up effort recorded around the same time, Still Dangerous: Live at the Tower Theater Philadelphia 1977 comes across as a double-edged sword.