New on the scene for ’21, Pennsylavania’s Boozewa truly believe in the power of lo-fi noise. With a barrage of heavy doom riffs and the kind of minimal production values that make those riffs sound even dirtier, they’re set to make an impact on the DIY metal scene with their new release ‘Deb’.
Tag Archives: metal
Watch: Two Pro-Shot Slipknot gigs from 1999
If you were a metal fan between 1999 and 2001, it almost became impossible to avoid Slipknot for a while. Their debut album gained the band a truckload of magazine coverage and around the turn of the millennium, they became a massive draw at festivals.
DEATH ON FIRE – Six Foot Box EP
Indiana death metal/extreme metal band Death On Fire cover a wide musical ground on the follow up to their 2020 long player ‘Ghost Songs’. The ‘Six Foot Box’ EP only features three tracks, but by taking elements of old school thrash metal, a pinch of black metal coldness and broad strokes of doom, the material almost feels as if it crams in a full album’s worth of ideas into a little under fifteen minutes.
RESSURECTION KINGS – Skygazer
The Resurrection Kings debut (released in 2016) was one of those frustrating albums that showed great promise, but was ultimately flawed. Ex-Dio band members Craig Goldy (guitar) and Vinnie Appice (drums) played up a storm throughout, but their best efforts were often drowned out by vocalist Chas West, a man who insisted in bellowing his way through the bulk of the material at full volume, making it a hard listen. As proven by his own West Bound project, it’s not that Chas doesn’t have a voice; he just needs the music to be in tune with his sometimes overbearing tones.
The flaws of the Resurrection Kings debut are evident once again here. For some reason, Goldy’s best efforts don’t always seem to be on quite the same wavelength as West’s huge performances. Or maybe West’s all or nothing approach doesn’t quite fit with some of Goldy’s more varied ideas. Whatever it is, there’s still something that feels a little off-balance and requires a fair bit of tuning in and patience on behalf of the listener. However, if you can tune into everything, the album features a selection of solid, old style metal tunes that definitely seem to have a little more drive and focus compared to their previous work.
BANG BANG FIRECRACKER – See Evil EP
Bang Bang Firecracker find themselves thinking much bigger in terms of both sound and concept for their follow up to their 2019 release ‘Welcome To The Slaughterhouse’. Although that album did a fine job in introducing the Stoke On Trent hard rockers as strong players, it featured the kind of drum sound and occasionally trebly edge that gave away its DIY origins (also, the least said about its horribly dated, David Coverdale channelling artwork, the better). Their next batch of material takes the form of not one but three separate EP releases which, combined, are designed to form a strong full length release. At a time where a lot of independent rock is issued digitally and so many younger listeners are seemingly incapable of committing to a full forty minutes, the EP format seems like a smart move. More importantly, the short and sharp approach also serves to make BBF’s riffs seem even more forceful. Also, a staggered release, in theory, also helps to keep the band in people’s minds a little bit longer.