| 4.0 excellent |
| *shels Sea of the Dying Dhow |
| ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead The Century of Self |
| 27 Brittle Divinity |
| A Storm Of Light And We Wept The Black Ocean Within |
| Adebisi Shank This is the Second Album |
| Agalloch Ashes Against the Grain |
| AJJ People Who Can Eat People are the Luckiest People |
| Algernon Cadwallader Some Kind Of Cadwallader |
| Anaal Nathrakh In the Constellation of the Black Widow |
| And So I Watch You From Afar And So I Watch You From Afar |
| Arcade Fire The Suburbs |
| Archers of Loaf All the Nation's Airports |
| Ascend Ample Fire Within |
| Baroness Red Album |
| BATS Red In Tooth and Claw |
| Belle and Sebastian Tigermilk |
| Belle and Sebastian Lazy Line Painter Jane |
| Between the Buried and Me Colors |
| Big Black Songs About Fucking |
| Big Business Mind the Drift |
| Black Cobra Chronomega |
| Black Flag Damaged |
| Bob Dylan Bringing It All Back Home |
| Bohren und der Club of Gore Beileid |
| Bomb the Music Industry! Adults!!!: Smart!!! Shithammered!!! And Excited By Nothing!!!!!!! |
| Bomb the Music Industry! Vacation |
| Bongripper Satan Worshipping Doom |
| Boris Pink |
| Braid Frankie Welfare Boy Age Five |
| Brian Eno Small Craft on a Milk Sea |
| Built to Spill There Is No Enemy |
| Buried at Sea Migration |
| Burst Lazarus Bird |
| Caribou Swim |
| Castevet Mounds of Ash |
| Cave In Antenna |
| Cave In Planets of Old |
| Cheap Girls My Roaring 20s |
| Circa Survive Blue Sky Noise |
| Circle Takes the Square As the Roots Undo |
| Coil The Ape Of Naples |
| Coil Black Antlers |
| Coil The New Backwards |
| Colossal Welcome the Problems |
| Current 93 Aleph At Hallucinatory Mountain |
| Current 93 Baalstorm, Sing Omega |
| Cynic Traced in Air |
| Dalek Abandoned Language |
| Dead Kennedys Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables |
| Dead Prez Let's Get Free |
| Death Human |
| Deathspell Omega Paracletus |
| Defiance, Ohio Midwestern Minutes |
| Dinosaur Jr. Beyond |
| Earth Pentastar: In The Style Of Demons |
| Earth Hex: Or Printing In the Infernal Method |
| East of the Wall Ressentiment |
| El-P I'll Sleep When You're Dead |
| Electric Wizard Black Masses |
| Eluvium Similes |
| Emeralds Does It Look Like I'm Here? |
| Enslaved Vertebrae |
| Enslaved The Sleeping Gods |
| Envy Abyssal |
| Explosions in the Sky The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place |
| Explosions in the Sky Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die... |
| Eyehategod In the Name of Suffering |
| Fantomas The Director's Cut |
| Fight Amp Hungry For Nothing |
| Fleet Foxes Fleet Foxes |
| Floor Floor |
| Foetus Nail |
| From Monument To Masses On Little Known Frequencies |
| Frontier(s) There Will Be No Miracles Here |
| Fucked Up The Chemistry of Common Life |
| Fugazi 13 Songs |
| Future of the Left Travels With Myself And Another |
| Genghis Tron Board Up the House |
| Ghost Mice Europe |
| Giant Squid The Ichthyologist |
| God Is an Astronaut Age of the Fifth Sun |
| Godflesh Us and Them |
| Godspeed You! Black Emperor Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada |
| Godspeed You! Black Emperor Yanqui U.X.O. |
| Gojira The Way of All Flesh |
| Goldmund Famous Places |
| Gonjasufi A Sufi and a Killer |
| Good Luck Into Lake Griffy |
| Grails Doomsdayer's Holiday |
| Grinderman Grinderman 2 |
| Grouper Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill |
| Grouper Way Their Crept |
| Hammock Raising Your Voice... Trying to Stop an Echo |
| Have a Nice Life Deathconsciousness |
| Helms Alee Night Terror |
| High on Fire Death Is This Communion |
| How to Destroy Angels How To Destroy Angels |
| Husker Du New Day Rising |
| Ides of Gemini Constantinople |
| Inca Ore Birthday Of Bless You |
| Intronaut Prehistoricisms |
| Irepress Sol Eye Sea I |
| Iron Chic Not Like This |
| ISIS Celestial |
| ISIS In the Absence of Truth |
| Jakob Solace |
| James Blackshaw All Is Falling |
| Jawbreaker Dear You |
| Joanna Newsom Have One on Me |
| Jodis Secret House |
| John Zorn The Crucible |
| Jonsi and Alex Riceboy Sleeps |
| Joy Wants Eternity You Who Pretend to Sleep |
| Julie Christmas The Bad Wife |
| Kanye West The College Dropout |
| Kanye West 808s and Heartbreak |
| Katatonia Night Is the New Day |
| Kayo Dot Coyote |
| Khanate Things Viral |
| Khanate Clean Hands Go Foul |
| Kudrow Lando |
| Kvelertak Kvelertak |
| Lantlos .neon |
| Laura Radio Swan is Down |
| Lights Out Asia Eyes Like Brontide |
| Loma Prieta Life/Less |
| Lord Mantis Pervertor |
| M83 Saturdays=Youth |
| Made Out of Babies The Ruiner |
| Magrudergrind Magrudergrind |
| Mamiffer Hirror Enniffer |
| Mamiffer Mare Decendrii |
| Master Musicians of Bukkake Totem One |
| Mastodon Remission |
| Mastodon Blood Mountain |
| maudlin of the Well Part the Second |
| mclusky The Difference Between Me and You Is That I'm Not on Fire |
| Melechesh Emissaries |
| Melechesh The Epigenesis |
| Melvins Stag |
| Melvins The Bride Screamed Murder |
| Mike Patton Mondo Cane |
| Minsk The Ritual Fires of Abandonment |
| Minsk With Echoes in the Movement of Stone |
| Mogwai Young Team |
| Mogwai Mr. Beast |
| Mouth Of The Architect Quietly |
| Mr. Bungle California |
| My Bloody Valentine Isn't Anything |
| Nadja Touched |
| Nana Grizol Ruth |
| Napalm Death Time Waits for No Slave |
| Neko Case Middle Cyclone |
| Neurosis Souls at Zero |
| Neurosis Given to the Rising |
| Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds Murder Ballads |
| Oceansize Self Preserved While The Bodies Float Up |
| Off With Their Heads In Desolation |
| Olafur Arnalds Eulogy for Evolution |
| Old Man Gloom NO |
| Om Pilgrimage |
| Omar Rodriguez-Lopez Se Dice Bisonte, No Búfalo |
| Opeth Damnation |
| Oxbow The Narcotic Story |
| Paul Baribeau Grand Ledge |
| Pelican City of Echoes |
| Pig Destroyer Terrifyer |
| Porcupine Tree The Incident |
| Portal Swarth |
| Psychic TV Allegory And Self |
| Radiohead In Rainbows |
| Red Sparowes At The Soundless Dawn |
| Red Sparowes The Fear Is Excruciating, But Therein... |
| Refused The Shape Of Punk To Come |
| Robin Guthrie Carousel |
| Rosetta Wake/Lift |
| Rudimentary Peni Death Church |
| RVIVR RVIVR |
| Sailors With Wax Wings Sailors With Wax Wings |
| Scout Niblett The Calcination of Scout Niblett |
| Set Fire to Flames Telegraphs in Negative/Mouths Trapped in |
| Shellac Terraform |
| Sigur Ros Agætis byrjun |
| Slayer Reign in Blood |
| Sonic Youth Daydream Nation |
| St. Vincent Actor |
| SubRosa (US) No Help for the Mighty Ones |
| Suis La Lune Riala |
| Swans White Light From the Mouth of Infinity |
| Swans Holy Money |
| Tarentel From Bone To Satellite |
| The Angels of Light We Are Him |
| The Ascent of Everest From This Vantage |
| The Austerity Program Backsliders and Apostates Will Burn |
| I like this. It sounds like NoMeansNo if they listened to Big Black. |
| The Blood of Heroes The Blood Of Heroes |
| The Body All The Waters Of The Earth Turn To... |
| The Body and Braveyoung Nothing Passes |
| The Body Lovers Number One of Three |
| The Corin Tucker Band 1,000 Years |
| I really like this. It's very different than Sleater-Kinney, though. In fact, this probably sounds more like Neko Case than anything. |
| The Dead Milkmen Big Lizard in My Backyard |
| The Dear Hunter Act III: Life and Death |
| The Dillinger Escape Plan Calculating Infinity |
| The Dillinger Escape Plan Irony Is a Dead Scene |
| The Dillinger Escape Plan Ire Works |
| The Ergs! Upstairs/Downstairs |
| The High Confessions Turning Lead Into Gold With |
| The Mountain Goats The Sunset Tree |
| The Mountain Goats Zopilote Machine |
| The Nation of Ulysses 13-Point Program To Destroy America |
| The Ocean Anthropocentric |
| The Promise Ring Very Emergency |
| The Riot Before Rebellion |
| The Twilight Sad Forget The Night Ahead |
| The Unwinding Hours The Unwinding Hours |
| Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra Born Into Trouble As the Sparks Fly Upward |
| Titus Andronicus The Monitor |
| Toby Driver In the L..L..Library Loft |
| Tom Waits Blue Valentine |
| Tom Waits Franks Wild Years |
| Tool 10,000 Days |
| Torche Torche |
| Torche In Return |
| Torche Songs for Singles |
| Toundra Toundra (II) |
| U.S. Christmas Eat The Low Dogs |
| Ufomammut Idolum |
| Ulver Shadows of the Sun |
| Ulver Wars of the Roses |
| Yakuza Of Seismic Consequence |
| Young Widows Settle Down City |
| Zodiak Sermons |
| Zoroaster Matador |
Georgia has been an interesting breeding ground for sludge metal in the past decade. Baroness, Mastodon, and Kylesa have all made it big in the scene by taking the blueprints of the genre and distorting them. With Matador, Zoroaster can finally be added to this list of rising stars.
The band's previous work is definitely competent and some of their older songs are on the border of being great. Zoroaster, however, was playing it relatively safe and locking itself in the tight confines of it's genre. On this album, the band seems to be taking more risks. The production work, courtesy of Sanford Parker, is relatively clean yet it feels intentionally distorted.
Songs like "Black Hole" and "Ancient Ones" use this warping to their advantage, creating a thick atmosphere. "Black Hole" lives up to it's namesake with it's untamed riffs.
Zoroaster has started to cut themselves loose from their genre's tradition, and their work is all the better for it. If they continue down this path, they might find themselves sharing a lot of the popularity that their contemporaries have received. |
