| 3.5 great |
| Anthrax Worship Music |
| Art By Numbers Reticence: The Musical |
| August Burns Red Constellations |
| Avenged Sevenfold Waking the Fallen |
| Avenged Sevenfold City of Evil |
| Behemoth Evangelion |
| Cannibal Corpse Butchered at Birth |
| Carcass Reek of Putrefaction |
| Children of Bodom Hate Crew Deathroll |
| Converge Axe to Fall |
| Dance Gavin Dance Dance Gavin Dance |
| Dance Gavin Dance Downtown Battle Mountain II |
| Dethklok The Dethalbum |
| Dream Theater Train of Thought |
| Dream Theater When Dream and Day Unite |
| Dream Theater Octavarium |
| Dream Theater A Dramatic Turn of Events |
In a certainly "Dramatic Turn of Events", without Mike Portnoy at the helm shoving metal
influences into the music; Dream Theater revert to a safe haven of pure Progressive Rock.
Falling back on what they do best with their recently regained ability to cut back on a bit
of excess technique, the unit feels more comfortable playing as a group as ever, without the
collective crash and burn mentality that plagued albums like Systematic Chaos when things
got out of hand.
Unfortunately, the music isn't always groundbreaking throughout and doesn't give newcomer
Mike Mangini thorough creative control to show everything he's got, but as a band in
transition out of a sea of turbulent times; I'm pretty excited to see what will be in store
when they all go at it with Mike included.
Highlights: Outcry, Breaking All Illusions, Bridges in the Sky |
| Evile Enter the Grave |
| Fleshwrought Dementia/Dyslexia |
| Gojira L'Enfant Sauvage |
| Guns N' Roses Chinese Democracy |
| Iron Maiden Dance of Death |
| Iron Maiden The Number of the Beast |
| Iron Maiden A Matter of Life and Death |
| Jeff Loomis Zero Order Phase |
| Job For A Cowboy Ruination |
| Joe Satriani Professor Satchafunkilus and the Musterion of Rock |
| Judas Priest Screaming for Vengeance |
| Just Like Vinyl Just Like Vinyl |
| Killswitch Engage The End of Heartache |
| Machine Head Through the Ashes of Empires |
| Machine Head The Blackening |
| Machine Head Unto the Locust |
| Mastodon Blood Mountain |
| Mastodon Crack the Skye |
| Megadeth Countdown to Extinction |
| Megadeth Killing Is My Business... and Business Is Good! |
| Meshuggah Nothing |
| Metallica Metallica |
| Obituary Slowly We Rot |
| Obituary The End Complete |
| Pantera Cowboys from Hell |
| Rush Moving Pictures |
| Shadow of the Colossus Shadow of the Colossus |
| I'll admit it, I first clicked on the review on sputnik's front page because I thought it was a review for the video game soundtrack of the same name. I wasn't expecting a tightly knit package of deathcore with a tasteful presence of melodic passages littered throughout the album. Even if it's not enough to single-handedly change the face of deathcore, these guys do a helluva job trying. |
| Slayer Show No Mercy |
| Slayer Haunting the Chapel |
| Slipknot Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses |
| Testament Souls of Black |
| Testament The Ritual |
| The Fall of Troy Manipulator |
| The Human Abstract Nocturne |
| The Replacements Let It Be |
| Times of Grace The Hymn of a Broken Man |
| Trivium Shogun |
| While this album is definitely a step in the right direction, Heafy's vocal abilities are still sub-par and the musicianship has an unsettling feeling of "been there done that" even with the standout moments factored into the equation. |
| Veil of Maya Eclipse |
