Hard Rock Reviews
As much as I like to call myself and this site Kevy Metal, my journey into music actually began with hard rock. Seventies and nineties hardrock – plus contemporary bands inspired by these styles – are still a significant part of what I listen to, and therefore, Album of the Week reviews on hard rock bands are published frequently. You can find all of them right here. Overlaps with my heavy metal reviews inevitably exist.
Looking for something specific, but can’t find it by browsing the reviews? Searching by artist name or release title using the search bar might bring up some Album of the Week reviews I have written before I started tagging my reviews properly.
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Album of the Week 37-2026: Europe – Come This Madness
Not many hard rock bands from the eighties have aged as gracefully as Europe has. Ever since they reunited in the early 2000s, they have been releasing music that is neither desperately clinging to their own past, nor are they trying too hard to get with the times. Instead, their…
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Album of the Week 34-2026: Triosphere – Oceans Above, Stars Below
Whatever happened to Triosphere? It’s a question I genuinely asked myself many times over the twelve years since their last album ‘The Heart of the Matter’ was released. Occasional activity checks proved that they had not broken up, but when ‘Monster’s Ball’, the first single of ‘Oceans Above, Stars Below’,…
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Album of the Week 30-2026: Iconic – II
Michael Sweet has a busy year. He released his solo album ‘The Master Plan’ in April, and the new Stryper album ‘Throne of Thorns’ is slated for release in late September. The fact that there is a second Iconic album in the middle of those is something that took me…
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Album of the Week 27-2026: Deep Purple – Splat!
Superlatives are typically thrown around when veteran bands release new albums. In fact, Deep Purple did it themselves, calling ‘Splat!’ their heaviest album in a long time. Whether that is actually true is in the ear of the beholder, but since ‘Splat!’ is one of their harder-rocking and most focused…
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Check Out Joad Manuel Jiménez’ ‘Retrospective’
One of the best things to come out of Venezuelan Metal Season for me was befriending Joad Manuel Jiménez. For those of you who don’t know: Joad was the singer of Venezuelan heavy metal pioneers Arkangel from 1994 to 2002, and then again from 2015 to 2016. After leaving Arkangel…
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Album of the Week 13-2026: Corrosion of Conformity – Good God / Baad Man
Quite a lot has changed in the Corrosion of Conformity camp in the eight years since ‘No Cross No Crown’ was released. Drummer Reed Mullin passed away in 2020, and longtime bassist Mike Dean quit the band. However, with Stanton Moore returning on drums, the band suddenly consisted of three…
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Album of the Week 07-2026: Black Swan – Paralyzed
My dislike for supergroups is fairly well-documented on this site, but I have made an exception for Black Swan since I first heard them. There are two important reasons for that. First off, guitarist Reb Beach and bassist Jeff Pilson tend to take songwriting and production very seriously, regardless of…
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EP of the Week 06.5-2026: Superblood – Enter a New Phase
Just when I thought Eizo Sakamoto had disappeared completely from the rock and metal scene after most of his post-Anthem projects failed to make much of a lasting impression, he was suddenly announced as Superblood’s new frontman with the fantastic new single ‘Enter a New Phase’ a few months ago.…
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Album of the Week 02-2026: Landsemk – Vence Tus Miedos
One of the handful of Venezuelan bands whose work I enjoyed before starting my research into Venezuelan Metal Season is Landsemk. Their blend of traditional heavy metal, pronounced melodic touches that owe as much to eighties hard rock as they do to power metal, and subtle progressive leanings is catchy,…