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 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,…
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Best of 2025: The Albums
We interrupt your regularly scheduled Venezuelan Metal Season for what I think are the twenty best new studio albums of 2025. Like last year, it was quite difficult to limit the list to only twenty titles. Great albums were relesased consistently throughout the year. While I briefly considered expanding the…
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Album of the Week 49-2025: Resistencia – Hecho en Venezuela
Very early heavy metal albums from any country have a tendency to be charming and promising, but also flawed. More often than not, that is the result of even the most experienced sound engineers at the time not knowing how to capture the raw power of a rock band on…
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Album of the Week 47-2025: Ningen Isu – Mahoroba
Like clockwork, Ningen Isu releases another album just over two years after their last one. For many bands, a release schedule like that would inevitably lead to running on auto-pilot after a while. But even though Ningen Isu has a sound that is immediately identifiable, the Japanese power trio somehow…
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Album of the Week 46-2025: Sortilège – Le Poids de l’Âme
After Sortilège essentially split in two about five years ago, the version of the band fronted by Christian ‘Zouille’ Augustin it the only one that managed to put together some new material. Obviously, with a band legendary enough to be able to just keep touring as a legacy act, there…
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Album of the Week 45-2025: Mägo de Oz – Malicia: La Noche de las Brujas
With a ten-piece line-up and a musical approach that just screams “let’s throw everything at the wall and see if it sticks”, Mägo de Oz may come across as sort of a traveling circus rather than a band. And, to be fair, ‘Malicia: La Noche de las Brujas’ is on…
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Album of the Week 44-2025: Aria – Kogda Nastanyet Zavtra
Aria celebrates its fortieth anniversary this year. Many veteran bands would be on auto-pilot after such a long period of uninterrupted activity, releasing a compilation album or a live release to mark the occasion. Ever since their best singer Mikhail Zhitnyakov joined the band in 2011, however, Aria has been…
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