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 41-2018: The Tea Party – The Edges Of Twilight
Curiosity about world music is natural for every rock band inspired by Led Zeppelin’s latter days. Very few make the leap of actually learning to play indigenous instruments beyond some rudimentary percussion though. This is exactly what The Tea Party did to further emphasize their – mainly – Indian and…
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Album of the Week 36-2018: Alice In Chains – Rainier Fog
A twisted riff, an overall gloomy vibe, haunting vocal harmonies… Opening track ‘The One You Know’ leaves very little doubt that we are listening to Alice In Chains. This could be interpreted as a lack of originality, but since Jerry Cantrell and his cohorts single-handedly developed and perfected this style,…
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Album of the Week 35-2018: Acid Black Cherry – Black List
Solo projects are an odd phenomenon. Technically, they could highlight a vision someone is not allowed to display in their main band, but they are often a disjointed mess. Acid Black Cherry’s debut album ‘Black List’ has all the symptoms of the latter – a rotating cast of musicians, a…
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Album of the Week 34-2018: Eisbrecher – Schock
Often labelled a Rammstein clone – which is not entirely unjustified – Eisbrecher has been moving away from sounding like outright clones and more into “inspired by” territory in recent years. Sure, there are German lyrics sung with a reasonably deep voice over semi-electronic rhythms and simple, but brutally heavy…
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Album of the Week 32-2018: The Magpie Salute – High Water I
Volatile fraternal relationships are nothing new in music. What is quite unusual, however, is that one brother goes on to do something which is at least on par with what made them famous in the first place. The Magpie Salute may just turn out to be one of those instances.…
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Album of the Week 29-2018: Concerto Moon – Savior Never Cry
In the light of Atsushi Kuze joining Jupiter, his works with Concerto Moon have been receiving more than a few spins in my household. I have been fairly critical of Kuze’s competent, but somewhat Dokken-ish voice in the past, but there is one Concerto Moon album on which he is…
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Album of the Week 28-2018: NoGoD – V
Within the visual kei realm, NoGoD is a bit of an anomaly. With a sound that is a lumpless blend of modern hard rock and heavy metal, they don’t really fit any of the trends that exist in their genre and because they are not a cast full of pretty…
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Album of the Week 18-2018: Fumihiko Kitsutaka’s Euphoria – Euphoria
When neoclassically inspired guitarists start a solo project, the records are often filled with flagrant displays of virtuosity. Fumihiko Kitsutaka however, presumably through his career as the guitarist for eighties hardrockers Arouge and crazy eclectics Kinniku Shojo Tai, learned a lesson or two about songwriting. Sure, his impressive dexterity is…
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Album of the Week 16-2018: Stryper – God Damn Evil
With an album title like ‘God Damn Evil’, it is obvious that all semblance of subtlety has gone out the window. Then again, Stryper never was about subtle intricacies. You just know you’re going to get simple, effective hardrock songs with huge choruses, strong melodies and a fairly obvious christian…
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