Heavy Metal Reviews
Heavy metal in all its varieties, and from all eras, is the bread and butter of Kevy Metal, if the name of the site had not given this away yet. All Album of the Week reviews about heavy metal albums published on Kevy Metal can be found right here.
Since I didn’t start properly tagging my reviews until a couple of years in, these aren’t all the heavy metal reviews I have done over the years. If you are looking for something specific, you can always search by band name or release title using the search bar at the bottom of the page.
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Album of the Week 21-2017: Seikima-II – Living Legend
According to Seikima-II’s own mythology, the band had to disband one second before the end of the 20th century. Luckily, they did not do so before releasing one more brilliant heavy metal album. Despite their reputation as an excellent heavy metal band, this was still a little surprising, because throughout…
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Album of the Week 18-2017: Soundgarden – Badmotorfinger
Along with Alice In Chains, Soundgarden is one of the very few bands from the early nineties Seattle scene that is actually appreciated among heavy metal audiences. The band’s third album ‘Badmotorfinger’ clearly shows why. The noisy punk leanings or mainstream ambitions that many of the band’s peers did have…
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Album of the Week 15-2017: God Forbid – Earthsblood
God Forbid’s last album with their original line-up – and penultimate altogether – was the record on which they truly outdid themselves. In quite a litteral sense too. Starting out as a musically tight, but not particularly surprising metalcore band, the quintet gradually evolved into an excellent contemporary heavy metal…
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Album of the Week 14-2017: Onmyo-za – Kishibojin
Concept albums can be a tricky affair, but when done right, their atmosphere and continuity lifts everything about the albums in question to a higher level. Take Onmyo-za’s ‘Kishibojin’. It’s one of those albums that leaves very little to be desired and therefore is almost impossible to turn off before…
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Album of the Week 13-2017: Wicked Mystic – Lithium
Sometimes unexpected breakups inadvertently mean that bands go out while they’re at their peaks. Yours truly was thoroughly impressed with Wicked Mystic’s sophomore album ‘Lithium’, but before they could properly promote the record, the band had already broken up. And that means that outside of the Netherlands, not many people…
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Album of the Week 12-2017: Seikima-II – Mephistopheles no Shouzou
A cliché often used for eighties rock bands that survived through the nineties is that their records sound as if the nineties didn’t happen. Hardly any album answers more to that sentiment than ‘Mephistopheles No Shouzou’. Despite being released in 1996, the compositions, arrangements and production scream eighties hard rock…
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Album of the Week 11-2017: OverKill – W.F.O.
Like many of their peers, OverKill faded to the background a little when the nineties reared their heads. Unlike their peers, however, OverKill continued to make quality records. A complaint often heard is that the band focused too much on groove following their classic ‘Horrorscope’ album. And while the next…
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Album of the Week 10-2017: Pentagram – Bir
Around the time ‘Unspoken’ was released, Pentagram must have realized that there was a demand for their Turkish language songs, which the album lacked. So a year after that album, the band released ‘Bir’, a collection consisting entirely of songs in Turkish lyrics or without any lyrics at all. This…
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Album of the Week 09-2017: Onmyo-za – Fuujin Kaikou
With the genre nearing five decades of existence, finding unique sounding metal is becoming increasingly difficult. Onmyo-za somehow succeeds at doing so without attempting anything too far-fetched. Their riffs and twin melodies are generally from the traditional heavy metal and hard rock mold, but their open-minded approach to songwriting allows…
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