For Those About to Squawk: TBDM, Primitive Man, Nudist

You should know the deal by now: I’m a parrot and I like to review records… and I review them for YOU!

So The Black Dahlia Murder are back at it with their 8th full length, Nightbringers, on Metal Blade. This cranky parrot is not a huge fan of melodic death metal, but I’m pretty sure I gave Everblack and Abysmal a positive review. So what about this one? Well, this is BDM no doubt, but feels a little like a different band when compared to some of the more recent efforts. BDM feels like they are paying more attention to songwriting and adding some catchiness to their songs in Nightbringers. Again, feeling like a more classic sound from BDM is not a bad thing, as there are hooks a plenty on this, but anyone looking to get their ass kicked should look elsewhere. So? All in all? This is a solid release and could be the return to form that this band has been looking for. 6 Fucking Pecks.

Denver’s own Primitive Man release their second full length, Caustic, on Relapse. To pigeonhole this band is a little difficult, part-doom, part-sludge, part-punk with a definite blackened edge. Let me first off point out that this record is HEAVY as peck, and the feedback drenched passages lend to a certain nastiness that make give this thing a more visceral feel. There are a lot of passages without vocals here and in general that leads to making this feel a little same-y at times, even though there are subtle variations on the songs here. All is all, this is an exercise in darkness and nihilism and a great second effort. 7 Fucking Pecks.

So you know I’m going to review a band called Nudist, and I gotta say, this is disappointing… I really wanted to not like this. So Bury My Innocence on Wooaaargh is noise rock, and I mean noise rock. From the thumping bass, drony, razor-sounding guitars, hammered drums and raspy shouted vocals, you don’t get more squawking noise rock than this. The reason Nudist stands out (and trust me, I wanted to make fun of this) is they’re from Italy, which is weird. So this record is cool… very Unsane-y and really packs a sonic punch of heavy rock balls. One thing I’d like to point out is there seems to be a glut of these bands and they all kind of follow the same formula, it’d be cool to see something more from this genre than bands that sound like each other. Anyway this is cool. 7 Fucking Pecks.

Peace out… howlies…