There seems to be not much going on this week, so I’ll do my best to keep you informed.
The Rods (also known as Ronnie James Dio’s cousin’s band) is an almost 40 year old act, are releasing their eighth LP, Brotherhood of Metal, on SPV/Steamhammer. I have to say I unabashedly love stuff like this (please see Wild Dogs 1982). The Rods are trad metal, a little more in the hard rock vein that has odes to playing loud, drinking and other such topics that a typical metalhead would love. This is just pure balls to the wall metal, I mean there are no bones about it. There are NO ballads, nothing here that doesn’t rock. That being said, I went into this with some hesitation — I mean when a band has been around THAT long and remains basically unknown, it doesn’t really bode well. This is SURPRISINGLY good for guys that are probably on Social Security. This is not without its faults, though. A lot of this stuff comes across as the same, but there is some life left in this band. 6 Fucking Pecks.
The industrial metal act Combichrist is back at it with their ninth record One Fire out on Out Of Line records. The first thing to note here is that this does not sound all the same, there is a very distinct tone to this but retains the whole Combichrist sound. The record starts out HEAVY (maybe their heaviest), then kind of has a dip then gets heavy as peck again. This comes across basically like a “side a/side b” kind of vibe, but retaining an overall feel of one complete package. Of note is a cover of Dead Kennedy’s California Uber Alles. I’m pecking digging this, kind of feels like a “best of” of all their records with new tracks. 8 Fucking Pecks.
A little over a year ago, the metal community lost Cave In and Old Man Gloom bassist Caleb Scofield. Now Cave In returns with Final Transmission on Hydra Head. Little is known about this (beyond a 5000-word cover story about it in our new issue –ed), so I’m not going to really review it here. What is known is that Scofield played on all of these tracks and had a HUGE hand in writing them. I can’t really review it (like I said it’s been kept fairly quiet), but I’m sure it’ll rip.
Waldo out!
