Penetrator-S/T
(Sonic Age Records, 2005)


What the world really needs is another bad heavy metal band, and one seemingly named after a equally bad porno movie. Want to be taken seriously? Don’t name your band Penetrator. Through and through, this is a poor mans Judas Priest that really does nothing to improve or expand the genre of heavy metal. This is the type of band you’d expect to hear at the bar and yea they might sound good after 12 beers, but sober this just isn’t very recommendable.

Pro-Pain-Prophets of Doom
(Candlelight USA, 2005)

Despite some surprising success with one album, I’m really surprised that Pro-Pain have stayed together as long as they have. They aren’t an extremely successful band, but despite that they keep trucking on and releasing consistently quality albums.

Prophets of Doom shows the band continuing in their usual style of hardcore meets thrash, full of groove and some slightly fast tempos. They aren’t doing anything that would really be considered new when compared to the back catalogue, but these are definitely among some of the best songs the band has written to date.

Pro-Pain are one of those bands that you pretty much know exactly what to expect from. If you liked them in the past, you’ll definitely still like them.

Dark Funeral-Live in South America 2003
(Candlelight USA, 2005)

Live albums are sometimes hit and miss. With the digital age being what it is, live albums are being replaced by DVDs and sometimes without the visual aid live albums can be a bit boring. Dark Funeral isn’t a band that I am extremely familiar with but the few albums I have heard I definitely liked. This live album proves that the band is just as devastating live as they are on album though. The band is tight and ferocious and really manages to play with a lot of energy. The only real problem I have with this is that I don’t think black metal is really suited for a live environment sometimes. A lot of these songs are fairly similar in sound and without the different productions from the albums; they start to sound even more similar. All in all though, this is definitely an above average live album. The band’s performance is damn near flawless, and rabid followers of the band would find this an essential purchase.

Monolithe-II
(Candlelight USA, 2005)

This is definitely a truly unique album. Monolithe is closest to the doom genre, but they definitely aren’t typical of the genre at all. They do have the crushing heaviness and slower tempos, but there is something a bit more spacey about this band, an atmosphere very different then the norm.

The album being on track at around 50 minutes might seem a bit daunting at first. But look at this like the doom equivalent of Crimson by Edge of Sanity. It is so well written and paced that the time just seems to fly by. Which is no small feat, when you consider that doom is a relatively slow genre. While on the subject of Edge of Sanity, the band’s gruff vocal approach actually does bring to mind Dan Swano at times. But that’s as far as the comparison could go really.

Doom fans will definitely find this album amazing. Fans of faster styles may even find the bands atmospheric approach a nice change of pace, but this definitely isn’t for those of you with short attention spans.

Flotsam and Jetsam-Dreams of Death
(Crash, 2005)

I wonder if it bothers these guys to eternally be known as the band that had the bassist from Metallica. Oh well. They can at least revel in the fact that Dreams of Death is a million times better then anything Metallica has released in a long damn time. Those familiar with the band will notice that this definitely isn’t much different then classic Flotsam. Fast thrash meets a more standard heavy metal sound that keeps things heavy yet very catchy. These guys have always been good songwriters and these songs definitely don’t disappoint. Look in His Eyes is a bit too ballady for my tastes, but overall the album has a lot of balls, while still keeping in step with the bands early material. I’m somewhat surprised to see that Crash signed these guys; I almost would have thought a much bigger label would have stepped in to support these guys. Hopefully Crash can handle what will come from this album, because an album this good is definitely going to gather some steam once word starts to spread.