REVIEW: Chimaira

Artist: Chimaira

Album: The Infection

Release Date: April 21st, 2009

Genre(s): Metalcore

Okay so this is the new album from the Cleveland rockers Chimaira, and let me just say that it bores me to death.

Think of everything you liked in their previous couple albums and throw that out the window, there is no speed, no complex drumming, nothing in this album. If you enjoy slow riffs with slow drums in your metalcore then by all means listen to this, if not then stay the hell away.

Just when you think it's going to get fast, it doesn't. It's just bullshit, I feel like I wasted my life listening to this shit, kill me now. But I might as well finish the damn review.

Here is my opinion of every song on this album:

1. The Venom Inside - Too bad the venom didn't work :(.

2. Frozen in Time - This album is frozen in time because I had to pause it.

3. Coming Alive - Coming alive are you? More like dying a slow death, RIP.

4. Secrets of the Dead - There are no more secrets, you bored them to the fucking afterlife.

5. The Disappearing Sun - It disappeared right up your giant assholes, christ.

6. Impending Doom - This review after all the hate it will receive from anal assholes.

7. On Broken Glass - OH LOOK! THE BEGINNING HAS SPE- oh nevermind people, back to slow again. Oh right, a pun...ummm...I feel like driving broken glass through my ears after listening to this song.

8. Destroy and Dominate - This album destroys my mind and dominates my asshole in very painful and bad ways.

9. Try to Survive - What you'll be doing while listening to this.

10. The Heart of it All - It had been given a heart attack due to massive amounts of faggotry.

Hope you people enjoyed the review : D. Now it's time to forget this album with some booze, peace.

Track to Check: None, they all sound the same

Score: 1.2/10

-Dainja

REVIEW: Warbringer

Artist: Warbringer

Album: Waking Into Nightmares

Release Date: May 19, 2009

Genre(s): Thrash, neo-thrash

THRASH!!! The year is 2009, and it's a very, very good year to be a thrasher. All your favorite thrash bands from the past are back to kick ass (this year, we're seeing new albums from Kreator, Slayer, and Megadeth), but that's not the reason you should be glad to be a thrasher right now. It's because, for once, there's a new wave of talented young rippers who are taking pride in playing music the way Satan wanted them to. There are countless neo-thrash bands on the scene today, and let's face it, not all of them are worth your time, but there are a bunch who have serious chops. Hands down, the most notable American neo-thrash band is Warbringer.

What makes Warbringer so special? A lot of things. Warbringer plays thrash, straight-up the way we remember it, the way we love it, with amazing proficiency and sincerity. Warbringer loves thrash, and if you love thrash, you'll love Warbringer, because thrash is their calling. Or maybe you love Warbringer because of their live dominance. If you frequent metal shows, I'm sure you've caught at least one of their performances (these guys tour CONSTANTLY), and I bet you had a killer time, too. These guys energize their songs and pump their crowd, adding up to some awesome freakin' pits. I know the reason I love Warbringer is because they're the most fan-friendly band I've ever met. If you go to one of their concerts, they'll be out in the lobby, hanging with fans; not merely polite greetings either, these dudes will have full conversations with fans. They're cool, funny, friendly, and all-around awesome people. It should be a crime to not love Warbinger; there's not a bad thing I can say about them.

As for their new album, Waking Into Nightmares owns, like holy crap, it's thrash to the core. I'm sure I don't have to bother explaining what thrash sounds like, so let me assure you guys, this is something you'll want to own if you're down with the thrash sound. The riffs sound amazing, the speed is wondrous to behold; it all sounds heavy and beautiful (by beautiful, I mean thrashy and violent!). New drummer Nic Ritter reaches a much greater height than his predecessor, busting out some fast and technical stuff that sounds just awesome. The bass adds a thick layer of infrasonic punishment (I've tried playing some of these songs on bass---they sound good!). And of course, the vocals are the greatest thing I can mention. John Kevill has an impetuous scream that sounds vehement beyond comparison. He shrieks out every song with as much force as he can muster, and really gives each song an extra push that makes them exceptional.

Warbringer knows all the right ingredients to make music sound good, and at no point does any of the music seem contrived. War Without End (2008) was a sick album, but Waking Into Nightmares takes things to a whole new level. Warbringer is a god among current metal bands, and this is a modern thrash-terpiece. Any thrashers out there who don't own this album yet are gonna take some punches in the pit!!!

Track to Check: "Senseless Life"

Rating: 9.0/10

-Psychotic Pulse

REVIEW: Job for a Cowboy

Artist: Job for a Cowboy

Album: Ruination

Release Date: July 7, 2009

Genre(s): Deathcore, death metal

Holy shit - that's a fucking BADASS album art. You're browsing the metal section in your local music retailer, looking for a new cd to bang your head to. After seeing that display of awesomeness, you're ready to drop your hard earned cash, take it home, and play the shit out of it. With artwork like that, you've got a death metal masterpiece in your hands for sure. Right?

...Right? Sadly, no. You couldn't have been more wrong. The moment Ruination enters the disc tray, starts spinning, and the speakers start lamentably vomiting out the first song, you realize you've made a grave mistake. And it's too late. The sadistic members of the band must be laughing now, knowing you're in for a sad forty minutes of suffering and pain. Not the good kind of pain, like the smash-you-in-the-face brutality of a Cannibal Corpse album. The pain that makes you want to stop living; the kind of pain that can come only from mistakenly purchasing a horrible album. You've just been introduced to Job for a Cowboy.

You can tell right away that the relationship between you two isn't going to work out, and you wish you'd never met. You want to like Job for a Cowboy; you may see the good in them deep down, their sweeeet death metal core, but it's hard to get past all of their glaring flaws. For starters, you can't communicate with each other properly. Why? Maybe because the voice gets on your nerves. The vocalist's growl is deep and sounds pretty good, but all of a sudden, he'll switch up his style (mid-verse, no less) without cause or warning, and do this high shriek that makes him sound like a complete ass. You wouldn't mind this one little issue if he did it less, but it keeps happening, and you don't know how to live with it.

As time goes on, you start neglecting Job for a Cowboy, spending less time with them. You feel bad, but it's just something you can't bring yourself to do. This band bores the hell out of you. Their riffs are generic far beyond interest. Once in a while it strikes up something that really interests you, but that cool part of that song is over before you know it, and it's back to that driving monotony you've gotten used to. You dread the premise of giving Ruinaton another go-around, knowing full well that it's going to drag on and on and on and on and on and on miserably. When you think one of these songs is going to end, your spirits lift at the prospect of getting to hear something different (if only slightly), and then come crashing down when the song continues. Never before have you wanted something to end so badly.

Relationships require a sense of rhythm from both participants, and the rhythm in Job for a Cowboy's latest album can only be described as erratic. You can only help but feel sorry for the drummer, witnessing that he has such talent yet no idea what to do with it. He overuses the cymbals in every song, including parts where it seems entirely inappropriate. The drum part changes at least 6 times per passage; there's no consistency whatsoever. It's hard for you to get into the songs when the drum parts sound like a bunch of randomly hit difficult patterns that the this guy played, clearly while attempting to show off, looped throughout the song, without even an effort to sync them with the other instruments. When you realize that the driving force behind everything doesn't even make sense to you, then you realize that it's time to break up.

And that's it - your relationship with Job for a Cowboy, which seemed so sincere at first, has come to a swift end. You can't say you hated everything about Ruination, though. There's a memorable solo here or there, and it's decidedly less deathcore-sounding than the band's previous work. You may be able to give them credit for that, but it's certainly not enough to make Ruination worth a listen. Any group with a couple good guitarists and a resilient drummer can get together, play something heavy, and call it death metal, but that doesn't mean it's going to be good. Coherent songwriting and expression are musts, and JFAC fails so miserably in that category, they're not even worth calling a band.

Ruination hasn't touched your cd player for weeks, and it's found a new home inside your recepticle bin, but the memories of the bad times you spent with it will haunt you forever.

Track to Check: God help you if you even think about listening to this album, but each song is as mindless and putrid as the other.
Score: 2.6/10

-Psychotic Pulse

REVIEW: DevilDriver

Artist: DevilDriver
Album: Pray for Villains
Release Date: July 14th, 2009
Genre(s): Groove Metal

Hey guys, this is my first review so don't get up all on my ass yet :(. Anyway, here goes!

Ah yes, Mr.Dez Fafara and his crew is back with a new album, and I must say it still keeps with the in-your-face-kick-your-ass kind of sound we are used to hearing from them (minus the earlier nu-metal influences).

The album opens with a pretty hard riffing title track and is one of my favourite on the album (yes I know I put in a u, I'm Canadian) followed by a much slower track 2 titled "Pure Sincerity". The album really starts to get going on Fate Stepped In, my absolute favourite from the album. Beginning with a very catchy opening riff and a high tempo that continues right up near the end of the song when they have their characteristicly relaxed atmosphere that reminds me a lot from the beginning of"End of the Line" from their 2nd album. This leads us to the following track "Back With a Vengeance" which is not noteworthy of any way in my opinion, so I'll just continue to "I've Been Sober" which is another one of my favourites. A pretty catchy rhythm and chorus in this song, and I found it weird hearing a little bit of clean vocals near the end, very good song. The following 2 songs are mediocre but the track "Waiting for November" just kicks you right in the fucking face after the slow paced opening. The last noteworthy song in my opinion would be "Teach Me to Whisper", due to the catchiness and it is seemingly lighter than most of the other songs on the album, but still very good.

The limited edition version of this album has 4 extra songs including a meh cover of Wasted Years by Iron Maiden which was originally on the track listing of Maiden Heaven.

This is a pretty good release by DevilDriver, I'd rank it a bit higher than "The Last Kind Words". I'm having a tough time figuring out how to conclude this review, so I'll just wish you all a nice day : D. \m/

Track to Check: Fate Stepped In
Score: 7.8/10
-Dainja C.

REVIEW: Born of Osiris

Artist: Born of Osiris

Album: A Higher Place

Release Date: July 7, 2009

Genre(s): Tech-death, metalcore

If your eyes haven't started reeling at the genre classification for these guys (technical death and... metalcore? Huh?!), then keep reading. These guys provide one hell of a weird genre fusion that somehow works (dare I say it?), spledidly. The guitars lay down metalcore riffs and technical sweeps in the same song. You'll hear the drummer do breakdowns and later go into sixteenth-note and double bass mania. The vocalist utilizes a death growl most of the time, but throws in the occasional metalcore scream to shake things up. Why does it work?

This genre-fusion works because it sounds so damn cool when these guys do it, plain and simple. Bands have tried mixing death metal and metalcore, with some less-than-stellar results (Job for a Cowboy, anyone? No thanks!); Born of Osiris thankfully put some more creativity into the process. Metalcore is a very stale genre with little diversity, so leave it to Born of Osiris to take the best aspects of it, cut the fat, and leave it on the plate, while experimenting with one of the very few metal genres that has yet to be played out: techincal death metal. What is the result?

The result is an album that surprises listeners by contrasting brutality with melody at the drop of a hat. There's a bright atmosphere behind all of the dark overtones; never before have I listened to a record with such pounding heaviness and came away with an uplifting feeling. It's a compelling sound, without a doubt, and most of the songs stick out in my mind, the novelty no doubt playing a major role. Those looking for something new, you absolutely have to give this album a shot; it's progressive and absolutely refreshing.

The repitition, surprisingly, is kept to a minimum due to the album's rational concesity. Almost all of the tracks on A Higher Place run under three minutes, making sure that none of the songs wear out their welcome. The 13 songs add up to slightly over half an hour, giving it a short but sweet spin in your stereo. Each of the tunes have a similar-sound when they first start out, but the disc keeps you listening to hear what sort of changes the band will throw in as each song picks up.

This is a very interesting listen for open-mided metalheads. If you're tired of hearing the numerous unoriginal, lifeless clones of last decade's metal bands (that happen to be so prevalent in this decade), make it your business to pick up a copy of A Higher Place. It's one of those releases that supports my theory that metal has more to offer than we ever imagined. Those who appreciate originality may come to agree after taking this record out for a few spins.

Track to Check: "Starved"

Score: 8.8/10

More Info At: www.myspace.com/bornofosiris

-Psychotic Pulse

Welcome to the Psychotic Pulse!

This is a short intro post briefly detailing my blog's mission. It's a constantly updated post dedicated to bringing you the latest metal news and reviews from a diehard expert on the genre. We'll be bringing you album reviews weekly, the tour dates for sick shows, and the biggest news about what's going on in the metal industry today. Opinion columns or metal-related subjects may occasionally feature, as well.

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To metal!!!

-Psychotic Pulse