Imperialist brings us Prime, 9 tracks of spiralling, breakneck black metal which is certainly going to be a crowd pleaser.
Sergio Soto’s piercingly harsh and often rapid metal vocals take centre stage with impressively long sustained metal screams; these are complimented by half time drumbeats to serve as a mid-track breakdown before gifting us loud and glorious solos. Throughout this album the guitars are buoyant with some excellent reverb which is a real feast for the ears.
Beneath The Sands Of Titan is noteworthy for its biting vocals and impressively fast drums which makes me break a sweat by listening. Another point of interest is the pacing of the guitars which switch to slower patterned whine instead of offering a breakdown to a track that’s already rapid, this works incredibly well and offers us something different before going into a slower more heartfelt hook.
Prime as a whole is very meaty and textured. The band has a great dynamic, and they complement each other well, the attention to detail for this one is crystal clear. Prime is memorable and is pure Mosh pit fuel. I really enjoyed this one and have recommended it to pretty much everyone I’ve bumped into. 9/10.
Syncolima - Move Mountains (Self Released) [Matt Bladen]
Beneath The Sands Of Titan is noteworthy for its biting vocals and impressively fast drums which makes me break a sweat by listening. Another point of interest is the pacing of the guitars which switch to slower patterned whine instead of offering a breakdown to a track that’s already rapid, this works incredibly well and offers us something different before going into a slower more heartfelt hook.
Prime as a whole is very meaty and textured. The band has a great dynamic, and they complement each other well, the attention to detail for this one is crystal clear. Prime is memorable and is pure Mosh pit fuel. I really enjoyed this one and have recommended it to pretty much everyone I’ve bumped into. 9/10.
Syncolima - Move Mountains (Self Released) [Matt Bladen]
Syncolima are looking to Move Mountains on their third full length and as Stoff's driving bass begins Gluten Free Toast, the engine of the bulldozer comes to life and we're ready to make things flatter than East Anglia. Along with Stoff, Syncolima is Josh's fuzzy guitars and sneering vocals wean of conspiracy theories as Harry's drums keep a steady pace, throwing in a clever fill hear and there to remind you that this just isn't brain-dead stoner rock.
They are a band with plenty of skill who anchor their sound with stoner rock but also venture into desert rock meets sludge on preview single Mistakes Were Made which shifts between rowdy riffs with gruff shouts and woozy psych moments where they get their prog on before crashing into some doom grooves.
They are a band with plenty of skill who anchor their sound with stoner rock but also venture into desert rock meets sludge on preview single Mistakes Were Made which shifts between rowdy riffs with gruff shouts and woozy psych moments where they get their prog on before crashing into some doom grooves.
Shipwrecked goes further down the stoner rock route with plenty of filthy bass lines and phazered guitar riffing, then they transition into galloping Maiden grooves on Ouroboros, meanwhile the title track shifts focus into grungy psychedelics.
It's an eccentric, energetic third record that doesn't shift the focus too far from what they were doing with their two previous albums but just tweaks it into the best version of what it can be.
It's an eccentric, energetic third record that doesn't shift the focus too far from what they were doing with their two previous albums but just tweaks it into the best version of what it can be.
The songs are more varied in style, the lyrics are still sharp and full of clever wordplay, inspired by politics, societal and mental health issues, it's a record with themes that many will associate with, be it on the fat grooves of The House We Build or the stoner thrash of Kill All Billionaires.
So do Syncolima Move Mountains on album three? It's not a total seismic destruction but they have shifted things enough to notice that this is band who are not the same as the one that began just after the pandemic, album number three pitches them as future heroes of the UK stoner scene. 8/10
Speed Queen - With A Bang (High Roller Records) [Simon Black]
Bands like Belgium’s Speed Queen are a prime example of why I am eternally hopeful about the state of the Rock and Metal scene into the future.
So do Syncolima Move Mountains on album three? It's not a total seismic destruction but they have shifted things enough to notice that this is band who are not the same as the one that began just after the pandemic, album number three pitches them as future heroes of the UK stoner scene. 8/10
Speed Queen - With A Bang (High Roller Records) [Simon Black]
Bands like Belgium’s Speed Queen are a prime example of why I am eternally hopeful about the state of the Rock and Metal scene into the future.
With a lot of the old bands that I grew up with in the 80’s still floating around, cranking out an album every few years that gives them an excuse to tour (but which doesn’t really generate any sales from the media itself, despite the exorbitant cost of production no matter how many times you stream it).
Treading the boards with a set mostly propped up with material that’s decades old and slowly fading away it’s easy to think that the time for this sort of music may be past.
They are not getting any younger, yet right now there is an increasingly energetic groundswell of completely new acts full of highly competent musicians in their early twenties for whom the decades between my youth and theirs are irrelevant waiting to take their place.
Describing themselves in their press releases as “A bunch of greasy teenagers discovering our dads’ record collections” bands like Speed Queen give me a huge amount of hope. For acts like this all the influence they need comes from the NWOBHM to the mid-80’s period where traditional Metal in its classical forms represents a pinnacle worth aiming for.
Describing themselves in their press releases as “A bunch of greasy teenagers discovering our dads’ record collections” bands like Speed Queen give me a huge amount of hope. For acts like this all the influence they need comes from the NWOBHM to the mid-80’s period where traditional Metal in its classical forms represents a pinnacle worth aiming for.
They are by no means alone – bands like the UK’s Tailgunner, whose meteoric rise up the bills of decent size festivals have proved that there is absolutely a vibrant market for youngsters like this to unashamedly wear their influences on their sleeves and play music that if it were no longer relevant, wouldn’t be needed by the oldsters to prop up their sets live forty years after their commercial peak.
This sophomore release has been cooking for a long time, with the impact of their debut Still On The Road somewhat dented by the Covid pandemic stifling their ability to get out on the said road and scream of their existence.
This sophomore release has been cooking for a long time, with the impact of their debut Still On The Road somewhat dented by the Covid pandemic stifling their ability to get out on the said road and scream of their existence.
It does exactly what is says on the tin, delivering forty minutes of well crafted and utterly catchy speed metal with an appropriate punch in the chops, straight from the Exciter, Racer X and Metal Church disks their parents had the good taste to invest in back in the day.
I was surprised to find, given the amount of harmonised guitar layering in here that they are only a four piece with just the one axe, because this is a rich and well-layered musical experience, but one I suspect that is going to need either a click track or an extra pair of hands to reproduce live.
I was surprised to find, given the amount of harmonised guitar layering in here that they are only a four piece with just the one axe, because this is a rich and well-layered musical experience, but one I suspect that is going to need either a click track or an extra pair of hands to reproduce live.
That’s a problem for another day, because what we have here definitely leaves me wanting to see what they can do live, as these ten tracks are well-crafted, polished in their delivery yet retaining exactly the essence and energy those acts back in the day achieved through constrained studio time and living with chemistry.
Too many bands waste energy trying to recreate an archaic mix, and Speed Queen score points from me from completely trying to sound like their come from 2025, and focus on bottling the energy with well-crafted catchiness and sheer energy.
Frontman Thomas Kenis holds the attention with a huge dollop of charisma, and no amount of vocal ability, but it’s the quality of songwriting that’s got me by the short and curlies today, because frankly there is not a bad track on here.
Frontman Thomas Kenis holds the attention with a huge dollop of charisma, and no amount of vocal ability, but it’s the quality of songwriting that’s got me by the short and curlies today, because frankly there is not a bad track on here.
It’s not all ninety miles an hour shredding, the traditional metal has equal footing, but with that restrained energy just bubbling under the surface of even the slowest tracks like a ticking bomb. Well-written, solidly delivered and catchy as fuck, this has had me grinning from ear to ear all morning. 9/10
ten56 - IO (Out Of Line) [GC]
Mixing death metal and elements of hardcore has been very popular as of late and there seems to be a whole new wave of deathcore bands appearing on the scene, it’s a polarizing sound as it can alienate fans of both genre’s if it’s not done very well!
ten56 - IO (Out Of Line) [GC]
Mixing death metal and elements of hardcore has been very popular as of late and there seems to be a whole new wave of deathcore bands appearing on the scene, it’s a polarizing sound as it can alienate fans of both genre’s if it’s not done very well!
Today I have the latest album IO from ten56, another band trying to convince us that they are the ones to make you truly think deathcore is the scene for you!
To be honest with you with you, I don’t think Doormat is going to make you think that deathcore is very good, it has the annoyingly overproduced electronic sound through everything and it grates on my nerves.
To be honest with you with you, I don’t think Doormat is going to make you think that deathcore is very good, it has the annoyingly overproduced electronic sound through everything and it grates on my nerves.
The song doesn’t really go anywhere either and is very mid-paced all the way through and very much the same can be said of Pig, the riffs get swallowed by the production and they all sound the same, the drums sound flat and lackluster and the pacing is slow and meandering.
Snapped Neck follows on and sounds exactly the same as everything else so far but here we do get some melodic vocals added in to create an new atmosphere and it does freshen things up slightly but doesn’t take long to fall back into the familiar routine and also errs more on the straightforward metalcore sound.
LIFEISACHORE.MOV is a stupid interlude that is another annoyance on top of all the other annoyances but then things do pick up slightly on I Know Where You Sleep which has a blistering beginning and gets your hopes up only for them to be dashed after about 36 seconds where it all just falls flat and gets slow and predictably disappointing again.
Good Morning once again opens with promise and has some wonderfully aggressive riffing and drums that almost cut through the production they mix in the slower more angsty parts in well to this song, they are still not for me but they work well in this song and it almost feels like they might have cracked a decent formula because the same style and unpredictability carries on into Earwig.
The introduction of some squealing guitars is slightly annoying though and its feeling like all I can mention is annoying things now as they seems to outweigh the positive decent things I occasionally hear, anyway for the most part this is actually a fairly decent track but on most other albums it would probably be a bit of a filler track and that also tells you a story in itself really!
ICU could have been lifted directly off any Emmure album, and you wouldn’t have guessed it was another band which is yet another reason I am not really getting behind this record, it’s just all very predictable sounding, has been done a 1000 times before and offers no inspiration or excitement.
PTY FCK goes back to the slow, laborious pacing from earlier track and drags it knuckles along the floor and never gets out of first gear and as before the song just sort of goes nowhere and plods along until it’s over.
Friends just might be the most annoying thing on this record, which is saying something its just 2 minutes of nothing with a bit of stupid guitars tacked on the end for nor reason, what is the point??
At this point I have just given up hope and Banshee does nothing to change my mood its just more formulaic boring noise and they end on IO which for a second makes me think I am listening to 21 Pilots, just an utterly pointless way to end a very underwhelming album.
In all honesty, I lost the will to live about halfway through this review and I am not sure how I managed to finish the album; it had no real redeeming qualities and was just not a good listen, there were a couple of sparks of life but not enough to save it.
In all honesty, I lost the will to live about halfway through this review and I am not sure how I managed to finish the album; it had no real redeeming qualities and was just not a good listen, there were a couple of sparks of life but not enough to save it.
There is no way this is a deathcore record, its highly electronic metalcore at best and honestly, you have probably heard it all before and done a lot better. 3/10
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