Amorphis – Queen of Time (2018) – Review

Posted on 29 May 2018 by RockmusicRaider — Leave a reply

RockmusicRaider Review - Amorphis - Queen of Time - Album Cover Aye! Guilty! The first listen of Queen of Time – Amorphis‘ 2018 concoction – originated from a relatively lo-fi streaming platform. And – unsurprisingly – this first glimpse left yours truly wondering where Amorphis was headed these days. Terrible visions of Amaranthe-esque disasters, misguided Power Metal et al. But the Finns usually have been a stable brand. At least until now. So, confusion reigned for a while at the RockmusicRaider offices.

Just think back to the outstanding ’96 album Elegy or the 2015 piece Under The Red Cloud, perhaps with the exception of Circle that earned less brownie points. In this sense, the puzzle did not fit at all. The supreme powers that be @ RMR thus decreed a forced waiting time until such time that a better copy would become available. And – lo and behold – the moment hi-fi amps started to flow from the music machine, things started to change. [...] Got hooked? Raid on...!

2017 Top 10 Records

Posted on 16 January 2018 by RockmusicRaider — Leave a reply

I have the feeling that the 2016 Top 10 just about came out. But time does move fast when you are having fun. And we now need to attack the 2017 Top 10 quickly, lest another few months go by.

Methinks that the records retained in 2017 were not as blackened as in former years. Instead, we found a fair share of interesting progressive and avantgarde records that bubbled to the surface. Many bands also engaged in all flavors of ‘post rock or metal’, and those – I admit – delivered the best quality stuff, in general. In other words, those outfits striding across the mighty genre list without sticking to one were the most successful. And we got them from unexpected places sometimes.

So, let’s see what juicy record really cut deep and made it onto the 2017 Top 10 Records. [...] Got hooked? Raid on...!

Intermittent Digest – Tome VI

Posted on 15 November 2017 by RockmusicRaider — Leave a reply

RockmusicRaider - Intermittent Digest - Tome VI Well, before the back office overflows with material, we better launch a new edition of the RockmusicRaider world-famous (ahem…) Intermittent Digest series. This will let off some steam and things will improve – hopefully.

The Tome V Edition was already substantial, but 2017 has been on the fast-track ever since with an enormous amount of material released to date. This includes many big bands that churned out their newest records right around fall of this year with a lot more still to come. On top of that the end of the year looms already with the inevitable top ten coming up fast, following the 2016 edition. So let’s get going with Tome VI without further ado.

One of the first surprises after the last edition was Morass of Molasses and their album These Paths We Tread. A somewhat bizarre, but historically solid band name hides a pretty savvy slice of Stoner Rock and Metal. Right out of the South of the good ‘ol US of A. Zep-infused fuzziness dripping down on us in a slow march of hardly viscous groove. You really need to take that one slow and savor every sugary drop of juice that emanates from this disk. The record sludges its way down this weavy path to a pretty cool mix of modern-day rock’n’roll and age-old stoner offerings that we all loved back in time. You should try some too. [...] Got hooked? Raid on...!