M.T. – Rock Remix Collection (2012)

Remixers are widely under-rated and almost marginalized, kind of feeders of the Music Industry. Most of the remix contests are about promoting the artist and the remixes are generally only secondary sub-products of this process. This is not quite fair, but well, music became lately only a secondary sub-product of the Music Industry/Business, so, it’s not quite surprising.
M.T. (Mihai Tivadar) is a Romanian musician and producer with a constant activity on the national rock scene. He made his name as a keyboard player, guitarist and main songwriter of the rock band Dirty Shirt. Additionally, he has played in and wrote music for several other bands, most notably Rhetorica, Arca, Eclipse and Neverland. He actively took part in the organization of festivals such as East West Fest, Dirty Fest, and RockFest Seini as well as a number of successful tours such as Dirty Tour (Romania, Hungary and Germany), Metal Orient Express (Romania), Tripod Tour (Romania and Hungary), Allied Forces Tour (Romania and Hungary), From East to West Tour (France and Belgium), etc. Read more M.T. – Rock Remix Collection (2012)

Knives Out! – Black Mass Hysteria (2012)

Featuring honorable members of Hellyeah, Nothingface, Dog Fashion Disco and Polkadot Cadaver, five friends, in 2008, in their hometown of Baltimore came together and form Knives Out! As they declare on their MySpace page: “it isn’t pretty and it isn’t safe. In a world of copy cat bands KNIVES OUT! stands up to deliver to the world a breath of fresh air to a stagnant, plagiaristic genre. Go hard or go home…horns up and KNIVES OUT!”
Imagine a deadly collision between Ministry and Tool with addition of some contorted groove metal riffs and 100% bad ass metal attitude, eventually think of Slipknot jamming with Down or settling down in a little more traditional area of metal, but still staying bold as… f*ck. Read more Knives Out! – Black Mass Hysteria (2012)

Edgecrusher – Damagemaker (2012)

Edgecrusher - Damagemaker (2012) 12 murderous, good-old fashioned groove metal tracks, Pantera fans will be definitively satisfied by this Russian outfit. They incorporated in their “edgecrusher” sound several modern elements, like using synthesizers and have several Korn-alike nu metal grooves and layers, but generally they staying solid in the traditional, heavy, metal area. Some of their riffs even reminded me of Iron Maiden (“Real Monster” for instance), so, this is more close to the classic metal then to the nowadays post-metal and metalcore products.
And just to be goddamn honest, even to take a closer look to their album art, worth a few minutes. Read more Edgecrusher – Damagemaker (2012)

Lamb Of God – Resolution (2012)

If there is such thing (music) as “post-Pantera Metal”, Lamb Of God are definitively the kings of it. No better album to kick in into 2012 then this furiously raging “Resolution”, the band’s seventh studio album scheduled for a January 24 release. Hard – actually quite impossible – not to jump up and bang on this. Maybe this is (still) so Pantera, but this is still murderous and those bloody riffs, those killer screams and growls, this brutal Metal still have so much anger and energy that’s gonna rip your head off. Randy Blythe learned and applied all the tricks of Anselmo perfectly, Mark Morton and Willie Adler bring to the surface the most cutting edge riffs while the rhythm section made by drummer Chris Adler and bass player John Campbell delivered the most intense grooves extremely precisely. 14 tracks, almost one hour of massacre, call it Groove, Nu or whatever Metal, this is so brutal and so good that if it wouldn’t be invented, it would have. But no use to re-invent the Steel ( 😀 ), it’s essential to play it straight from your heart and with guts and loud enough. Read more Lamb Of God – Resolution (2012)