All Shall Perish
The Price of Existence
Nuclear Blast
Street: 08.04
All Shall Perish = Kataklysm + Dying Fetus + Hatebreed
Just when you thought all outlets of certain metal hybrids were exhausted, All Shall Perish comes to dish out something new. Blending death and grind metal with hardcore breakdowns and chants is something that I honestly haven’t heard before. All Shall Perish are ultimately heavy as all hell. There is your typical drum blasting found in death metal. and your standard guttural grind vocals. This little package is tight, nice and fluid. And unlike a lot of grind metal the songs aren’t over just when they were just getting started. If you are looking for something that just screams heavy from many musical realms and has shiny polished production then don’t hesitate to check out All Shall Perish. – Bryer Wharton

Angra
Aurora Consurgens
SPV
Street: 10.24
Angra = Stratovarious + Blind Guardian + Dream Theater
This was my first visit to Angra land. I tried to be as objective and open minded as possible. To my disappointment, the vocalist is horrifically bad, consistently off-key and just plain stupid sounding as is the case with many progressive metal bands. The songwriting is bland and the keyboard piddling annoying. The band can actually play their instruments well, unfortunately the songs don’t jive all that well. There are quite a few acts in the genre that I enjoy but Angra is not one of them. I tried and I tried, but there is not one song that doesn’t come off as totally pretentious or just awful sounding. – Bryer Wharton

Ankla
Steep Trails
Bieler Bros Records
Street: 07.25
Ankla = Soulfly + Korn + Puya +Ill Nino
Ever wonder what the hell happened to the band Puya? After a few high profile tours the band seemed to drop off the face of the planet. The band in essence wasn’t that great on CD, but they demanded a great stage presence. One of the members has moved on and created his own outfit. Guitarist Ramon Ortiz has brought a hybrid of thrash, hardcore and nu-metal to the table with Ankla. There are a lot of things that make this record boring. There is an abundance of solo work amongst the already contrived concoctions. The drumming is fast and well worked. The sort of symbiosis between nu-metal and thrash actually works well. I would expect fans of Soulfly to enjoy Ankla more than fans of Ill Nino based on the heaviness alone. Regardless there is a new Latin metal band out to play with the big boys. – Bryer Wharton

Astrophagus
Casualite
Helmet Room Recordings
Street: 10.10
Astrophagus = Antlerand + Stars of the Track and Field + lukewarm coffee or beer
Casualite is your usual indie rock album with a lot of drum machines and atmosphere added in. Many of the songs on this album start off with a moody air, a catchy, scratchy drumbeat kicks in, and just when you’re anticipating something great, they don’t really take it anywhere. The basic structure of the song just keeps repeating. They usually add a faster beat over the underlying one, you know, to spruce it up a bit. Then the vocals come in, which are just as uninspired. It’s fine music, but its not what it has the potential to be. Moments of it catch your attention, but overall, it tends to slip into the background. It is as if, in the writing process, they came up with something that sounded great, and then just gave up on expanding it. You probably won’t hate this album, but you won’t really love it either. It’s tepid. You won’t spit it out, its drinkable, the flavor’s there somewhere…but who wants to drink something lukewarm? – Emily Allen

Bad Astronaut
Twelve Small Steps, One Giant Disappointment
Fat Wreck Chords
Street: 11.14
Bad Astronaut = Lagwagon + Elliott Smith + The Flaming Lips
A little more than a year after the suicide of founding drummer Derrick Plourde, Lagwagon front-man Joey Cape brings his Bad Astronaut side-project out for a final album that celebrates Plourde's life, while mourning the loss of a great friend. The overall mood of the album is somber as one might expect, but Twelve Small Steps also finds Bad Astronaut venturing into more of a rock-oriented sound that is not present on their previous albums. "Good Morning Night" is one of the bounciest and most fun songs that Cape has ever written, and the song that was culled from the personal journals of Plourde before his death, "Autocare", is one of the album's most up-beat. In contrast, "Beat" finds Cape lamenting the loss of his friend and commenting that without Plourde this is "an album always incomplete." The varied songwriting and the occasional use of synthesizers and cellos add a unique element to the band's sound that never comes off as forced. Even outside of the context of Derrick Plourde's death, this is a solid album that features songs that transcend many emotional states and features the excellent musicianship of a very tight musical ensemble. – Ricky Vigil