Kissin Dynamite is a German Rock ’n Roll band that’s always in for a good time. This time, their title track Not the end of the Road got a bit overplayed in my opinion. Nevertheless, it is a very nice song with a nice video as well. The album has feelgood rock songs, ballads and catchy songs. All with one message: positivity. Sometimes life can suck, it can suck badly. But then you have to find the power to continue again and get back up again. Be it through live music, playing music, or maybe something totally different: get back up. All of this is being told to you in the form of kick ass Rock ‘n Roll music, filled with emotions and the power to spread a positive message.

You can read the full review here. 

On June 3 2022, Killswitch Engage released the live show they played at the Palladium venue in Worcester – Massachusetts, their hometown during the pandemic. This venue is special due to a number of reasons. The band’s first show in 1999 was played there, their DVD “(Set This) World Ablaze” in 2005 was recorded there, Jesse Leach’s first show when he rejoined the band in 2012 was played there, and now, this DVD. Killswitch Engage was about to tour with their latest album Atonement, released in 2019. But after a couple shows, Covid hit and lockdown started. The band takes a moment to talk about it before the show starts. They haven’t seen each other for 15 months and with a new album ready to be heard, they decided to go back to this location and give it their all. Although they wished they got to play it in front of a crowd, since this is recorded only in front of cameras. On this album, they play their latest album Atonement in full, their first self-titled album almost in full minus the last song, and they close with Just Barely Breathing from their Alive or Just Breathing record. It’s an awesome live album to rock out to, even though there is not that much interaction with the camera’s. This makes it look like the band squeezes out one song after another. However, there was no crowd there, so there wasn’t really much to interact with anyway.

You can read the full review here. 

After watching the release show of their first album and also their first performance in Club de B in Torhout, I was curious to hear the studio version of the live experience I just had. Mantah gives you low tuned and heavy guitar riffs. Evoke gives you a mix between late 90s nu metal, modern metal and metalcore. It’s very melodic but also heavy at the same time. They seemed to have combined the two seamlessly on this album. They really let the instruments speak. Every little thing is so loud and clear. It feels as if you are in the studio with them while they are recording. The vocals seem to be at a bit lower volume. You can still hear them clearly, but the instruments seem to have gotten the storytelling part just right. A beautiful album to listen to, musically at first, but also lyrically when you take the time to dive deeper into this album.

You can read the full review here.

Ah yes, the album with a lot of sevens in it. Alestorm’s seventh album ‘Seventh Rum of a Seventh Rum’ had a lot of fun songs in it, as well as serious songs. Lead singer Christopher Bowes got a bit irritated by the fact that the party songs got that much more views than the serious songs, while there went so much effort into the serious ones. I guess the reason is that a party song gets shared a lot more through social media to show how fun it is. The people that are Alestorm fans, will appreciate the serious stuff just as much as the fun stuff, but I think it’s more specific to the genre, so it gets shared a lot less. Alestorm also referred back to their previous album ‘Curse of the Crystal Coconut’ with Return to Tortuga and Wooden Leg (Part III), the closer of the Wooden Leg trilogy. Overall, like all Alestorm albums, a very fun one with some serious notes.

You can read the full review here.

With their previous album ‘How it Feels to Be Lost’, they said goodbye to a poppier era of the band and brought back the old school melodic metalcore and post hardcore vibe that the band had in its earlier days. This album is a lot of controlled chaos in one place together, and I mean that in a good way. It’s sometimes really hard to put a genre on Sleeping With Sirens, because they are so diverse. Crosses has the perfect metal core vibe, title track Complete Collapse has a little demon in it, waiting to come out. And then on top of it all, closer of the album Grave is an acoustic song. No matter how you see this album, it is an absolute blast to listen to. It’s heavy, it’s loud, it’s melodic, it has screams and breakdowns. It’s controlled chaos at its best.

Read the full review here.

Let me quote myself from my review about this album: ‘Simple Plan is a band you most likely have heard before. Maybe you know it, maybe you don’t. But this band is so diverse, chances are high that you’ve heard about Tik Tok sensation ‘I’m Just a Kid‘, the recognizable ‘Welcome to My Life‘ or 2011’s big summer hit ‘Summer Paradise’’. Almost everyone has heard of this band before. The only downside is: their hits get a lot of credits and get played a lot, but their other stuff doesn’t as much. Harder Than it Looks brought a whole lot of emotions. This album has punk songs, pop songs, and everything in between. It’s definitely a good one to pick up if you’re into pop/punk.

Read the full review here.

This album is just, wow. The Halo Effect consist of Jesper Strömblad and Niclas Engelin (ex-In Flames), singer Mikael Stanne (Dark Tranquillity), as well as former In Flames members Peter Iwers and Daniel Svensson. This line up made for a very experienced Swedish melodic death metal band, who got headliner slots at festivals like Wacken, with only one album released. Did they deserve that? Absolutely. The style of music represents the old style of In Flames and the new style of these people coming together, creating an absolute ecstatic sound that blows you away. Seeing them at Metaldays in Slovenia at only their second show ever, got me hooked. While they already played their whole album, it felt like only 5 minutes had passed. If you don’t believe me, take a listen for yourself.

Electric Callboy, formerly known as Eskimo Callboy, has been in the spotlights for a while now. Ever since they got their new singer Nico, they seemed to have found their special formula with songs; party hard with a good beat and heavy guitars. But besides the fun and the video with German slager music and zombies killing the band on the heaviest breakdown ever, Electric Callboy can also create very serious songs like Mind Reader or Parasite. Whenever you go to their shows, you’re in for both a party and some excellent metal core music. Catch them live in the Lotto Arena in Antwerp on March 2nd, or anywhere they stop on their massive European tour!

You can read the full review here.

The album with the longest name of the year but also the most magical album of the year. It takes you on a trip to things you thought weren’t real or couldn’t possibly exist, yet they do. Maybe it’s all in your head, in a dream world, but maybe it’s also out there. A Paranormal Evening with the Moonflower Society shows that even if you think you don’t belong in the so called ‘normal’ world, there are more people who feel that way, so you’re never alone.

Avantasia creates these magical worlds where you completely lose yourself into. There’s beautiful symphonic / power metal music that makes you create your own images to the story that’s being told. Like I said in my review: ‘’It might seem scary and unreal, but maybe it’s not so scary and unreal after all if you dare to dream’’. 

You can read the full review here.

Darker Still went deep. Very deep. For the listener and for Parkway Drive themselves. It is a very dark album, as it talks about what the band was experiencing during COVID. Parkway Drive is a band that will only release stuff if they are 100% happy with how it sounds and looks. Having COVID around and thus no deadline, this was a good thing as well as a curse. The album takes you though all the thoughts and mental images the band went through. And yeah, it is dark, but as lead singer Winston says; ‘’Life grows darker still, but it doesn’t mean it’s bad. It becomes more complicated and the darkness is just as valuable as the light. You need the shadow, otherwise you are just blind’’.

Darker Still also had the first balled on it, as it was a long dream of Winston to be able to sing in his clean voice. He practiced 10 years for it and the song ‘Darker Still’ is the result. A beautiful ballad with the special whistles and the story behind the mask on the album cover; the story is that this album is about the inside, the human soul. It’s being protected by the mask, but also being trapped by the mask. If you want to know more details about the stories behind the album, read the full review here.