Archive for the Reviews Category

Alienator’s ‘Brutal Occupation’: Two Cent Review

Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags on 08/19/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

It’s not a negative that Brutal Occupation is another Alienator EP with four strong songs. It’s actually the highest compliment that can be paid to a band that has been unwaveringly devoted to hardcore since day one — and, for our money, will probably adhere to that philosophy until their final day as a band. The word “authenticity” gets bandied about way too often these days, because it’s misused nine times out of ten. Alienator’s Brutal Occupation is what authenticity really sounds like. Read my full review on Post-Trash.

Castiel’s ‘All Returns to Hollow and Silence’: Two Cent Review

Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags on 08/17/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

Despite a scattered presence in Europe, even those intimately familiar with the violent genre would be hard-pressed to name a deathcore band from Austria. Well, here’s one for ya: Castiel, who hails from Klagenfurt and started gnashing their teeth and every other part of their bodies since 2014. Dudes have flown under the radar since then, not even getting an entry on heavy metal’s Wikipedia equivalent, Encyclopaedia Metallum.

Read my full review on AllMusic.

REZN’s ‘Cycles in the Infinite Dream’: Two Cent Review

Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags , , , , on 07/28/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

After a decade together, Chicago psych-doom quartet REZN craft a second album for Sargent House, Cycles in the Infinite Dream, that’s as deadly serious in story as it is in execution.

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Creem’s ‘A Taste of Cherry’: Two Cent Review

Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags , , , , on 07/27/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

On their collaborative debut, Islands’ Nick Thorburn and Ratatat’s Mike Stroud mostly adhere to a conventional pop format and rarely deviate into either artist’s inherent weirdness. Read my full review of The Creem’s A Taste of Cherry at FLOOD.

Black Drumset’s ‘Friends in Dark Places’: Two Cent Review

Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags , on 07/27/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

In my second review for Bandcamp Daily, I argue that Brian Wiley (a.k.a. The Black Drumset) proves on Friends in Dark Places that he’s the rare generous solo musician/composer who is careful never to spiral too deep into his own mind and abilities—tempting though it must be—and lose the listener in the process. Instead, he welcomes all to join him for the ride.

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Of Montreal in Boise on July 26, 2026: Taste the Rainbow

Posted in Concert Reviews, Reviews with tags on 07/27/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

Two Cent Review: Left to Die’s ‘Initium Mortis’

Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags , on 07/23/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

In my first review for Bandcamp Daily, I argue that Left to Die’s Initium Mortis is a relentlessly punishing—and, naturally, relentlessly macabre—debut record. It’s the product of original Death members breathing new life into vintage songs by that band, which helped lay the groundwork for the bloody birth of death metal.

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Portrayal of Guilt’s ‘…Beginning of the End’: Two Cent Review

Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags on 07/17/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

Portrayal of Guilt seemed to come out of nowhere in 2017, but once they did, they stuck their tongue to the frozen light pole and released five LPs, six EPs and three singles while our heads were still trying to catch up to their murderous maelstrom of metal. Once we got a good look at ’em, the brilliance of the band was on their collective face.

On paper, one would’ve sworn numerous bands had melded black metal and post-hardcore. But what makes Portrayal of Guilt’s music so magical is that whatever one deigns to describe in words (and yes, this writer is fully aware of the irony at play here) doesn’t do justice to the sound that bursts out of their amps like flames from a nuclear explosion.

That Portrayal of Guilt has surreptitiously tried to sidle up to the “grunge” qualifier is as laughable as the band is serious: Be proud of what you’ve accomplished, guys, by continuing to marry two heavy subgenres (to reiterate, black metal and post-hardcore) with the same success that Deafheaven did with black metal and shoegaze.

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Mono’s ‘Snowdrop’: Two Cent Review

Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags on 07/16/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

Just like poker players have a “tell,” so do songs by eminently admired post-rock instrumentalists Mono. Faintly reminiscent of The Twilight Sad or Godspeed, but not enough to call them copycats, Mono songs typically start on a gentle note, slowly crescendo into a state of guitar noise, burst into a shimmering shower of affirmation, and conclude with a carefully crafted, rarely abrupt descent. Perhaps because Mono fans are accustomed to the shape of the band’s songs, or more likely due to the fact that this is the post-rock squadron’s 13th studio effort, Snowdrop is their smoothest deployment thus far.

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Warning’s ‘Rituals of Shame’: Two Cent Review

Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags , on 07/16/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

Warning‘s Rituals of Shame is an album effectively 20 years in the making, if not necessarily literally. Frontman Patrick Walker has released plenty of material during that time, but what we have here are five doom-metal masterpieces rather ironically untainted by the very trappings of the subgenre: repetition taken to tedious extremes, fogs of pot smoke so thick that the listener is blinded by what might very well be beauty at the core; overindulgence for overindulgence’s sake. Particularly on songs like “Station,” “Landing Lights” and “Night Comes Dawn,” Walker has created something fresh and new: clear-eyed, focused, minimalist yet illustrious doom metal. Perhaps it’s because he’s reached a transcendent understanding of the human condition, or something like it; the word “love” appears six times in the lyrics to the five songs.

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