resurrections
Unearthing the latest metal reissues
as if a brand new (and really fucking good) Candlemass album wasn’t enough, The Nuclear Blast Recordings [8] provides a comprehensive overview of the Swedish doom legends’ recent hot streak. With everything from 2005’s self-titled comeback to 2010’s Ashes To Ashes EP included, it’s a feast of latter-day Leif Edling brilliance, with 2007’s King Of The Grey Islands a particular highlight. Norwegian prog metal crew COMMUNIC have their own The Nuclear Blast Recordings [7] and while the band have never quite shrugged off their underdog status, the immaculate and crushing likes of 2008’s Payment Of Existence make this four-disc set a must for fans of Nevermore and Fates Warning. UK thrash icons onslaught pulled off one of the great comebacks of the 00s with the ferocious Killing Peace [8]. Newly reissued alongside 2009’s blistering Live Damnation [7] (both Dissonance), it’s still an irresistible stampede of massive hooks and evil riffing. Similarly, Swedish death squad the CROWN have long been masters of mass head-removal. Originally released under their earlier Crown Of Thorns moniker, first two albums The Burning [7] and Eternal Death [7] (Dissonance) set the tone for everything that followed, and while neither comes close to the bug-eyed insanity of 2000’s seminal Deathrace King, they still make just about everything else sound sluggish and dull. The first two twilight albums still stand up, too: 2005’s scabrous self-titled debut [7] and 2010’s bloated and grotesque Monument To Time End [8] are pitch-black highlights of post-millennial US black metal, with Sanford Parker and comrades jabbing antagonistically at the genre’s unmovable core. And then there’s Caspar brötzman Massaker: revered art rock outsiders, much celebrated for doing unspeakable but ingenious things with (or perhaps to) electric guitars. The incensed, barrelling noise rock and bursts of scabrous abstraction on 1987’s The Tribe [9] and 1989’s Black Axis [8] (Southern Lord) still sound stupidly exciting 30 years on. Newly remastered, they both sound more militantly electrified and on the edge of bloody chaos than ever before.