Ozzy Osbourne Scream 3.75/5 Listen To: Life Won't Wait Skip It: I Want It More Ozzy Osbourne told Classic Rock Magazine in 2009 that in fear of sounding too much like Black Label Society, his twenty plus year career with guitarist Zakk Wylde would cease. The new shredder aboard the crazy train is Gus G. of Firewind and Arch Enemy fame, accompanied by a new drummer, Tommy Clufetos of recent Alice Cooper and Ted Nugent albums. Resulting from the personnel shuffle is Scream, an album that at times offers a …

Comeback Kid Symptoms + Cures Rating: 3.5/5 Listen To: Balance Skip It: Manifest Canada's hardcore heroes are back with their fourth studio album Symptoms + Cures, marking the second album with Andrew Neufeld shifting from guitar to frontman after Scott Wade departed. This shift saw CBK move further away from traditional hardcore and experiment with more melodies and more epic buildups/breakdowns then heard on Turn It Around and Wake the Dead. This move proved to be disappointing to some, while the …

Kataklysm Heaven's Venom 3.75/5 Listen To: Determined (Vows Of Vengeance) Skip It: Nothing. Kataklysm's eleventh studio release, Heaven's Venom, is a hard-hitting disc blasting through ten songs of equal parts black, death, and thrash which come to embody the band's self-attributed "Northern Hyperblast" sound. A low crypt-keeper voice insists Go out and get what you're worth, but you've gotta be willing to take the hit before Kataklysm punches out album opener "A Soulless God.” More …

The Acacia Strain Wormwood 4/5 Listen To: The Impaler Skip It: Tactical Nuke Massive drop-tuned guitars resonate over a slap-happy double bass foundation on Wormwood, The Acacia Strain's fourth studio album. This record's heaviness warrants a backup set of speakers, it's a start to finish firing range of hardcore tinged death metal. Living up to its name, album opener "Beast" (featuring Hatebreed's Jamey Jasta) is a muscle shirt shredding inspiration. After an eyebrow raising intro with an …

Wretched Beyond The Gate 3/5 Listen To: Beyond The Gate - Part II Skip It: In The Marrow Naming your band Wretched is an open invitation to musical jerks like myself to use it as a handy adjective to describe your band’s overall sound and style. Unfortunately, for me anyway, there is no call to use such a dismissal of Wretched’s newest, Beyond The Gate. There are countless other adjectives that spring readily to mind (trite, for one, clichéd, for another), but wretched implies a …

Burning Love Songs for Burning Lovers 4.5/5 Listen To: Gain Skip It: None, that's just crazy. Burning Love is the type of band that gives dudes boners and make the girls a lil' wet. Comprised of members from Cursed, Our Father and The Vatican Chainsaw Massacre this new formation gives meaning to the line one man's trash is another man's treasure. They have just released their first full length album, Burning Songs for Burning Lovers, and it's straight up rippers. For those fans that are looking for …

Slayer / Megadeth / Testament July 29, 2010 Molson Canadian Amphitheatre, Toronto One of America’s most underrated metal acts, Testament warmed up the crowd at Molson Amphitheatre tonight for the long awaited Toronto stop of the Canadian Carnage Tour, originally scheduled for November 2009. It’s unfathomable why Testament, thrash pioneers forming in the early eighties in LA, doesn’t break into the mainstream alongside the heavy metal “Big Four” - Megadeth, Anthrax, …

GBH July 15, 2010 Mod Club With bands like GBH, it's a serious gamble if they can deliver on stage as well as they used to. This isn't a slight on their musical talents, but speaks of the amount of time they have been a band. After doing some number crunching you will come to the realization that GBH have been a band for 32 years. 32 YEARS! Whilst this is a rarity in any music scene, it's especially rare in the fly by night world of punk music. Often when these types of bands play a show after a …

The Flatliners’ Cavalcade Is Taking Over The Flatliners have been a staple in the punk scene in Southern Ontario since they were kids, now with their new record Cavalcade some believe they are destined for the next level of rock stardom. Through three albums this quartet has grown to become one of Toronto’s strongest units. They play shows through sickness and health to fans who have stuck by. The Flatliners frontman Chris Cresswell says he loves seeing the progression not only in the band, …

Gothenburg, the second largest city in Sweden, is most widely known around the world for being where Volvo was invented way back in 1927. But, the large city, of over 900,000 including its metropolitan hub, also holds a special place in metal listeners' hearts. In the late 1990s, Gothenburg is where melodic death metal was born, notably with Dark Tranquility, alongside other seminal Swedish melodic death metal bands At The Gates and In Flames. These troupes cut the path for today's major death metal …