2016 doesn’t know when to stop when it comes to great music. Whether it be Devin Townsend and Between the Buried and Me or Fear Factory and Soilwork, the amount of shows to correlate with the great albums coming out are nothing to scoff at. So is anyone actually surprised to know that another killer toured happened and if you missed it you were actually missing out on something? It’s the truth.  

Sometimes a joke album or concept can have terrible consequences, such as Tommy Lee’s side projects or Vanilla Ice; but sometimes, and these are fairly rare, they can become something beautiful. Such is the project that is Hatebean: featuring members of the Jason Ellis Show off Faction, SiriusXM channel 41 in the mornings, the band has transcended being a joke on the CEO of Faction into a formidable industrial music powerhouse, sounding like a cross between Nine Inch Nails and Ministry.  

Very few bands can get away with everything Darkthrone has done musically. Starting as death metal band and then becoming shortly after one of the many faces of the second wave of black metal bands in Norway, the band has (Excuse the pun) manifested a cult following in their career, with no shortage of albums and releases to keep their fans waiting. Twenty-five years after the release of Soulside Journey, Darkthrone are giving their fans Arctic Thunder, their 16th studio album and one that should resonate with fans of their older material more than their recent output.  

We’re still arguing about this, aren’t we? Death metal Opeth against prog rock Opeth. Fighting aside, Opeth are rooted in prog and that’s always been extremely evident. Getting older and playing death metal can be difficult, and playing it day after day on tour? That’s understandable. Plus, switching to prog rock prolongs the career of the band, with many of the bands from the 70’s still performing today. Opeth made a conscious decision on Heritage to make the genre switch, but Sorceress seems to be where they have it down.  

I remember the hype surrounding the 2014 version of Godzilla, in which everywhere you looked you would see advertisements. Even if you go on Google Maps and look on West 42nd Street in New York City, you can see towards 7th Ave an ad for a Samsung phone with art from the Godzilla film in question. It was literally everywhere and, for the most part, lived up to the fanboyish expectations that I had. Sure, it wasn’t perfect, but I had a lot of fun across the four times I coincidentally saw it. Quickly after that, though, Toho themselves announced that they would be returning to the Godzilla franchise, marking the first time in history that two Godzilla franchise would co-exist in the world.  

Let’s get one thing straight: Insomnium is one of the most universally agreed upon melo death bands. Across their discography, Insomnium have blended traditional melo death conventions with melancholic doom metal atmospheres and furious, frostbitten black metal passages, crafting their own sound right from their early demos back in the late 90’s. Everything the band has explored in their discography seems to accumulate with Winter’s Gate, the band’s most ambitious release thus far, and one that already stands out in not just among their best work, but the greater, ever-expanding genre they’re rooted in.  

I was sitting in my internship at a local radio station when this show was announced. A slow and uneventful day quickly turned my entire week around, and I quickly made sure, in every way possible, that I would not be missing this show. Even if I weren’t going to be covering the show for press’ sake, I would have found a way to get myself there to witness both Devin Townsend and Between the Buried and Me on the same bill.  

Reboots, remakes, sequels and what have you, Hollywood is constantly trying to recycle old ideas to make a quick buck at the box office. The Force Awakens and Creed managed to catch lightning in a bottle by hitting the same notes as the original films, and in doing so they made both a lot of money and positive ratings. With no end in sight to these soft reboots, The Blair Witch    Project is up next to bat with Blair Witch, acting as both an entry point into the series, as well as serving as a sequel to the original.  

In actuality, who’s making worthwhile music seventeen albums into their career? Make that twenty-two if you count the albums with Strapping Young Lad, Devin Townsend has essentially done it all since fronting Steve Vai’s band back in 1994. With so much musical output, however, any other artist would normally burn themselves out of originality after a while. Regardless of your opinion on Townsend, one can’t lie that nearly every release is its own entity and sounds different than the rest. Transcendence is no exception to that. Kind of.  

I’ve been going to shows for a few years now, and while I have gone to them amidst some controversy among bands (Mayhem Fest 2015 comes to mind) I have never even been met with any kind of complications that unfolded via the internet. It’s a strange time we live in, but this Belphegor show was met with problems that resulted in an attempt to state that the show itself was not happening. Clearly it did, and with most of the room packed, one could say it failed horribly.  

Originality isn’t just rooted in some new sound an artist creates. Oftentimes, the simplest change in instrumentation is enough to make a band with a familiar sound become fresh to the listener of a genre that’s been long played out and often mimicked countless times. Take Beyond Creation, for example: not only is their songwriting tight, but that emphasis on a fretless bass and instrumental sections gave tech death the kick in the teeth it needed.  

I spoke to my friend recently about the state of music being released this year and expressed some concern: I don’t actually love anything that has come out so far. Make no mistake, 2016 is a great year overall and everything has generally been really, really good. My reviews say enough. Yet I still haven’t found an album I’ve listened to and fallen for it. By this point last year, I had amassed enough albums that I had come to love, and it was apparent I’d have plenty to pick from at the end of the year. Almost all of my favorite bands have released albums this year, but aside from the Death Fortress album, I’ve been having more and more difficulty finding anything that I’ve truly loved.