• Kylesa "Spiral Shadow" CD

SEASON OF MIST

ON SALE!

Ten years into an unbroken wave of revitalized and omnivorous metal bands, it feels almost ridiculous to have to keep saying this, but: If you're not paying at least some attention to this stuff, you're screwing up. Like many of the best "extreme" metal albums in 2010, Spiral Shadow is less about alienating outsiders through heaviness, volume, or violence than it is about blurring those extremes (hook and noise, dreamy and ragged, virtuosity and bluntness, metal and pop) on the same record, on the same songs. Captivatingly intricate without sacrificing rough and tough forward drive, accessible without sinking into commercialized blandness, Kylesa offer the pretty irrefutable truth that metal's still the best place to find rock that actually rocks, that there's plenty of boot-to-the-sternum kick left in the old beast after all.