Martin Popoff – Page 18 – Lollipop Magazine

Starwood – If It Ain’t Broke, Break It! – Review

January 24, 2005

Lizzy Borden packaged not so secretly as a glam metal act, Starwood sound like a cross between Brides of Destruction and The Wildhearts.

Cathedral – The Serpent’s Gold – Review

December 29, 2004

Cracks a beer and hands it to you, saying Lee Dorrian is back. Seriously, nobody played and recorded and stomped their way through doom quite like Cathedral.

Metal Church – The Weight of the World – Review

December 27, 2004

Not crazy about the noisy production, and I find the record melodramatic in parts. Too Metal. But man, new vocalist Ronny Munroe is a corker.

Hatesphere – Ballet of the Brute – Review

December 27, 2004

Third album. Denmark’s Hatesphere crank out signature Scando-thrash with an emphasis toward faster, more claustrophobic and intimate American hardcore moshing.

Cattle Decapitation – Humanure – Review

December 27, 2004

A smoky, claustrophobic, humid form of warm death metal modernized and tenderized by grind. A much better record than the murky and befuddled To Serve Man.

Rhapsody – Symphony of Enchanted Lands II: The Dark Secret – Review

December 20, 2004

Italy’s princesses of ballerina metal return, offering 72 minutes of symphonic priss rock (A 60 piece orchestra was used, and often) about dragons and castles.

Iced Earth – The Blessed and the Damned – Review

December 20, 2004

Celebrating a 10-release relationship reaching back to 1991, Century Media round it off with a two CD best-of, closing the book with Iced Earth.

In Flames – Soundtrack To Your Escape – Review

December 20, 2004

In Flames have carved themselves an endearing, enigmatic, amusing place within a scene now dominated to the left and right by American metalcore bands.

The Stranglers – Norfolk Coast – Interview

December 13, 2004

An interview with bassist Jean Jacques Burnel

Peccatum – Lost in Reverie – Review

December 6, 2004

Three records into a surreal career that has them quietly becoming the greatest, most fearless, most exploratory avant garde hard-ish act in the drowning pool.