Metal Storm's outlet for nonmetal album reviews
The place where we'll talk about music without growls or blast beats
unless they still have those but still aren't metal
unless they still have those but still aren't metal
We here at Metal Storm pride ourselves on our thousands of metal reviews and interviews and article; metal is our collective soul and passion, which is why we bother with this junk. That being said, we'd be lying if we stuck to our trve-kvlt guns and claimed that metal is the only thing we ever listen to. Whether we want to admit it or not, we do check out some other stuff from time to time; some of us are more poptimistic than others, but there's a whole world out there aside from Satan-worshiping black metal and dragon-slaying power metal. We do already feature some nonmetal artists on our website and have a few reviews to back them up, but we prefer to limit that aspect of the site to those artists who have been a strong influence on the metal scene or who are in some way connected to it. This article series is the place for those artists who don't matter to metal in the slightest but still warrant some conversation - after all, good music, is good music, and we all know metal isn't the only thing on this planet for any of us.
Down below, you might find some obscure Bandcamp bedroom projects or some Billboard-topping superstar; as long as it ain't metal and the album itself isn't a best-of compilation, it fits. Obviously, we're certain that not everything will be for everybody (you guys can be viciously territorial even when metal is the only thing on the menu, and we're all supposed to like the same things), but we do hope you find at least one thing that you can enjoy, instead of just pointing and screaming in horror "Not metal!" as if that would be an insult.
Here are our previous features:
May 2026
April 2026
March 2026
And now to the music...
Placebo - Placebo Re:Created
[Alternative Rock]
In the mid ‘90s most of the musical world was revolving around brit pop and brit rock. Around that time, in a council flat in Deptford, Brian Molko and Stefan Olsdal were brewing something revolutionary that was about to become one of the most significant albums of its era. The self-titled debut of Placebo took Sonic Youth, The Cure, and Smashing Pumpkins, added the duo’s bipolar, punk-loving and self-harming personality, and topped everything off with an androgynous, cross-dressing appearance. “Nancy Boy” instantly became a gender-bending anthem when any such discussion was frowned upon, to put it lightly. 30 years later, the band decided to revisit one of the best debuts in the history of rock music and rework it.
Placebo are promoting Placebo Re:Created as a ‘director’s cut’, an album on which they are revisiting their original master tapes and they are enriching them by bringing 30 years of experience of playing these songs live. At the same time, the recording experience of all these years and the evolution of their music, which has become more layered and textured, have all been infused into this release, something that has many pros and only one con. This reimagining does sound better in every way and the songs are more ‘developed’, with more of the aforementioned layers and textures. They have subtracted nothing, which was a very wise choice, but only added parts and orchestrations to enhance the songs. Placebo have always really been Brian and Stefan, but they brought the whole live band into the studio for this, and you can hear it. This subsequently means that the youthful ferocity and bite are somewhat reduced, and the result is more mature and richer, but it also lacks the rawness of the classic first. For those who are unfamiliar with either the band or this album (seriously, is there anyone out there?), I can see how this may be so much more pleasing to the ears compared to the original. For the band, this is a wonderful and sentimental way to celebrate the anniversary as well. However, in case you didn’t catch it back in 1996 and you ever come across a time machine, make sure you use it because nothing compares to experiencing this album in its authentic form as an adolescent at the time when it came out.
“I know,
The past will catch you up as you run faster”
by nikarg
Onségen Ensemble - A Tale
[Progressive Rock | Psychedelic Rock]
musclassia's pick
Back in 2020, I covered Fear by Onségen Ensemble, and remarked upon how its psychedelic, avant-garde nature slotted in seamlessly to a particularly heavy music niche within Finland. While the band doesn’t seem to contain members of those other acts, new album A Tale is produced by Oranssi Pazuzu’s Niko Lehdontie. In spite of this, A Tale feels more grounded than my previous encounter with the band, although it is nonetheless still very adventurous.
I mentioned Spaghetti Western influence in my write-up of Fear, and A Tale opens with a song in “Garden Of Celestials” that retains that vibe with its harmonica and guitars, which go nicely with the atmospheric prog feel of the track. There is a slight Western tinge to subsequent songs, for example the trumpet in the otherwise quite classic prog rock effort “To Be Led By The Lost” (which reminds me a bit of King Crimson’s “Starless”), and especially the harmonica and rhythm of “The Word”, but it’s not a sound that completely defines the album. Instead, other songs lean more towards Chelsea Wolfecore-style gloom (“A Thought”) or melancholic prog rock vocal harmonizing (“Oldest Father”). A Tale is notably lighter and less oddball than Fear, but it is by no means safe or unoriginal, and it has a lot of seemingly effortless charm to its relatively subdued compositions.
Bandcamp
by musclassia
Exploring Birdsong - Every House We Built
[Progressive Pop | Alternative Rock]
musclassia's pick
With their first EP released in 2019 (and another in 2023), the arrival of Exploring Birdsong’s debut album has been a long-awaited affair. Credited with no guitarist, the trio started off on The Thing With Feathers with a piano-led jazzy art rock sound, which largely carried over onto Dancing In The Face Of Danger. The latter EP, however, did have some moments of relative heaviness, which were not in and of themselves out of place, but they did serve as foreshadowing for the turn the band have ended up taking with Every House We Built. I still see no guitarist credited, but in addition to the keyboards, synths, bass and drums, there are moments of rock/metal heft that definitely sound like guitar. Overall, this album veers away from the style of the EPs and expands outwards in directions as different as synth-pop and djent.
“Archipelago” exhibits this range, transforming from a poppish piano ballad into a voluminous synthy anthemic effort. Right after the grandeur and importance of this opening, Exploring Birdsong slide straight into djent-tinged hooky bounce infused with an RnB flavour, with “42” reminding me of similarly infectious songs from Nightlife. I can’t quite tell whether the distortion in “Romanticise” is the work of a guitar or very distorted synths, but the breakdown to the track has a real oomph to it, as do moments on several other songs. Every House We Built is by no means a ‘heavy’ album, though, with a real emphasis on pop-oriented hookiness. “Spy In The House Of Love” in particular has a wonderfully phrased earworm of a chorus, glowing with wistful charm. Add in more outfield wildcards such as the strings-laden indie cut “I_You” and the Tori Amos singer-songwriter feel of “Cartography”, and Exploring Birdsong have created something that is teeming with creativity and charm.
Bandcamp
by musclassia
Titled after the final words of a parrot, You Be Good, I Love You is inspired conceptually by human-led habitat destruction and guitarist Edward Thompson’s work in marine conservation. That said, this is a purely instrumental album, so I feel like its concept is largely down to what listeners hear in its contents for themselves. Said contents are classic ‘crescendocore’ post-rock, alternating between delicate clean textures, hazy droning tremolo layers, and loud outbursts of riffing verve, with the heaviest moments on the album approaching the density of post-metal. London’s Million Moons aren’t reinventing the wheel, but this is firmly above average for the genre.
“Titan Of The Deep” establishes the band’s range, ranging from the most tranquil shimmering textures to enormous walls of sound by the track’s conclusion, although there is an ebb and flow to its dynamics. Song structures do vary, such as the firm split between the subdued nature of “Last Days Together” in its first half and the volume assault in its later minutes, and there’s some variation in pace, with a more pounding drive and energy to “Thundering Footsteps” via the tom rhythms, but there’s no grand departures across the near-hour of its runtime. Perhaps the standout in both style and emotionality is closing song “Floating For Eternity”, focused for most of its runtime on the most tender and sorrowful piano and clean guitar tones before a grand cathartic mid-song climax.
Bandcamp
by musclassia
Liminal Sky - All Tomorrow’s Darkness
[Post-Rock | Progressive Rock]
Coming a decade after the most recent album from Messenger, Liminal Sky represents a musical reunion of multi-instrumentalists Daniel Knight and Jaime Gomez Arellano (the latter also an acclaimed producer for bands such as Ghost and Opeth), with vocal contributions from the likes of Mat McNerney (Hexvessel), Kristoffer Rygg (Ulver) and Karin Park (Årabrot). However, despite this pedigree, debut All Tomorrow’s Darkness belongs firmly in this article series; a bleak, grief-laden atmosphere accompanied by lyrics partly inspired by the passing of McNerney’s mother, this album lingers somewhere between post-rock, dark folk and progressive rock such as Porcupine Tree and Damnation by Opeth.
The latter feel like particularly relevant comparisons for the eerie, synth-laden opener “Some Other Time”, the first of six tracks featuring the vocals of McNerney. Rygg’s first appearance on “A Solitary Future” strikes a balance between his trademark vocal melodies from latter-day Ulver and a darker folkish croon, while Park is predictably evocative, rendering heartbreakingly tender emotion with her voice during the aching gloomy crawl of “Penance”. Other notable tracks include “In Some Secret Universe”, a slow, gloomy, at-times sparsely arranged effort that nevertheless swells with strings later on, and “Forget Me Not”, an unusually up-tempo and almost anthemic rocker that still has space to ponder in piano soundscape lulls.
Bandcamp
by musclassia
Oh Hiroshima - And The Dead Tree Gives No Shelter
[Post-Rock | Stoner Rock]
Post-rock is a genre intrinsically linked with both melancholia and a sense of euphoria in its climaxes; Oh Hiroshima’s previous album, All Things Shining, was an album that could offer sullen emotion, yet also deliver a brightness fitting with its title. On And The Dead Tree Gives No Shelter, the Swedish duo sound a tad darker, heavier, gloomier. They also sound a bit rockier; the likes of “Servant Of All” and “Tree Of Life” strive further towards alternative rock structures and desert rock riffs while also retaining the attributes of post-rock that have defined the band’s journey to this point.
In describing the album, Jakob Hemström acknowledges that the title (derived from a T.S. Eliot poem) represents a state of self-destructive hopelessness, yet that the songs seek to portray hope and meaning. There is a melancholic tinge to the lively post-rock riffing and bustling distorted heaviness of “Meridian”, and a wistfulness to the languid expanse of “Angelos”. Still, there are those moments of levity, including delicate tones woven into the fabric of the otherwise quite muscular “Skeleton Key” and an uplifting feel as “Broken Sunlight” progresses towards its climax. Oh Hiroshima remain a very distinctive entity within post-rock, with song structures that shy away from crescendocore, heaviness that hits genuinely hard, and vocal sections that integrate the accessibility of alternative rock; And The Dead Tree Gives No Shelter is another great rendition of their style, albeit slightly bleaker.
Bandcamp
by musclassia
Horse Lords - Demand To Be Taken To Heaven Alive
[Math Rock | Experimental Rock]
The term "math rock" is one that seems to trouble a lot of people upon first encountering, despite the fact that the genre has been around for well over three decades. Somehow the "math metal" subgenre is easier to specify when thinking about Meshuggah's various polyrhythms in a way that makes sense mathematically. Math rock isn't necessarily that will less distortion, but Demand To Be Taken To Heaven Alive is the kind of experimental rock that would bring the term "math rock" to mind had it not existed a priori.
This album is a surprisingly collaborative one, with the first notes themselves being heavily processed vocals coming from guest singers Nina Guo and Evelyn Saylor, whose vocals seem to be more about "shape" than anything else, before repetitive polyrhythms create a slowly building soundscape. It's music that feels sculptured in the same way a lot of the spectralism or totalism movements of the experimental music wave were, albeit with rock instrumentation. It may initially seem soulless, but there is soul in every shape's geometry, and this is an album that feels geometrical.
Bandcamp
by RaduP
Shooting Daggers - The Real Life Thing
[Hardcore Punk]
I imagine the database team for the site are glad that they don’t have to figure out how to categorize The Real Life Thing, described as a ‘mini-album’ by Shooting Daggers. With seven songs across 20 minutes, it is very much a brief affair, one that storms forward unapologetically in a cacophony of queercore punk that embraces sounds from outside the direct confines of the genre. From the synths that pop up during the riot grrrl-influenced “Adrenaline” to the spacious, sullen atmospherics of “My Oh My!”, The Real Life Thing is unafraid to be unpredictable.
The record features guest appearances from The Menstrual Cramps and Refused’s Dennis Lyxzén on “Loud Mouths” and “Glow”, respectively; the former is direct and biting, carrying a real instrumental heaviness to match the scathing lyrical rhetoric, while the latter opts for a style that leans more towards that of Jane’s Addiction circa Nothing’s Shocking, making effective use of the vocal contrast offered by Lyxzén’s presence. Of the remaining songs, the other major departure from hardcore punk is the languid, melancholic “Le Soleil”, which takes major inspiration from 90s shoegaze and dream pop in its vocal phrasings and delicate guitars.
Bandcamp \
by musclassia
Yes - Aurora
[Progressive Rock]
After nearly 60 years and over 20 albums, you’d think that Yes might be starting to run out of things to say. However, prog royalty Yes continue on with their third album this decade, with what has been a mostly stable line-up (current drummer Jay Schellen was just a guest on 2021’s The Quest before replacing Alan White). The band is tethered to their classic era solely by the presence of guitarist Steve Howe, whose talents across the album belie his near 80 years of age. Given the stage in their journey at which it arrives, it is probably unsurprising that Aurora is classic prog rock to a tee, but there are some signs of adventure across the record.
The prog rock across Aurora is generally as lush and airy as would be expected for the band, with symphonic elements on the likes of the title track and “Ariadne” adding an extra sense of grandeur, but the crunch kicking off “All Hands On Deck” will take you by surprise. “Outside The Box”, perhaps in line with its name, uses unusual keyboards and droning sounds, while there’s a touch of funk to bonus track “Jambustin’”. At the same time, this is a prog rock album through and through, and nowhere is that better demonstrated than with 4-part 13-minute opus “Countermovement”, full of lush synths and clean guitar melodies, jubilant vocal harmonies, its fair share of solos, and a rich tranquil finale. Aurora is an album that you know exactly what you’re getting yourself into with, but anyone excited to hear the Yes journey continue for that bit longer will likely find themselves perfectly satiated by this latest effort.
Bandcamp
by musclassia
Kelsey Lu - So Help Me God
[Art Pop | Chamber Pop]
Someone commented on Rate Your Music that if this album was a movie it would be Oscar bait. Granted, there's a bit of a different kind of critical appeal that sets apart movies from music that makes it different from just calling it "Grammy bait", and the quality that seems to have a different nuance is grandiosity. Or maybe just the fact that "Portrait Of A Lady On Fire" is one of the tracks here. Regardless there is a sense that this album is completely confident in its grandiosity. Seven years after 2019's Blood, an album I could've sworn I covered back in the day but it seems it was merely on my radar and yet had the staying power regardless, So Help Me God does feel like it made the most of the time passed.
Considering that in the time since the previous album Kelsey Lu has also worked on two soundtracks it does make sense why the album's soundscapes, though not a radical change from Blood, do offer a stronger cinematic component. Aided by the orchestral chamber quality which does go hand in hand with the cinematic, So Help Me God straddles the line between the orchestral, the more melodic pop, the more experimental pop that brings Björk to mind, and dashes of folk and jazz (especially because of Kamasi Washington's saxophone) to an already pretty eclectic mix of sounds.
Bandcamp
by RaduP
Tara Clerkin Trio - Somewhere Good
[Neo-Psychedelia | Ambient Pop]
RaduP's pick
Generally when an artist's name is "Name Surname Trio/Quartet/Sextet" or something of the sorts you generally expect some sort of jazz outfit named after the bandleader or the singer. I'm not saying there isn't any jazz in Somewhere Good but that it's so hidden beneath layers of dreamlike music that make it far from anything you'd expect based on the standardized band name. Tara Clerkin, though she is the singer, doesn't really overshadow the rest of the band in clear impact enough to make it obvious why she's the titular one.
Alongside Tara, who handles the clarinet and the vocals, there's her partner Sunny-Joe Paradisos who does the drumming, and Joe's brother Patrick Benjamin who does the synths. This trio formula already makes it very unjazz-like (mostly because jazz cannot exist without a saxophone obviously) but really intriguing in a soundscape building way, the kind of ambient psychedelia that is so vivid in its sounds, that the few vocal pop moments feel like the nuance rather than the core.
Bandcamp
by RaduP
Madonna - Confessions II
[House | Dance-Pop]
Right now the current pop zeitgeist is very femme centric, so it's quite weird how few of the femme pop stars from back in the day maintained continued relevancy until today. Obviously nobody can keep they heyday going on forever, but it's hard to imagine anyone with as lasting of a presence in that space as Madonna. Even so, that presence, at least musically did fade a bit in the past two decades after a series of duds following 2005's Confessions on a Dance Floor, itself following a series of milder duds following 1998's Ray of Light, arguably her best album. So if the formula for reverting course following duds is to confess on the dance floor, it makes sense that Madonna is confessing again.
Of course that Confessions II isn't as good as the original. I don't think anyone expected it to be, but also I don't think that anyone expected a Madonna album to be this good again. This album follows the longest in-between-albums gap in her career, and with the returning concept, it does seem like a very purposeful album. And sure the "love letter to dance music" has been done many times before, but rarely in such a way by an artist in her late 60s, one that sounds neither like clumsily trying to keep on with the times nor being overly nostalgic and self-referential (yes, I know that's ironic given the sequel nature) in a way that her past couple of records did. The production and transitions are smooth as hell, the vibes go from hedonistic to hazy seamlessly, and that duet with Sabrina Carpenter really doesn't feel like two artists separated by four decades.
by RaduP
And that was it. You've made it through still alive. Congrats. See ya next month. Here's a YouTube playlist we compiled out of stuff featured here:
