Album Review: "Worship Music" by Anthrax

The Big 4 - Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax - were the kings of thrash metal in the '80s. Nothing was more prevalent in American metal than those four bands. But as time passed and music changed, the Big 4 changed as well, each taking a different direction in attempts to stay relevant and popular. Anthrax encountered the most difficulty of the four bands, and their releases became less and less frequent with time, even though the band seemed to be doing fairly well with vocalist John Bush. Then, after 2003's We've Come for You All, Anthrax suddenly disappeared from the public eye. There was always news of the band working on new material, but nothing came to fruition, not even after the band's brief stint with lead singer Dan Nelson and the attempts to release Worship Music in 2009. It took the band's reunion with singer Joey Belladonna to finally bring this album to life, and with it, Anthrax hopes to revitalize their career and remind everyone what made them part of the Big 4 in the first place.

Album Review: "Drifter" by Heartsounds

Rock music is the source of so many offshoots that it's often easy to forget how closely linked certain genres and subgenres are at the core. Only after sampling an extremely vast set of different rock-inspired styles does it become easier to recognize the similarities that exist among punk, alternative, metal, indie, and hardcore. These similarities are the reason why bands like Heartsounds exist. The punk rock quartet was born out of the ashes of melodic death metal group Light This City, following their breakup in 2008, mostly due to financial difficulties and what vocalist Laura Nichol summarized as a general dissatisfaction with the metal scene in general. At that point, Nichol and drummer Ben Murray decided to shift their focus to their new musical love - melodic punk in the vein of Bad Religion and A Wilhelm Scream. Their debut album Until We Surrender was a decent beginning for the new band, and sophomore effort Drifter displays growth and an overall tighter focus for Heartsounds.