Mick Birchall Reviews

  2020... What can we truly say about this complete clusterfuck of a year? In all seriousness, it's been a year of confusion, depression, anxiety and misery. You know what they say though "in tough times, at least we will get some good music!" This was as true as ever this year as there were some truly excellent albums being released left, right and centre. I feel kinda bad about not covering more but because of stress and anxiety this year I've had to drop the blog completely. So, I genuinely apologise about this. To make up for it, instead of creating an "arbitrary number of best albums for the year", I am just going to talk about every album that was exceptionally good this year. The music that helped me through this tough year and put a smile on my face. As a music blogger, I feel like I should be trying to guide you to music that you'll ultimately love. If I can do that, then I will consider myself successful in my endeavour. So, get ready to search...

Impavidus are back with a new single and as soon as I heard, I was immediately interested. It’s been a long, long year without gigs. However, getting new music is always appreciated. This new song, Justice was recorded in 2019 at the same time as their tune Artifice . So they’ve had this song locked and loaded for a minute. It was recorded at Foel Studios and it sounds great. It’s a fact-paced, power-packed blast to the senses with a strong riff and a solid hook. The meaty, crushing metal tune grabs your attention straight away. The production is filled to the brim with harsh metal tones. The bass and drum work tightly together setting a fierce and brutal pace. The bass is deep and keeps the pace going allowing the guitar to go wild, especially in the solo, which elevates the track and gives it that little bit of extra power. Everything musically sounds excellent, every piece of instrumentation packs that punch and sonically it makes you want to get up and headbang away. Then you ge...