Fresh off of leaving Helloween, a band that he co-founded, guitarist and vocalist Kai Hansen would form his own band, Gamma Ray, and swiftly released their debut album, 1990’s ‘Heading For Tomorrow’. 

Featuring fast, upbeat songs, with plenty of energetic vocals and furious guitar playing, this, along with Helloween, was setting the standard for all European power metal bands to follow, and while it sounds quite generic today, it was likely a breath of fresh air back in the late 80’s and early 90’s. 

Personally though, I’m not really sure if I actually like this album or not. I’ve had this on my playlist for well over a year now, and there’s only really three tracks that I can recall from memory. ‘Space Eater’ is genuinely fantastic, and ‘Lust For Life’ and ‘Freetime’ are both fun and easy to dig, but as for the rest of it, each song just blends into the next. Nothing really stands out all that much. Kai Hansen (who usually has an amazing voice) seems a bit grating here, and the 14-minute title track drags on for ages, its duration totally unwarranted. 

Still, all criticisms aside, I am a Gamma Ray ( and Kai Hansen) fan, and I know they’ll go on to release some great albums over the years, but it just feels like he was in a rush to get the 80’s Helloween out of his system here, and as such, this isn’t a very memorable debut. 

After working their way to the top of the metal world during the 2000’s, Disturbed take a step back with their fifth album, ‘Asylum’. Released in 2010, the band had been riding a wave of popularity, boosted by a number of huge hit singles and appearances in the popular Guitar Hero video games, and as such, it feels like they’ve decided to stick to their formula here and play it safe. 

Not that there’s anything wrong with a band sticking to what works for them, but it just feels like ‘Asylum’ is missing that one big knock-out punch, and all we get are a few musical jabs instead. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good album, and it does have some good songs on there, but none of them immediately jump out at me like some of the bands earlier hits. 

Musically, everything here sounds similar to what’s come before it. The same guitar sounds, David Draiman’s instantly recognizable vocals, the production, the grooves, the riffs… they’ve stuck to their sound, and some fans may appreciate that. And songs like ‘The Infection’, ‘The Animal’, ‘Warrior’, ‘Another Way to Die’, ‘Innocence’ and the title track are all decent enough that I could listen to this album if I had to. 

I’d just much rather listen to ‘Ten Thousand Fists’ or ‘Indestructible’ instead, though.  

The next time someone tells you that they do not like black metal because "it all sounds the same", give a listen to the third studio album by Houston Black Metal band Necrofier, Transcend into Oblivion and you'll understand why. This album is almost comically one dimensional in its presentation, atmosphere and execution. Each song is disappointingly sterile and gives me no feeling of purpose. Necrofier try to shamelessly rectify this by having three of the same named songs back to back to back. But when you listen to them, they share no commonalities besides just being painfully generic black metal. They do not even try to present some kind of concept or transition between the parts; just two unmemorable black metal riffs that share the same song title.

The instrumentals are no better. The vocals are one note, the guitar work is adequate at best, and painfully underdeveloped at worst, and the drums sound filtered to oblivion! And to put icing on top of this already delicious air flavoured cake, Necrofier want us to sit through this for nearly an hour! Having three songs of the same title expecting some variety is one thing, but then Necrofier makes us do it three times and then it becomes ridiculous. Cut them down to one song each, leave the interludes and "Toward the Necrofier" and you have a, not great, but tolerable effort. This feels less like transcendence and more like biding my time until the end times.

Best Songs: Fires of the Apocalypse, Light My Path III, Servants of Darkness, Guide My Way I, Toward the Necrofier

For Fans Of: Blackbraid, Dimmu Borgir, Night Cobra

Three-piece Adelaide Christian metal band Jacob's Well formed around brothers John & David Owens back in 1985 with the duo enlisting the services of guitar-slinging frontman Glen Cannon to help them play a classic style of heavy metal that pushed their faith-based messaging right to the front of the stage. Not much is known about the group (in fact, they're not even listed on RYM) but they managed to put out three full-length albums over a period of three decades with 1986's "Fight for Paradise" cassette being their debut. I have to admit that I hadn't heard of Jacob's Well until a few years ago when I checked "Fight for Paradise" out as a part of a deep dive into the early roots of Australian metal. I can't say that it's left an indelible mark on me but it's not horrible either. There's definitely a major obstacle to overcome if you're gonna accept Jacob's Well as a serious metal band though so let's take a closer look.

Despite there being a clear hard rock influence to Jacob's Well's sound, you never really feel that "Fight for Paradise" is anything other than a heavy metal record. "Living Again" is probably the only track where I see myself admitting that it's obviously a hard rock number with the others all benefiting from rip-roaring guitar tone that single-handedly drags the song-writing into realms that are only perpetuated by metal bands. This is one of the major drawcards for the album actually, along with Cannon's general technique as he's a highly proficient lead guitarist who knows how to leave his mark on a song. The other two band members are also pretty decent musicians & the production job is more than acceptable too however it's Cannon's vocals that present the obvious obstacle for your average metalhead, particularly in the lyrical department. You see, you'll rarely find a Christian metal band who so gratuitously rapes the listeners ears with their religious message. In most cases, you can force yourself to ignore the lyrics with these sort of acts but it's simply not possible with Jacob's Well as they try to stuff literally all of the Christian catch phrases into every passage & I'm sure that they'd come across as being fairly "lowest common denominator" in a creative sense if you read them on paper too. Cannon's vocal chops aren't terrible but they also see him pushing himself right up to the limit & you can hear it at times through some mild pitchiness here & there.

Apart from those God-awful lyrics (quite literally), the song-writing isn't too bad & I could see some of these tunes being pretty decent listens if they weren't so preachy. In fact, "Return of the King" is a classic Aussie metal song in its own right & has completely won me over. Opener "Loving Heart" isn't too bad either with its anthemic chorus seeing proceedings getting off to a decent start. The rest of the material showed a lot of promise from an instrumental persepctive but failed to connect with me through the isolationism experienced through its messaging. This is a shame really as Jacob's Well showed a fair bit of potential here with some of the structures feeling like you're listening to a Dio or an Iron Maiden song. There wasn't a lot of high-quality Aussie heavy metal around at the time either so I think that other punters have also been put off by the lyrical content which has seen a muzzle being placed over any commercial aspirations that Jacob's Well may have harboured. I won't be returning to "Fight for Paradise" unless the light of Christ finally unveils itself to me in a completely undeniable format.

For fans of Bloodgood, Barren Cross & Saint.

Well 2026 has been a pretty solid year for me when it comes to the exploration of genres that I typically avoid or explore cautiously. However, it has been The Pit that has seen the least action, mostly because my schedule has not pointed me in that direction for quite some time. Plus my already well documented disdain for modern thrash metal has left me with very little to even want to listen to. Well as is the case here at Metal Academy, groove metal also falls under the umbrella of The Pit, so by throwing in a couple of groove metal albums from the past year (and beyond), maybe I'll finally start to see some numbers in this once forgotten clan of mine.

And we start off this adventure with a band whose careers I have seen take off since the start. DevilDriver are California's darlings of the genre and Strike and Kill is the bands eleventh studio album. Those first handful of records were heavy and groovy at the same time and also showed a certain level of maturity that I would not have expected. All these years later, DevilDriver seem to have given up some of that maturity (a common trend since their transition from Roadrunner to Napalm Records), but they haven't given up their songwriting. The albums one-two-punch of of "Dig Your Own Grave" and "Dead in the Water" to start off is a welcome punch to the face that is unfiltered, groovy and unsurprisingly melodic.

As the album progresses, DevilDriver definitely move away from the Machine Head and start embracing their mid 2000s metalcore. This would make sense since DevilDriver came up alongside bands like As I Lay Dying and God Forbid. "In the Moonlight" starts off very small and sweet before the heavy guitars and drums enter with a very nostalgic guitar riff and very catchy chorus. I particularly enjoyed the guitar solo in this song. The album does have a couple of moments where the band attempts to embrace some modern metalcore trends like the unprepared breakdowns that get progressively slower and the mix explodes such as "Strike and Kill".

Alas, DevilDriver have lost album focus. Strike and Kill is a diverse albums with lots of twists and turns to keep you guessing for sure, I'm just not sure it needed to be fifty minutes. The album starts off great with a five song run that matches the best runs of The Last Kind Words or  The Fury of Our Makers Hand. But afterwards, this album precision kind of loses itself. Strike and Kill does have some saving graces with the final couple of tracks, but getting there feels less like a quick strike, but rather toying with your enemy before delivering the final blow.

Best Songs: Dig Your Own Grave, Dead in the Water, In the Moonlight, You're Just a Ghost, Oath of Iron

For Fans Of: God Forbid, Lamb of God, Chimaira