Review by JD on December 30, 2015.

Progressive rock/metal is a growing commodity. It’s pretty much that many of today’s listeners want more substance in their music than has been offered lately and I am one of those people. I love heavy music of many kinds, but I need something that challenges my intellect and explores music effortlessly, not simply beats you pretty much senseless (although I still love the ‘beating you senselessly’ thing quite a bit).

Coming from corporate world jobs (he worked for Google and others before layoffs) and decided to do some work as producer and movie soundtracks before finally releasing his own. Taking his love of the 70’s hard rock/progressive rock and early metal and his banks of synthesizers and guitars, basses… he combined it all into one to produce his opus New Metal From Old Boxes.

Sounding like 70’s heavier prog rock with early 80’s inspired metal all in an instrumental format, it lumbers along like a brontosaurus meandering with some sense of purpose. Songs like "Frankenstein On the Read Line" and the title track are interesting, but most of instrumental album goes nowhere with no direction in many parts, it turns into elevator music with an edge and you find yourself looking for another disk to put in. The man can play, but his writing abilities are far from interesting.

There are better instrumental albums out there leagues better than Mr. Rubenstein’s offering (better off getting Lawrence's Creation). Musicianship is top notch, but that is as far as it goes. Musicianship can never save a boring and uninspired album from being what it is and New Metal From Old Boxes is just plain boring and uninspired.

Rating: 5 out of 10

Review by JD on December 5, 2012.

Among all of the sub-genres of metal, most of them I like or admire. With that said, there are a few genres that I either don’t like or don’t understand. Metalcore is such a type, that on the surface is chaotically heavy... a sonic tidal wave with metallic overtones.

Hailing from one of my favorite US cities, Salt The Wound explodes from Cleveland to strike its own chord with the masses. Playing what I describe as Metalcore with some Scremo-metal influences tacked on haphazardly, they come at you with true as shit fury...unfortunatly it is with little else. Musically repetitive with no diversion in any way, the band tries to be like a tenth rate Black Dahlia Murder that seem to have no idea how to write a simple song. The addition of un-needed pig squeals, sort of like if the singer was being goosed with a cattle prod, just adds to the hopelessness of this band.

All the songs seem to be almost identical, almost being like as if the album was all one song, with same parts that are only named differently. There is not much in the way of musical variety going on here, seemingly as if one track had been caught in a horribly cued up and never ending loop. I looked for anything close to something good to say about Salt The Wound, or to report on anything at all - sadly, I found nothing.

Salt The Wound seem to be rather popular and rising fast... guess I am not a fan of Metalcore, needing musical substance over style. I would like to see this band, who seem to possess some talent that is hidden deeply away, get into a more melodic style, and perhaps get rid of the Pig-boy screamer and get themselves a real vocalist. For me, this was a waste of my time and effort, but something in it dose give me a small shard of hope.

Categorical Rating Breakdown

Musicianship: 5
Atmosphere: 2
Production: 4
Originality: 2
Overall: 3

Rating: 3.2 out of 10