Australian HiFi

Future Publishing Australia PO Box Q1179, Queen Victoria Building Sydney, NSW 1239 Email: aushifi@futurenet.com Web: www.whathifi.com/australianhifi Editorial Editor: Becky Roberts rebecca.roberts@futurenet.com Art Director: Kristian Hagen kristian.h

And just like that, you are about to tuck into the last Australian Hi-Fi issue of 2022. It's been a year of recuperation for much of the world following the disruption of You Know What, though price hikes are seemingly everywhere you turn and, for ma

LEN WALLIS AUDIO® NEWSLETTER NO.261 Following a couple of years of Covid enforced inactivity we are finally seeing some new, and exciting, stock hit our shelves After a long wait we have finally received the new Marantz Model 40n streaming amplifier.

Not everyone is as enamoured with Dolby Atmos as the music industry (and Apple and, er, Dolby) might have you believe. One notable voice of dissent, it seems, is Radiohead producer Nigel Godrioh. He has shared his opinions on mono, Atmos and everythi

MILAN/SONY Given his clear penchant for dry humour, it's apt that Mikael Akerfeldt found the ultimate artistic freedom while telling the story of a Swedish bank robber. When director - and former Bathory sticksman - Jonas Åkerlund recruited Opeth's m

HASSLE By the time they reach decade two, your average punk band's career arc would usually see them seeking to expand their sound, pursuing success more single-mindedly or trying to rekindle the fire of their early records, not always convincingly.

FRUITS DE MER Paul Lake and Dave McLean have pursued a ‘60s-inspired psychedelic vision with singular consistency since the 1980s, but they have tended to prefer the medium of the EP to the long player. If that suggests they wouldn't have enough good

POLYBORUS Probably the closest thing we'll ever get to an American Talk Talk, Texas's Shearwater are now fundamentally the deeply talented maverick Jonathan Meiburg, with friends and collaborators helping him to realise an auteur's vision. After thei

METAL BLADE Considering Killswitch Engage have sat atop the metalcore mountain for over 20 years now, a fan-less livestream seems an odd choice as the Massachusetts band's inaugural concert album. That said, perhaps it actually makes perfect sense? A

PLG UK CATALOG Disgruntled by critics having labelled the previous year's Aqualung a concept album, Ian Anderson ramped up his perversity and constructed the band's often-misunderstood parody of one, Thick As A Brick. One long track spread over two s

LIGHT IN THE ATTIC Accompanied by a booklet that's longer than most bands’ careers, this collection of demos, mostly recorded in - you guessed it - May 1965, has been given almost reverential treatment in the great rock tradition of these things. Lou

ABB RECORD COMPANY By the time the Allman Brothers Band recorded this remarkable record at the Austin Municipal Auditorium in September 1971, their landmark At Fillmore East from earlier that year had been in shops for just two months. But their repu

CHERRY RED Performed live for MTV's 120 Minutes shortly after the release of Where You Been, SeventyTwoHundredSeconds (in reality, only 26 minutes) comprises five tracks: one deep cut from each of the band's first five albums. What seems a niche comp

BUREAU B Quite how journalist and producer Uwe Nettelbeck managed to convince Polydor that Faust were Germany's next big thing is anyone's guess - especially when their first single was essentially a set of instructions on how to use a washing machin

BMG If the weight of being one of the most influential American rock bands of all time ever burdened the shoulders of Pixies, there's no sign of any pressure on Doggerel. While it would have been very easy for them to stuff their eighth album with kn

CLOUDS HILL Bouncing right back onto the alternative music scene after a ten year hiatus, The Mars Volta releases a seventh studio album that is an ethereal self-titled opus of quirky psychedelic pop and Latin American fusion. After the group's core

WARNER RECORDS After releasing their epic 73-minute album Unlimited Love in April this year, most bands could have easily left it at that for 2022. But as we know, Red Hot Chili Peppers are not most bands. Although they usually take half a decade to

BARGAIN BIN RECORDS Four years after going viral online with their song Smoko, Sunshine Coast shed punks The Chats have released their second full length album, Get F*cked. As the album's title and artwork demonstrates, these talented bogans seem int

WEATHERMAKER MUSIC Latter-day Clutch are enjoying something of a creative purple patch - if you can call the past 10 years since Earth Rocker a patch. The sophistication and breadth of their songwriting has escalated to the point where each album is

CHERRY RED Dave Brock has helped steer Hawkwind for more than half a century now, weathering periods of derision and indifference while always remaining resolutely unfashionable. Nevertheless, We Are Looking In On You inexorably judders forwards with

EPIC RECORDS At this point, you can say whatever you like about Ozzy. He's a bit deaf from more than 50 years of being an absolute legend, a co-architect of heavy metal, and a survivor of multiple near-death experiences. Whether the great man will ev

UNIVERSAL MUSIC It's great to experience Megadeth returning to form with a reinvention of their classic ‘80s sound, from 2016's Dystopia to this, their latest release. The first instrument we hear is a grim electric guitar passage that segues into a

ROADRUNNER RECORDS, INC. We Are Not Your Kind reset the bar for Slipknot albums, returning to the sheer intensity of the band's first two records to re-establish them as an 18-legged maelstrom of nihilism and fury. The End, So Far is a near-complete

EPIC RECORDS Pessimism runs deep through Lamb Of God's catalogue, so it's little wonder that the Virginia groove metal band's latest — and, actually, best — album yet is riven with fury, given the current hellscape that America and the rest of the wo

MEXICAN SUMMER Anyone familiar with Sweden's Dungen will know the Stockholm band for its lush psychedelic folk-and-jazz flavour, late ‘60s/ early ‘70s analogue warmth, psychedelic, buzzing reverb and splashy drums. There might also be the awareness t