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RevocationThe Outer Ones

✦✦✧✧ On one level, this is every bit what you’d expect from a Revocation album: unabashed virtuosity in the most fun metal ways imaginable. On another level, the album laudably goes for a wide assortment of musical genres (rethrash, death metal, grind), but does not particularly stick this landings very well.

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HakenVector

✦✦✧✧ It’s an odd thing to hear a band try to be simultaneously accessible and fucking weird. In Haken’s hands, it comes across like an awkward fusion of Leprous and Muse. By now, the band have made the logical evolution from 80s-inspired prog metal to a metal-and-synthwave melange of influences. Just about the solitary cohesive element here is almost pathological usage of odd time signatures, which sometimes work out just fine, but often wind up euthanizing the material’s sense of flow or momentum.

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Beyond CreationAlgorythm

✦✦✦✧ As to be expected, this BC album starts out sounding primarily like a showcase for fretless bassmanship. (Playing to the judge? I’ll allow it.) And while I’m talking about the bass, I need to highlight that “newcomer” Hugo Doyon-Karout more than fills his predecessor’s shoes. But the album quickly shifts gears into a more nuanced form of technical death metal, jazzier and more inventive than before.

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GorodAethra

✦✦✦✧ Three years since their last album, Gorod return with a more honed approach. Their sound now is still solid technodeath, but with a renewed commitment to songcraft. The band wields a more diverse palette this time around, channelling Gojira, Revocation, and early Mastodon… while simultaneously reining in their prior self-indulgences.

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Death By Metal

I just watched the new documentary on the band Death, called “Death By Metal,” which you can find on Amazon Prime. It’s really sweet and touching, and does a great job reminiscing about the early days while still hitting all the biographical beats you’d expect. Also, great interviews with ex-members of Death, Sadus, and just about everybody you’d care about.