Bloodywood — Rakshak
✦✦✧✧ This is a six-piece nu metal band from New Delhi. That is to say, it sounds a lot like Limp Bizkit learned what a sitar is. See the rest here
Category: First Listens
Zeal & Ardor — Zeal & Ardor
✦✦✧✧ Both Z&A and The Armed pull from the same fount when they’re at their best: an uncanny and narrow intersection of ear-candy accessibility and undiluted acrimony. Ironically, the more this music hews to sounding overtly spiritual, the more boring it sounds. Fortunately, there are plenty of more subtle and intriguing tracks on the album (“Erase,” “Feed The Machine”, “Götterdämmerung”). See the rest here
Allegaeon — Damnum
✦✦✦✧ Eight years ago, techdeath darlings Allegaeon released Elements of the Infinite, developing for themselves a reputation for virtuosic unseriousness. They’ve been trying to distance themselves from the goofiness assumption ever since, in the process sounding like they’re still trying to figure out what their sound is. I’m happy to say that Damnum is a mighty step in the right direction, delivering dazzling, surprising, and energetic progressive metal that repeatedly manages to sound both fresh and familiar. See the rest here
Immolation — Acts Of God
✦✦✧✧ It’s a bold choice to start your album with a pair of clean, not-well-tuned guitars. And yet, it’s just one of many examples on this album where these progenitors of the NY death metal scene expertly feed and feed off of your expectations. Even less modern-sounding than earlier albums, Acts Of God nevertheless deliver a potent, ineffable air of melancholic aggression, at times bordering on o.g. See the rest here
Author & Punisher — Krüller
✦✦✧✧ Successfully moody, but fairly boring neo-industrial. It’s more Front Line Assembly than I remember A&P ever being in the past. A small step down from Tristan Shone’s recent work. See the rest here
Voivod — Synchro Anarchy
✦✦✧✧ This is quite literally a continuation of 2018’s The Wake, mostly for the good. The pacing is curious: it feels like a long album, but I’ll be damned if I wasn’t intrigued the whole time. Even the potential complaint of having heard this kind of thing from Voivod before isn’t much of a criticism here, as the songs are all such great exemplars of the Voivod sound. See the rest here
Cult Of Luna — The Long Road North
✦✦✦✧ This album from Sweden’s kings of post metal builds on and refines the sound from its predecessor A Dawn To Fear. Their sonic palette is expanded and even moodier and more interesting, and the production affords the music more space to inhabit and breathe. If I imagine what Isis might have sounded like if they’d continued their ascendancy, this album is pretty close to it. See the rest here
Once Human — Scar Weaver
✦✦✦✧ I have somehow been snoozing on Logan Mader’s work after he left Machine Head. What a great time then to hop on Once Human’s bandwagon: this album feels like a wholly cohesive statement, yet not quite like anything else you can hear today. Lauren Hart’s vocals that remind of Chester Bennington as often as of Joe Duplantier, all to great effect. See the rest here
Amorphis — Halo
✦✦✦✧ A fairly heavy, if not too polished, album of lavish prog folk metal and a fitting continuation of the band’s evolution into being a spiritual if not literal eastern extension of the Gothenburg sound. Solid from start to finish, although I do yearn for a standout classic or two (although “Windmane” comes close). See the rest here
Rolo Tomassi — Where Myth Becomes Memory
✦✦✦✧ As ever, this band has two modes: sumptious gorgeousness and feral mathcore aggression. What’s new and noteworthy is how well those two threads can be woven together, and in how many different combinations they work in tandem, not quite as relegated to their separate corners as before. I’m hardpressed to think of another band that can pull this off so effectively. See the rest here
