Malevolent Creation — The 13th Beast
✦✦✧✧ A decidedly more Behemoth-y brand of death metal than I remember from Malevolent Creation. If only the album sounded as interesting as that description does. See the rest here
Category: First Listens
Jinjer — Micro
✦✦✦✧ Ukrainian djenty nu metal! That’s likely to evoke a bad reaction, but if you can look past your preconceptions, you’ll be left with a unique (and, at times, surprisingly heavy) EP that reminds me a bit of Torrential Downpour, Mudvayne, and SikTh. Tatiana Shmailyuk’s clean vocals work more often than not, but her gross vox are always great. See the rest here
Born of Osiris — The Simulation
✦✦✧✧ Glitzy and glossy as always, this time around BOS actually manage to deliver some interesting songs as well! What’s interesting about this album (other than its 25-minute length) is that the 8 songs tend to fall into either a strongly metal-with-techno camp or in a techno-core vibe. What’s detrimental about that is that BOS has yet to integrate their djent, synthwave, emocore, and blackened death tendencies into a cohesive whole. See the rest here
Infernal Coil — Within a World Forgotten
✦✦✦✧ A particularly nasty bit of blackened death, this debut from a trio out of Idaho packs a lot of interesting riffage and punishment into its scant 35 minutes. It’s noisy and devastating, but beneath that offputting veneer lays a progressive beast of an album. Production values may hurt the band here, but either way I’m going to be keeping my eyes open for them in the future. See the rest here
Omnium Gatherum — The Burning Cold
✦✦✧✧ After a treacly intro, OG deliver another solid suite of melodeath. There’s not a lot of envelope pushing here, which is not surprising for this band. Still, strong musicianship and standard-setting catchiness are coupled with tasty riffs in a way that proves that the formula still works well enough to get the job done. See the rest here
Imperial Triumphant — Vile Luxury
✦✦✦✧ This is a really interesting slab of avant-garde grindy blackened deathy metal, reminiscent of Gorguts, Artificial Brain, Torrential Downpour, and Kronos Quartet. It’s insanely ambitious and highly inventive. The album loses points for its uneven production, however. While this is certainly not for everyone, if you’re the kind of metalhead who also likes jazz, this is a must-listen for you. See the rest here
Tomb Mold — Manor of Infinite Forms
✦✦✦✧ A nicely balanced bit of retro death metal, with touches of grindcore and… Converge? See the rest here
High On Fire — Electric Messiah
✦✦✦✧ This is Matt Pike et al at their most Motörheadesque. See the rest here
Immortal — Northern Chaos Gods
✦✦✧✧ Can Immortal still bring the frostbitten fury after parting ways with Abbath? Yep: this is classic Norwegian black metal, with all the wind-whipped ferocity you remember from albums past. Therein lies the rub: there’s not a whole lot newness here, and the album does feel a bit by-the-numbers. Still, this is a lovingly produced testament to an important band that still has plenty of bite. See the rest here
Sumac — Love in Shadow
✦✦✦✧ First off, don’t let the 4-song-66-minutes thing fool you: there are definitely sections and breaks in those tracks. That said, this feels like Sumac’s attempt at pulling a Catch Thirty Three. And the band pull it off a surprisingly high percentage of the time. Yet, this brand of post metal can’t seem to consistently bridle their experimentalism to the yoke of listenability. See the rest here
