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PersefoneLingua Ignota: Part I

✦✦✦✧ More prog metal perfection, although I can’t help but feel like this one has been sanded a bit too smooth. Still, for a five-track, 26-minute half album, this is a remarkably unrushed and hauntingly mature release. New vocalist Daniel Rodríguez Flys definitely fits in nicely here with the rest of the band.

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VitriolSuffer & Become

✦✦✦✧ This album gives me chills, y’all. And not just because the band obviously took to heart my critique of their promising yet flawed 2019 debut, fixing or improving upon everything on it. Seriously, aside from the already-stellar shredding or vocals, Vitriol have improved their scores for every one of my criteria, resulting in a new benchmark for modern techdeath.

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Enterprise EarthDeath: An Anthology

✦✦✦✧ Continuing their exploration of kitchen-sink post-deathcore, EE sacrifice cohesion for a cavalcade of endlessly tasty bits. This turns out to be a winsome choice, and a recipe for a grower of a record. As was also the case of its predecessor, the album is possibly 15 minutes too long for my attention span, but so what?

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Caligula’s HorseCharcoal Grace

✦✦✦✧ This album marks a subtle pivot for the band, emerging from CoViD as a djentier yet still proggy version of themselves (less Textures, more TesseracT). The music still tends to groove, it shreds when it needs to, and is remarkably listenable for an album that has three longform pieces (counting the 22-minute four-part title track).

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SaxonHell, Fire And Damnation

✦✦✦✧ Man, Saxon just don’t give up! Their twenty-fourth studio album is guaranteed to get your fists pumping, my olds. Also, I’m a sucker for historically-themed midtempo metal, and this album that in spades, from the Battle Of Hastings to aliens in Roswell NM). Who needs to stray from the formula when you’ve got The Goods?

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SuffocationHymns From The Apocrypha

✦✦✦✧ Unrelenting tech death… you can really feel that Long Island rage! More than ever, this album has something old and something new for you. New vocalist Ricky Myers does a fantastic job filling Frank Mullen’s nasty shoes. There aren’t that many earwormy hooks on this album… but honestly I’m just saying that because I can’t think of anything else to criticize here.

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Blut Aus NordDisharmonium – Nahab

✦✦✦✧ This is BAN at their most discordant, most troubling, and ultimately most successful. Sure, their brand of avant-garde music is by now reliably atmospheric, but on this album they seem to really gotten much closer to the crawling chaos than ever before. Catchy, this is not, but I don’t think you want this nightmare fuel rattling in your head any more than the runtime requires.

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DødheimsgardBlack Medium Current

✦✦✦✧ Surprisingly accessible, as far as avant-garde black metal goes. The album’s experimentation comes at you as curveballs without warning; while not every bet pays off, there are definite rewards here if you’re patient enough to receive them. Vicotnik’s vocals are a conspicuous letdown when compared to the lush production, instrumentation, and expansive songwriting.