✦✦✦✧ Meet the new and improved FGA, with a sound as epic and balls-to-the-wall as you’d expect, but now catchier than ever. More room is given to singer Veronica Bordacchini, and the songs are generally tighter, more concise, and more accessible. But the album still shreds where it wants to. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Oranssi Pazuzu continue their avant-garde electronicky black metal explorations, but in going farther than ever before with their cross-genre borrowings, they’ve managed to turn in a sound that is also their most listenable? I promise, even if you’ve heard these guys before, this album will keep you guessing. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Holy hell. This is Aborted’s best work since at least Retrogore, and may even surpass The Necrotic Manifesto (their previous high water mark). This album answers every criticism I had from the previous two efforts, sticking closer to their tech death basecamp while still being experimental and borrowing moves from almost every other modern metal genre (with the exception of black metal). See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ After seven years away, JFAC treat us with this powerhouse album, a followup to 2014’s Sun Eater. The band continue to hone their punishing brand of techdeath, flirting with a more experimental approach to their songwriting. The riffs on here: sheer madness. Shout out to the always great Navene Koperweis filling in on drums this time around (but everyone turns in epic performances here). See the rest here
✦✦✧✧ Al-Pal ushers in 2024 with what is allegedly Ministry’s penultimate album. What that means is more guitar-forward industrial, with a shiny new production patina and not-at-all-novel spoken word samples, acting as a backdrop for anything that a left-leaning American might rail against these days (toxic masculinity, white nationalism, climate change, MAGA, you name it). See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ So, when I said that Ihsahn is my favorite Norwegian composer since Edvard Grieg, I didn’t mean that he had to go quite so orchestral with the music. The lush arrangements here often work, but when they don’t work, they sound as awkward as Michael Kamen and the SF Symphony’s contributions to Metalica (ie, conspicuous and ill-fitting). See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ At last, brutal death metal for Gen-Z metalheads! Almost all songs under 3 minutes long! No dynamics, just grossness! See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Folks, this album is maybe everything I ever wanted from Priest. It’s anthemic, shreddy, speedy, gritty, and even more energetic than 2018’s Firepower. Andy Sneap’s production is top-tier, of course, but that only serves to showcase how great the whole band sound. Only time will tell if tracks like "The Serpent And The King" and "Trial By Fire" will take places aside "Painkiller" and "Breaking The Law"; regardless, this album is a must-listen. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ 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 RodrÃguez Flys definitely fits in nicely here with the rest of the band. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ 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. See the rest here
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