✦✦✦✧ This is Converge (with Chelsea Wolfe and Stephen Brodsky) at their most brooding and contemplative. Not sure if that’s what anyone wanted from them, but that’s what they did with their pandemic; how about you? Shit talking aside, I really like this album, but if you think you’re getting “Axe To Fall II” here, you’re going to have a bad time. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Finally, a halfway-fresh-feeling album of rethrash from Bay Area veterans Exodus! You’d have to go back to 2004’s Tempo Of The Damned to find its equal. Guitarists Gary Fucking Holt and Lee Altus deliver the goods, and Steve Souza sounds as manic as ever. That said, the album does go on a little too long… there, I said it. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Six years ago, I noticed that iwrestledabearonce were starting to “[trade] their goofy self-indulgences for unsubtle savagery.” Then that band broke up. Courtney LaPlante (singer) and Mike Stringer (guitarist) went off and created Spiritbox. This album, their debut, is a continuation of iwabo’s evolution, with a sound that lands somewhere between Evanescence, TesseracT, and A Perfect Circle. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ A borderline great hardcore album that succeeds precisely because it gives you all the tropes you’d expect, only it pushes each’s intensity up to the maximum. Brickwall compression! Breakdown! Overdriven scream! Sudden left turn! Repeat! Familiarity does not always breed contempt. Now shut the fuck up and break something! See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Turnstile’s third album takes the experimentation of its predecessor and makes it look safe and timid by comparison. Here, the post-hardcore quintet set out to see just how far they can push and expand the limits of the beloved genre that they have so faithfully served. Track after track is full of surprises and delights. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ As was the case with 2017’s Red Before Black, this album starts off by giving the people what they want: traditionally disgusting old-school death metal. And just like its predecessor, this album waits until a third of a way in, before revealing the really great stuff. From “Condemnation Contagion” on, this album showcases the band at their most reinvigorated and, dare I say, catchy? See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ This is fucking ridiculous. The shredding, the changeups, the sheer number of strings… The production’s quantization and brickwall addictions notwithstanding, this is a must-listen for any tech death fan, and easily one of the genre’s best of 2021. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ ETID is as vital and imaginative as ever on this album, but this time around their mathy metalcore maelstrom feels more political than I recall them being before, in ways both overt and subtle. The album is chock full of pleasing surprises and upheavals. The whole band sound great, but special props to vocalist Keith Buckley, whose range is as impressive as his commitment to every style he reaches for, and to newcomer Goose Holyoak on drums, fresh off a few years with my other fave metalcore standardbearers Norma Jean. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ This is as much an evolution from 2016’s accessible hit Magma, as it is a descendent of their earlier albums. Fortitude is the best of both wordsL experimental, driving, satisfying, heavy, and confident. My only question is: what more can Gojira do before they’re accepted into the media mainstream? See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ The latest from Belgian deathgrind heroes Aborted continues the band’s fascinating and satisfying assault, following their career-long trajectory that has me convinced they’re Carcass from a parallel and slightly more demented universe. There’s not much innovation here, but with shredding this lethal, who’s going to complain? See the rest here
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