Asphyx — Necroceros
✦✦✧✧ I’ll be kind and call this retro Euro-style death metal. It’s not bad by any means; it’s just not particularly inspiring. I give it two out of 4 Obama-not-bads. See the rest here
First Listens With Two-Star Ratings
Gatecreeper — An Unexpected Reality
✦✦✧✧ It is admittedly unusual to hear a band segregate their distinct influences, rather than try to meld them together. That what you’ve got here: Side A (grindy death core) vs Side B (doooooom). Both halves are competent, but I wish either side brought more originality to the mix. See the rest here
Cryptic Shift — Visitations From Enceladus
✦✦✧✧ These guys totally remind me of Thought Industry. Oh man, I fucking miss Thought Industry. Did I ever tell y’all they TI was my first ever fan mail exchange? True story. Anyway, enjoy this super-interesting piece of art noise. See the rest here
Yashira — Fail To Be
✦✦✧✧ Not quite as devastating as the band’s 2018 debut Shrine, but hardly an example of a sophomore slump, either. The band continue to serve up steaming heaps of nasty, noisy sludge, a la Old Man Gloom but with less meandering. The edge is smoothed over a little since last time, but this is a quibble; Yoshira are still heavy and fascinating and worth the listen! See the rest here
Napalm Death — Throes Of Joy In The Jaws Of Defeatism
✦✦✧✧ How do Napalm Death make politically aware grindcore sound so ferocious yet so catchy?! These songs, mostly penned by bassist Shane Embury, lean more experimental and unpredictable than we’ve been getting from ND lately, which is great news. And great noise. See the rest here
Primitive Man — Immersion
✦✦✧✧ This is as ridiculously heavy a noisescape as anything else PM have put out, with a slightly more pronounced focus on song structure than their previous album Caustic (and mercifully less than twice the running time). But it’s still a bit of a one-trick diversion of an album, and definitely not something you’ll ever hear on any radio request line. See the rest here
Anaal Nathrakh — Endarkenment
✦✦✧✧ Another 41-minute grind/industrial/death/black metal maelstrom, this time with a hint of… growing maturity and reflection? This album is in fact unusually thoughtful (don’t like the song title “Libidinous (A Pig With Cocks In Its Eyes)” fool you), with Dave Hunt’s lyrics touching repeatedly on the state of the Western world. See the rest here
Inferi — Of Sunless Realms
✦✦✧✧ An album length of 22 minutes might seem a little skimpy, but that doesn’t stop these tech death shredders from cramming an hour’s worth of riffs into it. It’s blistering fun at a million miles an hour, of course, but the listening experience is a little like doing shots; I can’t remember much after it’s all done, but I feel like I got hit by a truck anyway. See the rest here
Fates Warning — Long Day Good Night
✦✦✧✧ More like Long Album Good Night, am I right?! 31 years after “Nothing Left To Say,” Fates’ thirteenth album of thirteen songs is 72 minutes long (about 20 minutes too many). The songs don’t feel particularly related to each other (and this is somewhat of an aberration in the band’s catalog of albums with unifying themes). See the rest here
Pyrrhon — Abscess Time
✦✦✧✧ Perhaps Pyrrhon’s most accessible album to date… by which I mean that normies will be all “NO FUCKING THANK YOU” after about 10 seconds of this virtuosic cacophony. If you stick with it, however, you’ll find the progressive death metal band’s malevolent logic is a bit closer to the surface than before. See the rest here
