Klysma — Death
✦✦✦✧ At last, brutal death metal for Gen-Z metalheads! Almost all songs under 3 minutes long! No dynamics, just grossness! See the rest here
First Listens With Three-Star Ratings
Judas Priest — Invincible Shield
✦✦✦✧ 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
Persefone — Lingua 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 RodrÃguez Flys definitely fits in nicely here with the rest of the band. See the rest here
Vitriol — Suffer & 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. See the rest here
Enterprise Earth — Death: 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? See the rest here
Caligula’s Horse — Charcoal 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). See the rest here
Saxon — Hell, 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? See the rest here
Suffocation — Hymns 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. See the rest here
Spiritbox — The Fear of Fear
✦✦✦✧ On this EP, Spiritbox wheel between ridiculously heavy djent and radio-friendly metalcore. The real standout track is “The Void,” in which the band successfully marries aggression and catchiness. Solid and eminently relistenable. See the rest here
Blut Aus Nord — Disharmonium – 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. See the rest here
