✦✦✦✧ A stunningly beautiful and powerful album that defies genre boundaries. The band’s unique blend of melodic black metal, progressive metal, and post-rock creates a sound that is as haunting and uplifting as it is unpredictable. Avienne Low’s vocals are a standout, soaring over the complex instrumentals with grace and power. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ One of In Flames’ better late-stage albums. This feels like a return to the Gothenburg melodeath form that this band helped define. The back half of the album does wear out its welcome a bit, though. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Jesus Piece’s sophomore album is a blistering, uncompromising, and yet groovy metalcore assault on the senses. This is also a powerful and challenging exploration of addiction, depression, and self-doubt. And don’t let the 28-minute runtime fool you: this is a big meal, so plan accordingly. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ These guys aren’t the kings of NPR Metal for nothin’. Equal parts black metal, prog, and Dead Can Dance, this album once again marks an evolution of their sound, if not a complete departure. It’s full of surprises from start to finish. Do me a favor and give it a listen, if for no other reason than we can talk about it afterward. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Longtime readers of this blog won’t be surprised by my initial thoughts on this, the 714th album from thrash metal’s most consistent band. (It even had the exact same score as the previous album, for the first two-thirds of the album). But I’ve gotta call out the track “Fever,” which is so nasty and sludgy and rad. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Entheos is now a power trio. Think about that as the safety lapbar comes down and you are immediately launched onto this wild ride. Navene Koperweis handles the guitars as well as drums on this album, while Evan Brewer is back on bass. The result is a sound that slides adroitly from death metal to prog to jazz, equal parts Torrential Downpour and Meshuggah at their most experimental. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ This is one of the Finnish band’s best efforts to date, improving on its predecessor Heart Like A Grave in all aspects except for pacing, which does tend toward the overblown. Still, a fine almost-hour of melodeath, best served cold. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ This album, more than most, feels like a product of the CoViD-19 pandemic, for good and for ill. By way of delays and other exigencies, Ne Obvs were required to spend years on this album, and the resulting level of refinement and honing on display here is without equal. There is no filler, no fluff; this beast is all muscle and precision. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Deathcore brutality par excellence. What it lacks in variety, it makes up for with clever sound sculpting, thoughtful brevity, and endless kicks to your teeth. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ More settled than the 2020 predecessor City Burials, this album is surefooted, dynamic, and above all else, hauntingly emotive. So the band is less and less progressive with each album. And sure, it sounds like they’ve taken another step closer toward being Leprous (but that’s not much of a tragedy). See the rest here
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