Lord Mantis — Universal Death Church
✦✦✧✧ Black metal meets stoner metal meets industrial? I guess that sounds like a good idea on paper. See the rest here
First Listens With Two-Star Ratings
Agnostic Front — Get Loud!
✦✦✧✧ Your best bet is to pretend like this album came out in 1990. This hardcore album is so obstinately nostalgic that it rushes headlong past Charming and instead crashes right into So What. Good news, though: you get 14 songs in 30 minutes, making this my winner for More Concise Album Of The Year. See the rest here
Nile — Vile Nilotic Rites
✦✦✧✧ A very consistent and satisfying slab of Egyptian-themed brütal tech death, which makes it an improvement over “What Should Not Be Unearthed.” Kudos in particular go to Mike Breazeale and Brian Kingsland, who ably fill the vocal and guitar voids respectively left by the departure of long-term mainstay Dallas Toler-Wade. See the rest here
Rings Of Saturn — Gidim
✦✦✧✧ Putting aside the various controversies that have plagued Lucas Mann and Rings Of Saturn for years, this technical deathcore album on its own merits is… okay. The most impactful parts, of course, are the sources of said controversies: the (possibly literal) inhuman performances, the clear substitutions for software over musicianship, and the at-times all-too-familiar riffs. See the rest here
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Sunn O))) — Pyroclasts
✦✦✧✧ This is an improvement over Sunn’s previous album, “Life Metal,” only insofar as there is a hint of an actual performance on a real instrument about 26 minutes into the album. See the rest here
Bad Wolves — N.A.T.I.O.N.
✦✦✧✧ For their second album, Bad Wolves took their SiriusXM-friendly groove metal formula and… made it less interesting? See the rest here
BABYMETAL — METAL GALAXY
✦✦✧✧ It’s ironic that an album that starts with a track titled “FUTURE METAL” trades so heavily in clichéd tropes. The metal gems on here are fewer and farther between the increased reliance on J-Pop, and honestly most of this album sounds like the soundtrack to Beat Saber… but don’t sleep on truly interesting and fun tracks like “Elevator Girl” or “Night Night Burn!” See the rest here
Norma Jean — All Hail
✦✦✧✧ All of the ferocity you’ve come to expect from these glitchy metalcore legends. What makes this album interesting is how the band simultaneously pummel the listener and hold their fire for better pacing throughout the album. The album’s back half is as compelling and brutal as its front half, not an easy feat for anyone in this genre. See the rest here
Singularity — Place Of Chains
✦✦✧✧ Symphonic tech death that feels like a cross between The Faceless and Fleshgod Apocalypse. When it’s on (“Sisyphean Cycle”, “Consume And Assume”, “Desmoterion”, it’s fucking on. Otherwise, the music here does trend toward the derivative or at least very familiar. That’s pretty much the worst criticism I can level against this otherwise epic and impressive shredfest of an album. See the rest here
1349 — The Infernal Pathway
✦✦✧✧ Speed metal and black metal, two subgenres that don’t often get successfully blended together, find an uneasy alliance in 1349’s latest album. Or rather, this happens in different ways throughout the album, which feels like at least three slightly different EPs, bookended by a few recurring “Tunnel Of Set” interludes, themselves a continuation of a trick first heard on 1349’s Demonoir album. See the rest here
