Wolves In The Throne Room — Primordial Arcana
✦✦✧✧ This is everything I’ve come to expect from American black metal, for good and for ill. I will say that these songs tend toward brevity, which is a very good thing. See the rest here
First Listens With Two-Star Ratings
At The Gates — The Nightmare Of Being
✦✦✧✧ The good news: Jonas Björler’s songwriting is interesting and ambitious without losing the main thread of their ethos. Coupled with their customary crisp production, this album sounds like ATG has been listening to a lot of Opeth lately.
The bad news: what is up with Tomas Lindberg’s vocals? Also, this album is maybe 5 or 10 minutes too long. See the rest here
Architects — For Those That Wish To Exist
✦✦✧✧ Djenty metalcore at its finest, for what it’s worth. See the rest here
Todd La Torre — Rejoice In The Suffering
✦✦✧✧ This is an adequate showcase for a Queensrÿche lead vocalist. Aside from that, there’s not a lot to get excited about here. See the rest here
Rivers of Nihil — The Work
✦✦✧✧ Ambitious and genre-defying, for good and for ill. RON are continuing their evolution from techdeath into full-on progressive high-concept auteurs. Without an outside editorial voice to help them keep focus, the resulting album feels uneven when taken as a whole. There are stellar moments here and there, and then there are moments that aren’t bad, but certainly feel like a setup to something else. See the rest here
Cynic — Ascension Codes
✦✦✧✧ Moody, jazzy, unique… undeniably Cynic. Also, very navelgazey, twice as long as it needs to be, and (you had to know this was coming) barely metal. Seriously, this is in some ways pathologically anti- metal. Like, any time Paul Masvidal starts getting close to groove or a riff, the band has to stop, change the tempo and cut the volume. See the rest here
The Armed — Ultrapop
✦✦✧✧ Former Arsies winners The Armed return with yet another slab of performance art (noise) that is about as metal as The Mars Volta or Boris, which is to say: tangentially. Still, Ultrapop hits my ears as subjectively more interesting than its predecessor Only Love. Pitchfork loves this album, so there’s that. See the rest here
Ice Nine Kills — Welcome To Horrorwood
✦✦✧✧ I like the idea of a metal album inspired by a collection of horror flicks (Child’s Play, Hellraiser, Candyman) as much as the next guy. And I have a surprisingly high tolerance for radio-friendly melodic metalcore. Together, they feel at odds with each other, the music’s J-Pop tendencies clashing with and belying the subject matter’s demands for gross heaviness. See the rest here
Der Weg einer Freiheit — Noktvrn
✦✦✧✧ A weirdly accessible and effectively moody album from this well-beloved German black metal band, Noktvrn introduces experimental elements with mixed results. Even with their misfires, it’s a compelling album worth listening to. See the rest here
Jinjer — Wallflowers
✦✦✧✧ All of the trademarks you’d come to expect from this Ukrainian quartet are still here: the chaotic changeups, ferocious riffs, adept performances. But there aren’t many memorable moments, as opposed to the genre-shaking hits from Micro and Macro. See the rest here
