Release Day Roundup – 8/7/20

Editor’s Note: Longtime reader Remi VL is a regular guest contributor to our Release Day Roundup posts! He submitted several of the albums listed below. Join his Facebook group for more recommendations.

Each month, we always seem to come to the same conclusion when it comes to our Editors’ Picks column: Friday release days open the floodgates and unleash a seemingly endless stream of quality new music. But while some of our Editors and Contributors sit down gleefully each week to dive into this newly stocked treasure trove, others find themselves drawing a blank at the end of the month due to the breakneck pace needed to keep up to date with what’s been released. Which brings us to this Heavy Blog PSA: a weekly roundup of new albums which pares down the week’s releases to only our highest recommendations. Here you’ll find full album/single streams, pre-order links and, most importantly, a collection of albums that could very well earn a spot on your year-end list. Enjoy!

Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids – Shaman! (spiritual jazz, Afro-jazz)

Alas – Alas EP (screamo)

Aminé – Limbo (pop rap, contemporary r&b)

Another Sky – I Slept On the Floor (alt-rock, indie rock)

Avatar – Hunter Gatherer (alt-metal, melodeath)

Badmouth – Brickstone Sessions (post-punk, math rock)

Backxwash – Stigmata EP (industrial hip-hop, horrorcore)

Batushka – РАСКОЛ / RASKOL (atmospheric black metal)

Burn Ritual – The Void (stoner-doom)

Concrete – Free Us From Existence (metallic hardcore, death metal)

Crystal Lake – The Voyages (metalcore)

Curses – Chapter II: Bloom (progressive metalcore)

Death By Stereo – We’re All Dying Just In Time (melodic hardcore, punk)

Deep Purple – Whoosh! (hard rock, symphonic prog)

Drugs – Episodic (noise rock, indie rock)

Duma – Duma (industrial techno, grindcore)

DVSR – West Technique (djent, rap metal)

Eto – Eto Brigante (gangsta rap, hardcore hip-hop)

Eye O – Continua (post-punk, post-rock)

Faceless Burial – Speciation (death metal)

Glass Animals – Dreamland (art pop, indietronica)

Good Tiger – Raised in a Doomsday Cult (post-hardcore, prog metal)

Gruppe Planet – Travel to Uncertain Grounds (post-metal, prog metal)

Great Gable – Tracing Faces (alt-rock, indie rock)

Willie J Healey – Twin Heavy (alt-rock, indie rock)

Hecate – In Nomine Artem Blackium (blackened death metal, symphonic metal)

Helvetia – This Devastating Map (indie rock, slacker rock)

Howling Giant/Sergeant Thunderhoof – Turned to Stone Chapter 2: Masamune & Muramasa (heavy psych, progressive stoner rock)

In Hearts Wake – Kaliyuga (metalcore)

in:tides – Silent Dusk (post-rock)

Ital Tek – Dream Boundary (IDM, progressive electronic)

Jenny O. – New Truth (singer/songwriter, indie rock)

JOBS – Endless Birthdays (experimental rock, avant-prog)

Jaga Jazzist – Pyramid (nu-jazz, progressive post-rock)

Jaye Jayle – Prisyn (alt-country, gothic country)

June of 44 – Revisionist: Adaptations & Future Histories In The Time Of Love And Survival (math rock, post-rock)

Krallice – Mass Cathexis (progressive black metal, tech metal)

Luck Won’t Save You – Sail Into the Abyss (melodic deathcore)

Marlowe – Marlowe 2 (abstract hip-hop, boom bap)

Megascavenger – Songs in the Key of Madness (death metal)

Mesarthim – The Degenerate Era (atmospheric black metal)

Messiah – Fatal Grotesque Symbols – Darken Universe (death metal)

The Microphones – Microphones in 2020 (psychedelic folk, ambient)

Misery Signals – Ultraviolet (melodic hardcore, progressive metalcore)

Jason Molina – Eight Gates (alt-country, Americana)

Liela Moss – Who the Power (alt-rock, folk rock)

Federico Musso and Jessica Ackerley – Nervios calavera en roja cinta en una noche en bruma gualda (avant-garde jazz, free jazz)

Oneiric Celephaïs – The Obscure Sibyl (tech death)

Onslaught – Generation Antichrist (thrash, d-beat)

Orbit Culture – Nija (death metal, groove metal)

Sanity Control – War on Life (thrash)

Selbst – Relatos De Angustia (atmospheric black metal, post-black metal)

The Shits – Punishment (noise rock, drone)

Six Leaves Left – Deleted File Recovery (synthwave, post-rock)

Slaves – To Better Days (alt-rock, post-hardcore)

Spiral Heads – Nothing New (pop-punk, punk rock)

Stand Atlantic – Pink Elephant (alt-rock, pop-punk)

Swarvy – Sunny Days Blue (contemporary r&b, jazz rap)

Temple Nightside – Pillars of Damnation (blackened death-doom)

Terminal Nation – Holocene Extinction (metallic hardcore, death metal)

Tough Age – Which Way Am I? (indie rock, garage rock)

Ursula – Fickle (metalcore, hardcore)

Vassafor – Vassafor III – To the Death (black metal, blackened death metal)

Video Age – Pleasure Line (synthpop, sophisti-pop)

Steve Von Till – No Wilderness Deep Enough (Americana, chamber folk)

Washed Out – Purple Noon (chillwave, dream pop)

Year of the Knife – Internal Incarceration (brutal hardcore)

Yellow Days – A Day In a Yellow Beat (neo-soul, hypnagogic pop)