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

4 years ago

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!

Top Picks

Glorious Depravity – Ageless Violence (death metal)

Death metal? In the vein of Cannibal Corpse, Death, Ripping Corpse, Suffocation, and Deicide? Featuring members of Pyrrhon, Woe, Mutilation Rites, Weeping Sores, and more? Sing me the fuck up.

Last Week’s Best Discovery: Badge Époque Ensemble – Self Help (jazz-funk, psychedelic soul)

Scott

Ingrina – Siste Lys (blackened post-metal, doomgaze)

Following up from their debut Etter Lys, Siste Lys finds the French conveyors of atmosphere Ingrina return with another devastating album of bleak, crushing post-metal. With reworked old songs and new ones alike, Ingrina shows off their strong roots and resilient growth since. Siste Lys is a soundtrack for the forgotten, lost in the frozen sludge between the mental and the physical.

Last Week’s Biggest Surprise: Seahaven – Halo of Hurt (post-hardcore, midwest emo)

Trent Bos

Palm Reader – Sleepless (post-hardcore, melodic hardcore)

If there was ever any doubt that Palm Reader are one of the best (post-)hardcore bands working today, then there isn’t anymore. Sleepless is the crowing achievement of their  career so far and one of the best albums of 2020.

Josh Bulleid

Sealand Airlines – Sealand Airlines (prog rock, classic rock)

As much as I’d consider “prog” probably the most common theme in the venn diagram of music styles I listen to, it’s still a genre tag that always makes me a bit apprehensive.

Am I going to get Haken or Porcupine Tree, or some hokey, cheesy neo-prog?

Hopefully, Sealand Airlines’s debut album will be anything but…

Coming out on the excellent The Sign Records, a labels whose back catalog is solid enough to give everything they put out a chance, the first few singles seem to hint towards an excellent mix of ’70s prog with a bit of late ’70s/early ’80s synth love. With excellent driving bass, big jam outs, if they manage to stick the landing, this might be a late contender for a stop on my year end list!

Last Week’s Biggest Surprise: Alpha Hopper – Alpha Hex Index (hardcore punk, noise rock)

Remi

Best of the Rest

A Mutual Question – Connect (prog rock, prog metal)

A Pretext to Human Suffering – Rotting Sanctum (slam, brutal death metal)

Acrolysis & Reaver – The Nobody Crowd (heavy metal, thrash)

Amahiru – Amahiru (heavy metal, power metal)

Azarath – Saint Desecration (blackened death metal)

Beast Warrior – Wet Nightmare (heavy metal, melodeath)

Bethmoora – Thresholds (doom metal, sludge metal)

Phoebe Bridgers – If We Make It Through December (indie folk, Christmas music)

Ane Brun – How Beauty Holds the Hand of Sorrow (folk pop, indie folk)

Tim Burgess – Ascent of the Ascended (indie pop, indie rock)

Cadaver – Edder & Bile (black metal, death metal)

Clutch – WeatherMaker Vault Series Vol. 1 (stoner rock)

Coletta – Idealism (post-hardcore, pop rock)

Communic – Hiding From the World (progressive metal, melodic power metal)

The Corona Lantern – Certa Omnibus Hora (post-metal, blackened sludge)

Corrupt Moral Altar – Patiently Waiting For Wonderful Things (deathgrind)

Craven Faults – Enclosures (progressive electronic)

Miley Cyrus – Plastic Hearts (art pop, synthpop)

Def Neon – War Beats (electronic rock, synthpop)

Donato Dozzy – The Tao (drum & bass, techno)

Earth Trax – LP2 (deep house, dub techno)

Electric Hydra – Electric Hydra (stoner rock)

Factor Chandelier – Eastlake (downtempo, instrumental hip-hop)

Gryphon – Get Out of My Father’s Car (neofolk, prog rock)

Hatebreed – Weight of the False Self (hardcore, metalcore)

Horse the Band – Your Fault (nintendocore, post-hardcore)

Intolerant – Primal Future (blackened death metal, noise)

Jahari Massamba Unit – Pardon My French (jazz, hip-hop)

JFDR – Dream On (art pop, ambient pop)

Juicy J – The Hustle Continues (trap, pop rap)

Karkara – Nowhere Land (heavy psych, space rock)

Kaunis Kuolematon – Syttyköön Toinen Aurinko (death-doom)

KEISER – Our Wretched Demise (black metal, thrash)

Kyros – Four of Fear (synth pop, prog rock)

Moeror – The Ghosts of Amour Propre (avant-garde black metal, Hellenic black metal)

Névoa – Towards Belief (atmospheric black metal, post-metal)

Numbered With the Transgressors – Tombless (brutal death metal, deathgrind)

Obsidian Mantra – Minds Led Astray (progressive death metal, groove metal)

Oresund Space Collective – Four Riders take Space Mountain (psych rock, jazz fusion)

Ôros Kaù – Imperii Templum Aries (avant-garde black metal)

Our Oceans – While Time Disappears (art rock, prog rock)

Outside – Green In You (post-hardcore, shoegaze)

PÅGÅ – The Evil Year (post-punk, experimental rock)

Painted Shield – Painted Shield (alt-rock)

Parseltongue – Coiled (technical deathcore)

PlasticBag FaceMask – Content (mathcore, deathcore)

Plini – Impulse Voices (prog metal, djent)

Precaria – Nigraluminiscencia (avant-garde black metal)

Psycroptic – The Watcher of All (tech death)

Revolting – The Shadow at the World’s End (Swedish death metal)

John Robinson – The LvL Up (east coast hip-hop)

Morgan Rose – The Answer (nu-metal, alt-rock)

Sainte Marie des Loups – Funérailles de feu (raw black metal)

Schafter – Futura (pop rap, trap)

Senserase – Oros (mathcore, prog metal)

Siculicidium – Az alámerülés lárvái (raw black metal)

Signals – Death In Divide (prog metal, prog rock)

The Smashing Pumpkins – CYR (alt-rock, synthpop)

Snooze – Still (math rock)

Sodom – Genesis XIX (thrash)

Starmonger – Revelations (stoner rock)

Steps – What the Future Holds (dance-pop, Europop)

Temple – Funeral Planet (doom)

Trial by Combat – Consumed by the Darkness (death metal, thrash)

Tunes of Negation – Like the Stars Forever and Ever (ambient dub, tribal ambient)

veresk – Всё на своих местах (Midwest emo, post-hardcore)

VHS – Gore From Beyond the Stars (death metal)

Void Moon – The Autumn Throne (traditional doom, heavy metal)

Within the Ruins – Black Heart (progressive deathcore, melodic metalcore)

Scott Murphy

Published 4 years ago