No top pick(s) this week. Maybe it's just me, but – despite the glut on offer – I find myself utterly underwhelmed by today's releases. There's some solid-enough stuff in there. The Bleeding do their thing well enough and those Aodon and Halls of Oblivion albums have a cool tone to them, but neither really go anywhere. The remixed version of Cynic's Focus (2003) is also very good and most welcome – especially seeing as the original production job has always prevented me from properly appreciating it, despite counting its successor, Traced in Air (2008) and precursor, Death's Human (1991), among my all-time favourite albums of all time – but it's hard to get too excited about the repackaging thirty-year old album in 2023, especially seeing as a bunch of the tracks were already remixed back in 2004.
Anyway, here's a bunch of albums that are out this week. I'd say to let me know what I'm overlooking in the comments section, but we don't have one anymore. But let me know if there's anything you're digging or that I've overlooked when this gets shared on Facebook or something and I'll check it out. Maybe I'm just in a funk?
Release Roundup
All Life Ends – Miscreation (blackened death metal)
Aodon – Portraits (progresisve blackened death metal)
The Arcane Order – Distortions From Cosmogony (death metal)
Art Nation – Inception (melodic rock, heavy metal)
As We Suffer – The Fallen Pillars (crossover groove thrash?)
Avarice – Avarice (death thrash)
Before The Sirens – Desolate Seas & Darkened Skies (rockin groove thrash)
The Biscuit Merchant – Phobia (prog metal)
Black Rainbows – Superskull (stoner metal)
The Bleeding – Monokrator (death thrash)
Burial Hordes – Ruins (blackened death metal)
Cancer Christ – Satan Is A Bitch (crusty grind)
Carrion – Binary Communication (death metal)
Carry The Torch – Delusion (melodeath)
Cavern Deep – Breach: Part II (doom)
Claustrum – Claustrum (death metal)
Conjuring – Vis Natuare (black metal)
Crashing Wayward – Listen! (slightly gothy hard rock)
Cynic – Refocus (progressive death metal)
Dayshifter – Hiraeth (post hardcore)
Dead Quiet – IV (doom metal)
The Defiants – Drive (a lot less hair metal)
Eremit – Wearer of Numerous Forms (progressive funeral death doom)
Ekrom – Uten Nådigst Formildelse (black metal)
Exnun – Nutshell Studies Of Unexplained Death (crossover death metal)
Extreme – Six (hard rock)
Fallow Gold – The Slog of Days (sludgy emo)
False Memories – Hybrid Ego System (gothic doom metal)
Gardner / James – No Strings (heavy metal)
Geld – Currency // Castration (hardcore)
Godflesh – Purge (industrial metal)
Grant The Sun – Voyage (instrumental prog metal)
Gravecrawler – The Horrors Unleashed (brutal blackened death metal)
Gridfailure and Interstitia – Sunyata Ontology (ambient industrial)
Halls Of Oblivion – Eighteen Hundred And Froze To Death (blackened melodeath)
I, Destroyer – Cold, Dead Hands (black metal, black thrash)
Imperishable – Come, Sweet Death (blackened death metal)
Isvara – XXV: Cerebrospinal Fluid (blackened death metal)
Janelle Monáe – The Age of Pleasure (RnB, hip-pop)
Jesus Chrüsler Supercar – Rising (sludgey doom metal)
Johnny The Boy – You (blackened doom metal)
Kaksonen – Universumin Kuningas (weird death metal)
Kill Division – The Thoughts And Prayers (death thrash)
King Krule – Space Heavy (art rock, neo-psychedelia)
Max Enix – Far From Home (opera metal)
McFly – Power To Play (Weezer-core)
Miasmes – Repugnance (black thrash)
Passéisme – Alternance (blackened death metal)
Pyrexia – System Of The Animal 25 (brutal death metal, deathcore)
Rainbows Are Free – Heavy Petal Music (psychedelic metal)
Rat Cage – Savage Visions (punk, hardcore punk)
Ray Alder – II (prog metal)
Rise To Fall – The Fifth Dimension (melodic melodeath)
Ruiner – The Book Of Patience (doom drone? drone doom?)
Scar Symmetry – The Singularity (Phase II – Xenotaph) (melodeath)
Shakra – Invincible (heavy metal)
Slow Fall – Obsidian Waves (melodeath)
Slipknot – Adderall (y tho?)
Snake Healer – Oblatio (doom)
Soft Kill – Metta World Peace (post-punk, darkwave)