Release Day Roundup: 8/18/23

Top Pick

Spirit Adrift – Ghost At The Gallows (heavy metal)

It's kind of ridiculous just how far ahead of the rest of the retro/trad-metal revival crowd Spirit Adrift are. An argument might be made for Sumerlands, but that second album is still leaving me pretty cold. Spirit Adrift, on the other hand, continue to go from strength to strength, delivering yet another outlandishly awesome heavy metal record, packed with enough crunching riffs and anthemic choruses to carry the entire trad metal genre on their ample shoulders until their next record rolls around.

Ghost at the Gallows isn't quite the equal of Enlightened in Eternity (2020), which remains the best single outing from the modern trad metal crowd (again, with the possible exception being that first Sumerlands album). Yet, rather than attempting to outdo that record in fist-pumping heavy metal thunder, Spirit Adrift have opted instead to give its follow-up its own distinct identity. Ghost at the Gallows is a much more rock-infused, even earthen sounding album, compared to its more-metal-than-thou predeecessor. Although the heavier, riff-driven influences of bands like Metallica and Corosion of Conformity are still what sets the band apart from and above their competitors, its the the notable nods to formatove, metal adjacent, hard rock acts like Thin Lizzy that distinguishes Ghost at the Gallows within the band's own discography and again makes for one of the more memorable heavy metal records of recent memory.

Release Roundup

After Earth – The Rarity Of Reason (groove melodeath)

Aggrieved/Cold Case – Split (metallic hardcore, crossover)

Atreyu – The Moment You Find Your Flame (please, please stop (before it’s too late and you’ve destroyed it all))

Atria – Ground Zero (modern metal, melodeath)

Bees Made Honey in the Vein Tree – Aion (post metal, sludge doom)

Blacksheep – Bloodties (melodeath)

Bone Dagger – The Veil (stoner sludge)

Borracho – Blurring the Lines of Reality (stoner metal)

The Circle – Of Awakening (blackened goth doom)

Creak – Depth Perception (nu hardcore, metalcore)

Crown of Anguish – Crown of Anguish (death metal)

Cyhra – The Vertigo Trigger (melodic metal)

Damnation Plan – The New Horizon (prog metal)

Dead Talks – Veneration Of The Dead (death metal, melodeath)

Déhà – Averses II (post-black metal)

Divinite Hive/Parasitic Infection/Vault – Extraterrestrial Warfare (brutal death, slam)

Dripping Decay – Festering Grotesqueries (death metal)

Elohims Sterne – Gott Allmächtig (EDM metal)

Fall Of The Albatross – Rite (Instrumental prog metal)

Father Figure – Father Figure (progressive death metal)

Fetal Sewage – Dominated In Putrefaction (brutal death metal)

Fetus Destruction – Biologic Organic Brutal (goregrind)

Fiddlehead – Death is Nothing to Us (post hardcore, alt rock)

Flo – Long Way Down (alt rock, grunge)

Godthrymm – Distortions (doom)

Gom Jabbar/Pissing Contest – Split (noisy sludge, doom grind)

Hellcross – Altares en Llamas (blak thrash)

Horrendous – Ontological Mysterium (progressive death metal)

Imperial Tide – Existence In Crisis (hardcore, metalcore)

Invultation – Feral Legion (death metal)

Lombolo – Här och där (folk metal, power metal)

Milking the Goatmachine – Neue Platte (death metal)

Mortem Obscuram – The Wretched Divinity (symphonic tech death)

Movements – Ruckus! (alt rock, indie rock)

Nocte Obducta – Karwoche – Die Sonne der Toten pulsiert (black metal)

Nott – Hiraeth (brutal sludge death?)

Oblivion Protocol – The Fall Of The Shires (prog rock)

Occult Blood – The Room in the Ground (black metal)

Orbit Culture – Descent (groove death, melodeath)

Oxx – The Primordial Blues (prog sludge)

Princess Alice Manor – Outer Demons (melodeath, electronicore)

Pušča – Pušča (black metal)

Pyrkagion – The Katechon And the Unending Fire (unorthodox orthodox black metal)

Questioning Reality – Immersed in Illusion (better than its cover suggests)

Reformat – Precursed (electro-prog metal)

Ringworm – Seeing Through Fire (sludgy crossover)

The River’s Source – Beasts of Its Creation (black metal)

Sanguine Glacialis – Maladaptive Daydreaming (symphonic prog metal)

Sargassus – King of the Sun (extreme prog metal)

Seraina Telli – Addicted To Color (coordinated shoelace-core)

Shadow Smile – Signed In Blood (“visionary” atreyu-core)

Skalmold – Ýdalir (folk metal)

Soleo – Soleo (middle eastern prog)

Something Is Waiting – Absolutely (crust rock?)

The Trousers – Animal Gun (hard rock, blues)

Tusmørke – Hestehoven (psychedelic folk prog)

Ukć – Coming Out (progressive blackened death metal)

Unblessed Divine – Portal to Darkness (blackened death metal)

Valkeat – Fireborn (folk metal, power metal)

Warmen – Here for None (folk metal, melodeath)

Worm Shepherd – The Sleeping Sun (symphonic deathcore)

Ysbrydnos – Altar Of Moss Vol.1 – Amidst A Forgotten Glade (dungeon synth)