Top Pick
To the Grave – Everyone’s a Murderer (brutal deathcore)
Sydney's To the Grave are one of the better and more exciting acts to emerge from the burgeoning deathcore scene in recent years, having gone from strength to strength across the span of their previous releases, especially 2021's Epilogue and last year's Director's Cuts. As you might be able to tell, the band's trademark animal liberation ethos has also been brought even further to the forefront for this new album, which eschews a lot of their earlier, environmentalist bent in favour of a direct assault upon and inversion of the meat industry. Paradoxically, this newfound lyrical bluntness and (literally) pig-headed delivery only makes their message more cutting, and makes Everyone's a Murderer easily the album I've been looking forward to the most amid today's stacked list of highly-anticipated releases.
From my first few listens though, I'm feeling pretty mixed about the album. On the one hand, it's refreshing to hear some seriously brutal deathcore, sans all the Lorna Shore-inspired symphonics. There is a lot of old-school death metal and grindcore that's been brought back into the album's sound, with old-school acts like Cannibal Corpse, Dying Fetus earlier Cattle Decapitation serving as obvious points of reference. The singles are the best of the bunch, with the nu-metal-tinged "Burn Your Local Butcher" (featuring Siantelle Johns of Melbourne up-and-comers Identity Error) being a fun throwback to Despised Icon and their ilk, while grove-laden closer "Dead Wrong" (featuring Michael Kearney from some band called Nautilus) represents the apex of To the Grave's more death-metal-inclined development. Although it certainly leaves the album on a high note, it's also somewhat of a shame that it's saved for last, as it would have been nice to see them develop this sound further, or at least more constantly, across the entire record.
There are also some serious clunkers, however. Second track "DxE" is an extremely hackneyed deathcore hype-track, replete with cries of "this is To the Grave motherfucker!" and a stale shoutout to Lamb of God via the line "this is a motherfucking invitation". To the Grave excel in their brutality, but they lack the charisma and (semi) awareness of bands like Alpha Wolf or even Emmure, who are more equipped to pull something like this off. The track maybe would have made more sense as an opener, but then again, that maybe would have left it dead on arrival, and the whole thing was probably better left on the cutting-room floor. None of the other tracks are anywhere near as cringeworthy, but a lot of them are still fairly stock-sounding.
Some of the guest appearances also aren't the strongest. The inclusion of animal activist Sophie Wilcher is interesting, but the clean vocals she brings to "Eight Four One Six" stick out like a seriously sore thumb (one that's undergone a forceful onychectomy perhaps?). Then there's Kearney who announces his presence on "Dead Wrong" with a cry of "Colorado Springs to Sydney bitch". The casual use of misogynist/speciesist slurs is (unfortunately) pretty par for the course within the death-core scene, but it stands out as an odd inclusion, given the context and that the term doesn't appear anywhere else amid album's otherwise forcefully anti-speciesist rhetoric. It's a relatively minor offence (especially compared to the others detailed throughout the record), but it's weird that it slipped through here, and someone might also like to have a chat with fellow-contributor Connor Dickson of No Life about the (over-)use of such language (and explicit smilies!) in his own band's lyrics.*Anyway, I'm off to their album launch show this evening (which also features No Life and Identity Error), so we'll see how I/they go. I should be able to pick up some decent vegan pizza while I'm there, at least.
Update: The opener at the album release show was a comedy/death rapper named Ill Ferrell, who came on stage and yelled "If you don't do DMT, you're a bitch," and then did a song where the chorus was just him repeating "I said bitch" over and over again. Make of that what you will... To the Grave were really good though, and "DxE or Die" want off live, even if I still think it would work better as an opener and they probably could have played for a bit/lot longer, but it was good while it lasted. I didn't get any pizza though.
*I have a spare copy of The Sexual Politics of Meat, if he or anyone else wants to borrow it?
Release Roundup
Amiensus – Reclamation Pt. II (progressive meloblack)
Anciients – Beyond The Reach Of The Sun (stoner prog/doom)
Anna Pest – You and Me at the End of the Fucking World (nuish deathcore)
Avmakt – Satanic Inversion Of… (black/death metal)
Awolnation - The Phantom Five (alt/indie rock)
Avmakt – Satanic Inversion of... (black metal)
Bent Knee – Twenty Pills Without Water (prog rock/pop)
Betelgeuse – Bajo el amparo de la putrefacta cruz (black metal)
Chelsea Wolfe – Undone (remixes)
Cold Gawd – I’ll Drown On This Earth (post-hardcore, shoegaze)
Constancia - IV Evermore (melodic rock/metal)
Concrete Winds – Concrete Winds (industrialish deathgrind)
Contemptor – Aequinoctium (blackish death metal)
Copse – MMXXIV (blackgaze)
Cult Of Orpist – Attack Of The Zombies Cans (death metal)
Cutdown – To the Grave (crusty hardcore)
Deceased – Children of the Morgue (gothy death-thrash)
Deliver The Galaxy – Bury Your Gods (blackened melodeath)
Deny – Call Of The Void (crust, hardcore)
Dionize – Lighthouse (death-sludge)
Druid Stone – Undead Poets Society (weird/depressive doom-rock)
Elkapath – The Twisted Jester (nu-ish symphonic metal)
Ellende – Todbringerin’ (progressive/post-black metal)
Entropy – Dharmakaya (alt rock)
Enumclaw – Home In Another Life (alt rock)
Erronaut – The Space Inbetween (stoner doom)
Executioner’s Mask – Almost There (noisy goth rock, post-punk)
Faceless Empress – The Escapist (doom metal)
Fim da Aurora – Empty (death metal)
Gloria Perpetua – The Darkside We Wanna Hide (speed/power metal)
Grave Risk – Mindkiller (hardcore, crossover thrash)
Grendel’s Sÿster – Katabasis into the Abaton / Abstieg in die Traumkammer (folk doom)
Gutvoid – Breathing Obelisk (death metal)
Hāg – Over stormskapte fjell (black metal)
Leprous – Melodies of Atonement (prog metal)
Longhouse – III: Nìjwàswe (blackened doom)
Lordchain – The Chastisement Of Our Peace (heavy metal)
Lovebites – Lovebites EP II (heavy/power metal)
Marax – The Shrine (black metal)
Modern Rites – Endless (death metal, meloblack)
Nails – Every Bridge Burning (edgy crust/grind, powerviolence)
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Wild God (goth folk? ramble rock?)
Nighthawk – Vampire Blues (hard rock)
Norna – Norna (sludge doom)
Oceano – Living Chaos (deathcore)
Other World – Tenebrous (post-black/death metal)
Palaye Royale – Death or Glory (alt/pop rock)
Phaëthon – Wielder Of The Steel (trad/power metal)
Phenocryst – Cremation Pyre (blackened death metal)
Pneuma Hagion – From Beyond (slammish brutal death metal)
Rat Lord – Blazed In The Northern Sky (blackish hardcore punk)
Richard Cheese – Blue No Matter Who (lounge, comedy)
Rezet – Rezet (thrash/power metal)
Rosetta Stone – Under The Weather (post/goth synth, post punk)
Saint – Immortalizer (heavy/melodic metal)
Salt On Sunday – A Docket Of Votive Offerings (post sludge?)
Satan’s Satyrs – After Dark (shitty occult rock)
Shining Force – Spiritual Warfare (heavy metal)
Sickrecy/SlothPhantomMoth – Split (sludgy grindcore)
Sunbleached – I Crawled Into The Hole (alt rock)
Sunless – Grave of the Lambs (weird doom)
Sur Austru – Datura Strahiarelor (weird folk)
Tantrum – No Place For The Damned (heavy/speed metal)
Teeth – The Will of Hate (weird/sludgy death metal)
Temple Witch – Ocean Thousand, Mountain Thousand (sludge doom)
Thrown – Excessive Guilt (nu meal/hardcore)
Thunderbird Divine – Little Wars (stoner prog)
Tusmørke – Dawn Of Oberon (prog rock/folk)
Ty Segal – Love Rudiments (experimental electronic, alt/indie rock)
Vast Pyre – Vast Pyre (stoner doom)
VHS – For A Few Riffs More (croaky country?)
Wall – Brick By Brick (alt-sludge)
Wintersun – Time II (sauna wankery)
Wolfhorde – Bloodmoon Symphonies (folk metal, melodeath)
Worn Out – Low (hardcore, metalcore)
Wunderhorse – Midas (alt-folk/punk)
Zedd – Telos (electro pop)