Top Picks
Sans Froid – Hello, Boil Brain (weird piano prog)
Normally I'd take this opportunity to recommend you one of the larger, mainstream-leaning releases (the groovier the better!). This week, however, I'm donning my sunglasses, and you should too, because I've got the scoop on some very cool, underground releases that even the coolest of cool people probably don't even know about. Because they're not cool enough.
First up are Bristol's Sans Froid, who are a piano led "art rock" band who kind of remind me of the more organ-driven moments prog-era Opeth, except with even less metal and if they were also a weird indie band with a female vocalist who splits the difference between Bjork and Mike Patten, while also playing piano. Then there's brighter, more upbeat songs like "Gammons" or "The Still", that remind me of later Beardfish, before they went all twee. I'm sure there are a bunch of other, more accurate reference that people cooler than I are aware of. But then they probably don't know about Sans Froid now do they?
Pincer Consortium – Geminus Schism (weirdish/posty prog-death)
If you're looking for something a bit more traditionally metal, but also fairly odd and certainly obscure, then hop aboard a quick boat trip over to Belfast where Pincer Consortium are busy knocking up some semi-dissonant, post-tinged prog death that reminds me a lot of the heavy sections from the last Rivers of Nihil album, mixed with something like Septic Flesh or even 7 Horns, 7 Eyes, if anyone (else) remembers them?
The band are apparently an offshoot of a pre-existing worm-themed band called Scald, who I am not cool enough to have know about beforehand, and who appear to have started off as some kind of crusty grind/drone hybrid, before developing toward a more progressive sound on their most recent record, Regius I (2021), which seems more in line with what its members are offering up on Geminus Schism and offers an intriguing next step if you like what you hear (and might just be the best "new" album I've discovered this week).
Release Roundup
A Killer’s Confession – Victim 1 (modern/melodic metal)
Aethyrick – Death Is Absent (black metal, meloblack)
Agrypnie – Erg (progish black metal)
Apep – Before Whom Evil Trembles (War Anthem)
Black Citrus – Glass Mountain (doom sludge)
Bones UK – Soft (alt/pop-rock)
Breeding Chaos – Distant Planets (weirdish death metal/melodeath)
Caffeine – The Threshold (progressive stoner metal)
Chastity – Chastity (post-hardcore, emo)
Cokus – An Hour Of Lies (doom rock/metal)
Colin Stetson – The Love it Took to Leave You (experimental electronic, jazz)
Crobot – Obsidian (stoner rock/metal)
Crypt Crawler – The Immortal Realm (death metal)
Cursive – Devourer (weird alt rock)
Dale Crover – Glossolalia (noise/indie rock)
Dark Brown – American Instrument (progressive/psyche-rock)
Death Decline – Pattern of an Imminent Collapse (thrash metal, melodeath)
Denomination – The Last Companion (death metal)
Ecliptic – Ĕrǫ Űgṭhĩƚxiƨƚeƨ Ḳmƀaṗḳǫsħi (brutal dissodeath)
Father Befouled – Immaculate Pain (death metal/doom)
Fen – Dear Mouse (progressive/weird alt rock)
Firtan – Ethos (black metal)
Flotsam And Jetsam – I Am The Weapon (heavy metal, thrash)
Foxing – Foxing (progressive alt/noise rock)
The Funeral Portrait – Greetings From Suffocate City (My Chemical Romance)
Gallileous – Dancing Ash (doomy prog-rock)
Geisterfaust – Geisterfaust (Crawling Chaos)
Glare Of The Sun – Tal (mellowdoom)
Hammerfilosofi – Solus (Igne Natura Renovator Integra) (dissoblack)
Hand Of Omega – The End Of The Beginning (blackened sludge)
Helevorn – Espectres (mellowdoom)
Herakleion – Necroverse (death metal)
Insurrection – Obsolescence (death metal)
Isolert – Wounds Of Desolation (black metal)
Jackals’ Feast – Lost In The Forest And Tormented By Demons (doom metal)
The Jesus Lizard – Rack (alt rock, grunge)
Jade/Sanctuarium – The Sempiternal Wound (melodoom, death-doom)
Killing Spree – Camouflage (noisy sax-sludge)
Las Trumien – Budowniczowie grozy (sludge, doom)
Lastelle – Exist Vol. I
Legions Of Doom – The Skull 3 (doom metal)
Man's Gun – The Reprobate (folk-goth, alt-rock)
Manuel Barbara – Whisper In A Storm (djent shred)
Mass Disorder – Hupokrisis (death metal)
Mechanix – Architects of Chaos (shitty thrash)
Mind Mold – Erosive (posty prog-black)
MK Ultras – MK Ultras (punk)
Mordkaul – Feed The Machine (death metal, melodeath)
Morticide – Death Cannot Hold Those with Purpose… (deathened black metal)
Mynskh – Chapter II – The Last Messiah (black doom)
Nada Surf – Nada Surf (alt/indie rock)
Nightwraith – Divergence (progressive melodeath)
Noen Hater Oss – Kunsten Aa Gjoere Jorden Ubeboelig (black metal)
Oceans Of Slumber – Where Gods Fear To Speak (progressive metal, goth doom)
156/Silence – People Watching (nu-metalcore, alt metal)
Opium Warlords – Strength! (industrial doom)
Öxxö Xööx – + (The Opening of the Hypercube) (progressive goth doom)
Paganizer – Forest Of Shub Niggurath (death metal)
Post Luctum – Forced to Watch You Wither (mellowdoom)
Putridarium/Trollcave – Swallowed by Rottenness (death-doom)
Qarinah – Transcendent (alt rock)
Ramera – Midnight Funeral (black thrash, speed metal)
Reconstructed Torso – Glimpse (brutal prog/tech-death)
Satan – Songs In Crimson (heavy metal, thrash)
Sbarco – Sbarco (progressive post-rock)
Schwein – War (punky/progressive black metal)
Shadow and Claw – Whereabouts Unknown (sludgy black metal)
Silent Theory – Tell Us How It Ends (nu/alt-metal)
Slomosa – Tundra Rock (stoner rock/metal)
Solus Rex – The Duellist’s Monologue (doom)
Spirit Mother – Trails (progressive stoner doom)
Stryper – When We Were Kings (hard rock, hair metal)
Sully – Sully (grindcore)
Sven Gali – Bombs And Battlescars (alt rock, hair metal)
Swampworm – Architeuthis (weird blackened death-doom)
Taur-im-Duinath – Verso casa (meloblack)
Thanatomorphose – Cold Cuts (goregrind)
Timeless Fairytale – A Story To Tell (busty jester metal)
Tommy Stewart’s Dyerwulf – Fyrewulf One (doom metal)
Torso – Brain Cells (stoner doom)
Torus – Torus (alt/stoner rock)
Trelldom – …By The Shadows… (weird ambient, post-doom)
Trip To The Morgue – Toe Tagged And Body Bagged (groove/death metal)
Typhonian – The Gate Of The Veiled Beyond (doomy/progresisve meloblack)
Unspeakable Carnage – Unbearable Weight (noisy black metal/grind)
Vafurlogi – Í vökulli áþján (black metal, meloblack)
Val Experience Band – Osmium (instrumental prog metal)
Velosity – Consuming All The Evil (thrash metal)
Victory – Circle Of Life (hard rock)
Wake The Nations – Heartageddon (hard/melodic rock)
Warpriest – Gloombreaker (doom)
Where’s My Bible – Kave (blackened death metal)