Top Picks
Dormant Ordeal – Tooth and Nail (dissonant/posty blackened death metal)
This is the best new album I've heard all year. In case you missed Eden's single premiere last week, or (like me) had overlooked Dormant Ordeal's previous albums, Tooth and Nail sounds like a perfectly potent mix of Decapitated and Behemoth, with a splash of Ulcerate, resulting in an overall sound that brings to mind lesser known bands like Vredehammer or Dyscarnate really putting their pedals to the (dissonant/posty blackened death) metal.
It's tempting to call Tooth and Nail a progressive album, not least because of the Opethian interludes that interject album highlights like "Horse Eater" and "Against the Dying of the Light" or the posty-melodic textures built to on "Everything that isn't Silence is Trivial". The album's true appeal, however, lies in its overwhelming brutality and aggression, with the band blasting away for much of its runtime in an unrelenting manner befitting of Behemoth's Baal, or even the mighty Hate Eternal. Tooth and Nail doesn't quite have the "aura" of an obvious Album of the Year contender, and Dawn of Ouroboros (and even A Separate Piece) are already giving it a run for its money. Either way though, it's an album I'm sure you'll be hearing a lot more about at the end of the year. Until then, lay back and let its glorious barrage wash over you.
Empyrean Sanctum – Detachment from Reality (progressive metal)
If you're after something a bit more uplifting, then I recommend Empyrean Sanctum practice a style of traditional prog-metal heavily reminiscent of genre titans like Symphony X, Dream Theater and Queensrÿche, or even a less thrash-forward Nevermore, if they were fronted by Big City/Invasion wailer Jørgen Bergersen instead of Warrel Dane (fingers crossed!). Their actual singer's name is Albert Rybka, who also fronts Katagory V, and current Exist and Revocation bassist Alex Weber (decidedly ex-Obscura) also adds to the bands progressive edge, delivering one of the year's most melodically memorable and musically impressive records in the process. Plus it has Hannes Grossmann on drums, so you know it's good!
Release Roundup
Aittala – Machines (prog-metal, doom?)
Akantophis – Erneuerung (weird/progressive black metal)
Aorist – Predator (djeathcore)
Ancestor Of Kaos – Animal Ritual (blackgrind)
Ancient Death – Ego Dissolution (prog death)
Anoxia – Revel In Sin (death metal)
Assassinator – Defeatizen (industrial metal)
Astroqueen – Rufus Rising (stoner metal)
Black Band Shirt – You Will Never Know Me (post-black metal, emo)
Black Rabbit – Chronolysis (death metal)
Blackwater Holylight – If You Only Knew (progressive/post-gaze)
Blade’s Edge – The Fate’s Key (heavy metal)
Brain Stem – Nullified (death metal)
Braveride – The Great Awakening (power metal)
Burning the Oppressor – Waking Nightmare (groove death)
Newspeak – Bury The Hatchet (metal/deathcore)
By Way Of Sacrifice – The Chapel of The Resurrection (rap djent)
Catalysis – The Only Way Out is Through (groove melodeath)
Cave Sermon – Fragile Winds (progressive post-black/disso-death)
Collapsed Vein – Pain Communion (death-doom)
The Concrete Boys – Everything’s Better Than You (whacky rock)
Crow’s Flight – The Dark Horizon (heavy/melodic metal)
Crypts Of Despair – We Belong In The Grave (deathcore) Review
Demonologists – Rakshasa (industrial/electro black)
Derrick Barry – Hey Derrick (drag pop)
Divide and Dissolve – Insatiable (weird/ambient doom-drone)
Exterminatus – Echoes from a Distant Star Part 1 (tech-death) Review
Fabulous Desaster – Crucify This! (thrash)
Face Yourself – Martyr (deathcore)
Fractured Fairytales – Parasomnia (industrial black metal)
Gama Bomb – Necronomicon Automaton (thrash)
Gouged – Realm of Disgust (slamish brutal death)
Hawkwind – There is No Space for Us (space rock, stoner prog)
Horrid Human Condition – Perpetual Imbalance (crusty/blackened crossover)
I Am Your God – Δ (Trinity) (melodeath)
Imperatus – The Dusk of Hopeless Dreams (death metal)
Inoculation – Actuality (brutal death metal)
Iron Lung – Adapting//Crawling (noise slude)
Kexelür – Epigrama De Un Pasado Perdido (weird/noisy blackened death)
King Garcia – Hamelin (instrumental prog)
La Hija del Carroñero – El argot de los muertos (deathgrind)
Laurenne/Louhimo – Falling Through Stars (melodic rock/metal)
Lik – Necro (death metal) Review
Lost Souls – Lore (9–5 grind-core)
Lord Vampyr – The Greatest Bloodbath (goth/theatre metal)
Luminous Veil – Where Malefic Icons Do Eons Keep (black metal)
Lux Terminus – Cinder (instrumental prog)
Mo'ynoq / Urocyon – Split (progressive black metal)
Morphin – Finding Bliss Amidst the Darkness (funeral doom, dsbm)
Mystic Circle – Kriegsgötter MMXXV (black metal, covers)
Nasty Surgeons – Gangrenous Symphonies (death metal)
Newshapes – A Conversation With Myself (baddiecore)
Övervåld – Vigarv (blackened deathgrind)
Pearl Handled Revolver – Tales You Lose (prog rock)
Rawfoil – Where Malice Converges (prog-thrash)
Recrtix – The Bell That Never Stops Ringing (weird/noisy electronic) Premiere
Red Moon Architect – October Decay (funeral doom)
Revenira – Neo Tokyo 2125, Part II: Fear (electronicore)
Russ Ballard – Songs From The Warehouse/The Hits Rewired (progish AOR)
Sawtooth – Hymns of Armageddon (death metal)
Serpentes – Desert Psalms (blackened disso-death/doom)
Set // Adrift – To Love is to Regret (post hardcore)
Sick N’ Beautiful – Horror Vacui (goth metal)
Sublime Cadaveric Decomposition – The Macabre Voodoo Messiah of Masochism and Fetishism (death/goregrind)
Superheaven – Superheaven (alt rock, grunge)
Svnth – Pink Noise Youth (progressive/post black metal)
Tetramorphe Impure – The Sunset Of Being (blackened funeral-doom)
Tigerleech – Bicephalous (prog-sludge)
Tribunal – In Penitence And Ruin (black metal, goth doom)
Trovão – Diamante (heavy metal, melodic rock)
Ungraven – Hollows Made Homes In Their Sunken Cheeks (doom drone)
Varnheim – Void (blackened death metal)
Visionatica – Harrowing Insight (melodic/pop metal)
Voluptas – Where Celestial Bodies Guide Not (blackened death-doom)
Wither//Bloom – Weeping Season, Vol. 2 (electro metalcore)
Words Of Concrete – Most Hated (beatdown hardcore)
Wreck-Defy – Hybridized (thrash)
Wretched Idol – Unholy (deth metal)
Zmarlym – Wielkie Zanikanie (progressive black metal)