Top Pick
Your Spirit Dies – My Gnawing Pains Will Never Rest (metalcore, groove thrash)
Sometimes I agonise over these top picks, swapping albums in and out as my opinions change or I decide I can or can't be bothered writing about them. Sometimes I know it form the moment I click on the first band when going through the week's release lists*—as was the case with Your Spirit Dies, whose debut album sounds like a mix of God Forbid and Unearth, and features guest spots from the vocalists of Zao and No Cure. Apparently the dude from The Callous Daoboys is in there somewhere as well, but I couldn't tell you where. In fact, Your Spirit Dies sound so much like Unearth that it's got me checking whether Brandon Byars is an anagram of Trevor Phipps (it isn't), or whether I'd be mad if it was (I wouldn't). We don't necessarily need more Unearth clones, while the band themselves are still out here dropping some of the best albums of their career, but when they're this good I'll happily take them.
Although the album is primed to overwhelm you with its sheer aggression, there's also a delicate balancing act being performed amid all the palm-muted open duplets, with the band knowing exactly when a devastating tempo change is required and being able to execute them in the same very distinctive way that only Unearth seem to have otherwise mastered—the way they kind of fall back into the riff and let it catch them on the way through. Through this deceivingly dexterous onslaught, My Gnawing Pains Will Never Rest invokes both Watchers of Rule (2014) and The Wretched; The Ruinous (2023)** as much as it does the earlier, more hardcore driven albums of that band's discography (there's even a song that ends with the same dead air sound that announce the final breakdown in "Dawn of the Militant").
They haven't quite mastered the ear for melody and memorable hooks that have helped Unerath and other standout bands of their era carry forth to this day, but with their debut record Your Spirit Dies have delivered a worthy tribute to the masters of the metalcore and NWOAHM waves whose revival is in full swing at the moment, and of which My Gnawing Pains Will Never Rest perhaps represent the pinnacle so far.
*I go through these lists backwards y'see, because it's easier to scroll them that way.
**Wow, I've taken to think of those albums as a bit of a pair, but they really are almost a decade apart!
Release Roundup
Aawks – On Through The Sky Maze (blackened stone- doom)
Abyssal Vacuum – Abyssal Vacuum (black doom)
Acceptance – Crucifixion Of Orchids (post-black metal)
Acherontas – Nekya: The Necromantic Patterns (black metal)
Acres – The Host (post-hardcore)
A Minute To Die For – A Minute To Die For (emo)
Aørist – Afterlife (djethcore)
Amalekim – Shir Hashirim (black metal)
Arv – Curse & Courage (post-hardcore/metal)
Askel – Sundered (sludgy post-metal)
Beware Of Gods – Upon Whom The Last Light Descends II: Amnesia Island (industrial doom)
Black Honey Cult – Black Honey Cult (psych rock)
Bleed – Bleed (alt rock, Deftones)
Brzask – Der Wanderer Im Riesengebirge (meloblack)
Burndy – Burndy (industrial, post-punk)
Car Seat Headrest – The Scholars (alt/indie prog)
Catalyst Symphony – The Light Inside (symphonic metal)
Crawl Below – Democracy Is So Last Season (industrial noise)
Crematory – Destination (melodic/groove death)
Demonic Death Judge – Absolutely Launched (sludge rock)
Embers UK – Devour (butt core)
Encelado – Pillars Of Creation (weird/brutal death metal)
Evilucifer – Satanic Evilucifer (black thrash)
fallfiftyfeet – Counterfeit Reflections (hardcore, metalcore)
Falling From Grace – At The Edge (groove metal/death)
Firmament – A New World If You Can Take It (progressive/mellowdic metalcore)
Flock Named Murder – Incendiary Sanctum (doomy black metal)
FloodGate – Horizons (djentcore)
The Flower Kings – Love (prog rock)
Flume & JPEGMafia – We Live in a Society (electronic hip-hop)
Ghost In Stereo – Artifacts (progressive metalcore)
Growing Horns – The Essence Of Suffering (sludge doom)
Gurnslinger – Who Killed The World? (rock)
Gypsy Pistoleros – Welcome To The Church Of The Pistoleros (y tho?)
Hagane – Top of the Tower (power metal)
Hangfire – Burn (melodic/prog metal)
Hate – Bellum Regiis (blackened death metal)
Herta – Crossing The Illusion (progressive metal)
Identify The Body – False Prophets (metalcore)
In Gloom – True Violence and All the Terror That Comes With It In (break/deathcore)
Infiltration – Sociobastard (death metal/grind)
Ka’aper – While Flows the Nile (gothic melodeath)
Kalaveraztekah – Nikan Axkan (prog death)
Khora – Ananke (symphonic/progressive blackened-death)
Knives – Glitter (saxy post punk)
Labyrinthus Stellarum – Rift In Reality (progressive black metal)
Leper Colony – Those Of The Morbid (death/groove metal)
Lifetaker – Herbsthunde (industrial noise)
Lightless – A Foreseen Loss (sludgy funeral doom)
Maestrick – Espresso Della Vita: Lunare (prog rock/metal)
Master Charger – Posthumous Resurrection (doom)
Matraque – Nature Morte (sludge doom)
Melting – You Exist Because We Allow It (beatdown metalcore)
A Minute To Die For – A Minute To Die For (metalcore)
Misfire – Product Of The Environment (thrash)
Moonsoon – East Of Asteroid (prog rock)
Morningviews – Anhedonia (post-hardcore, emo)
Murdered – The Brutal Gore Grotesque (slamming brutal death)
Namebearer – Industries Of The Fading Sun (blackened folk-doom)
Neuroblade – Desert Claw (power metal)
Nightfall – Children Of Eve (melodeath)
No Heroes – Brood Eternal (blackened noise-sludge)
Okami CA – Vol.3: The Nihilist Chronicles (deathcore)
Palantyr – The Ascent & The Hunger (heavy metal, speed doom)
Paradise Slaves – With Hell In His Eyes (metalcore)
Pohjoisen Soturit – N (blackened death metal)
Power Surge – Shadows Warning (heavy metal)
Praetor – The Spiral of Addiction (groove thrash)
Press Club – To All The Ones That I Love (alt-rock, punk)
Propagandhi – At Peace (alt/melodic punk)
Pup – Who Will Look After the Dogs? (pop/indie punk)
Pyramids – Pythagoras (weird/electro black?/shoegaze)
Recall the Remains – Revenant (metalcore)
Sacral – Vile Consumption (industrial/electro black)
Sandfinger – Minus Illusion (death thrash)
Sapere Aude – Sants E Demonis (power metal, folk)
Scott Hepple & The Sun Band – English Mustard (hard/psych rock)
Shearling – Motherfucker, I am Both: "Amen" and "Hallelujah"... (horse-butt noise rock)
Skyjoggers – 12021: Post-Electric Apocalypse (prog rock)
Slung – In Ways (alt rock, sludgegaze)
Solfatare – Asservis par l’espoir (progressive/doomy post-black)
Stepping Sideways – Rebirth (progressive metalcore)
Strega – Stryx Strega Strygae (heavy/blackened metal)
Suggah – Her Chrysalis (instrumental post-metal)
Tonguecutter – Minnow (progressive alt/math-rock)
Tumble – Lost In Light (hard rock)
Under Ruins – Age Of The Void (heavy/doom metal)
Wishender – Destined Death (deathcore)