Top Pick
Gaupa – Fyr (grungy/psychedelic stoner-prog)
There’s bugger all out this week, as in there is only about a third of what we’d normally cover coming out today;* As in, when I accidentally deleted the list and had to redo the whole thing I didn’t even mind that much. Sure, quality over quantity, but a lot of what is out today is also nameless post-rock, which is made even less worth listening to given there's a We Lost the Sea album out today as well—which I’m assured is extremely excellent actually and not at all the aural equivalent of watching paint dry.
Suitably, the strongest offering from today's shortened selection is also quite compact. Fyr, the newest offering from Swedish stoner rockers Gaupa is only four tracks long, but it's also sure to make every second of it's 24-minute runtime count. Maybe it's just giving Boss Baby after going on a recent grunge binge, but—in addition to hearing similarities to Stone Temple Pilots deep cuts on the recent King Witch record—I'm getting a lot of grunge and alt-rock vibes from this supposedly psychedelic stoner-doom outing.
Opener "Lion's Thorn" starts off sounding like the last good/even-listenable Incubus song "Megalomaniac" before bringing in a very Silverchair-sounding bass riff. Later, "Ten of Twelve" starts off with a wiry Mastodon-esque flourish, which soon gives way to a strutting Queens of the Stone Age-sounding groove, whose influence is perhaps revealed by the following track's refrain of "like clockwork". When the psychedelic edge comes through, it's in a somewhat Tool-ish manner, so that the EP is perhaps best summed-up as a combination of two of this year's best full-lengths from Messa and Lo-Pan, with frontwoman Emma Näslund also often bringing to mind Björk, in both in her breathy delivery and the sudden shifts in pitch and off-kilter melodies she employs throughout.
Although I'm partial to a bit of stoner rock here and there, I find that many of the genre's offerings long overstay their welcome. With Fyr, Gaupa have hit the balance just right, making for a much more memorable and revisitable record than you might expect.
*50ish releases might still seem like a lot, but it's around half as many as last week, which was already down by about 30% from the June average.
Release Roundup
Akouphenom – Connections To The Erebus (weirdish/dissonant black-metal)
Anger Machine – Human Error (groove thrash)
Anheim – Die Welt die wir begruben (doomy meloblack)
Anthony Ellis: Ashes Of Reason – Crisis Catalyst (heavy metal)
Backstabbed – Self-Fulfilling Tragedy (metalcore)
Burden of Ymir – The Long Winter (folky meloblack)
Cancroid – Tempus Odii (death metal)
Cerrone and Christine and the Queens – Catching Feelings (disco, pop)
Daida Laida – Justice in 2025 (heavy/melodic metal)
Deadtrees – 十万肉喇叭 / One Hundred Thousand Meat Horns (psych drone)
Deathdotgov – Deathdotcom (mathcore, screamo)
Destroy! – Autostop značí smrt (thrash metal)
Dev1ous – Artistry of Butchery (death metal/thrash)
Disrupted – Chasm of Eternity (death metal, melodeath)
Dropkick Murphy's – For the People (Celt punk)
Emberthrone – Cursive (deathcore)
Eminentia Tenebris – Whispers Of The Undying (meloblack)
Erebor – Infinitus Somnium (progressive tech-death)
Feces Fetus – Snaek Meet Slug (shitty grind)
Grimorio – On The Path Of The Morning Star (doomish heavy metal)
Joe Stump’s Tower Of Babel – Days Of Thunder (heavy metal)
Keddie’s Resort – American Spirit (Green Day at home)
Leonov – Shape Of Ash (post rock)
Lowbau – The Great Zero (stoner sludge)
The Lucidia Project – The Twilight Affliction (melodic prog-metal)
Meth Leppard – Gatekeepers (grindcore)
Morcrof – Colvmnae Stoicae (weird/blackened doom)
Mortual – Altar Of Brutality (death metal)
Oceanica – Try Not To Dwell On It (long/progressive post rock)
Our North – Everyone For Themselves (nu metal)
Phantom Heir – Fragile Immortals (weird/progressive djent)
Respect For Zero – Overtime (hardcore)
Rev3rent – Decimate (deathcore)
Rimmar – Raises (heavy/melodic metal)
Rites To Ruin – Daughter Of Hatred (heavy/goth metal)
Scarlxrd – Pennance (trap metal)
Seasons In Black – Anthropocene (groove/mellow death-doom)
Sixth Wonder – Prologue (melodic/progressive metalcore)
Spineless – Anatomy Of A Coward (deathcore)
Stygian – Dreadlands (crusty black-thrash)
Thumos – The Trial of Socrates (blackish post metal)
Vaarcloc – Contururi (post rock)
Warkings – Armageddon (power metal)
We Lost The Sea – A Single Flower (post rock) Review
Weald & Woe – Far from the Light of Heaven (heavy black metal)
Whispers Of Granite – Liquid Stone (posty goth)
Wytch Hazel – Wytch Hazel V: Lamentations (traddy prog rock)
Ylva de Lune – II (post-black metal)