Release Day Roundup: 8/22/25

Top Pick

Visitant – Rubidium (progressive/symphonic black metal)

This one is technically out tomorrow, but I'm sick of waiting to tell you how good it is. At the same time, it's a bit outside my wheelhouse, so I've brought in our most enthusiastic new reviewer Boeli to provide a more nuanced take:

Genre classifications are a funny thing. To me, Visitant's debut sounds like an album firmly rooted in death metal,with a generous helping of black metal frosting on top, adorned with sprinkles of neo-classical goodness and layered on a delectably proggy base. Opinions were of course mixed on that, and based on how Josh tagged this here and your own opinion, I might be in for a nice debunking. Classification aside,this album fucking slays—which should be no surprise, since they feature members from Abiotic, Lattermath, Scale the Summit (!), Unaligned and Voraath.

Visitant speak their own beautifully twisted, fel language though, reminding me mainly of the excellent and criminally underrated Sacrificed Alliance in their grandiose yet razor-sharp melodies and neo-classical majesty on “Unworldly”, “Briars” and “Starless”. Moving into the album's second half, the riffy and muscular title track is an immediate attention-grabber, coupling a huge and hooky riff with the powerful, raspy delivery of Accursed Creator/Voraath vocalist Chelsea Marrow. I’m also pleasantly reminded of underrated gems Great Leap Skyward by the even more triumphant melodic outbursts and the classy cleans on on “Rubidium” and ”Fodder”. On the last proper track “Envy’s Lament”, Visitant pull out the big hooks and enter Mors Principium Est territories of energetic goodness, while maintaining their intricate and progressive songwriting and dropping in a wonderful, whammy-kissed solo and ethereal clean vocals.

Having mainly name-dropped death metal influences, I’ll happily admit there’s plenty of speedy blackened goodness on offer as well, with fast riffs and blasty drum parts peppered into the album, some of which recall …and Oceans. As Middle East and North African-melody tinged atmospheric instrumental closer “Moon Bathe” sways to a close, the albums hooks, urgency and chameleonic grandeur demand more spins and list season considerations. Don’t sleep on this excellent debut, folks.

—Thanks Boeli! I would have just said it sounds like Dimmu Borgir.

The World Is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die – Dreams of Being Dust (progressive post-hardcore/emo)

Turns out The World Is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die are a post hardcore band, not a post rock one. I'd always associated them with bands like And So I Watch You From Afar, This Will Destroy You and other such similarly sentence-named bands that I don't particularly care for/about. I'm told they started out as a mid-west emo band, but Dreams of Being Dust has much more in common with progressive post-hardcore and often dips into bruising metalcore at times. Which is to say that, whatever the band's history, this is extremely my jam.

Perhaps the increased aggression comes from new guitarist Anthony Gesa (Gatherers, Ornaments), who has been touring with the band since 2022, before becoming an official member last year. Whatever the impetus, this added intensity makes itself immediately known on opener "Dimmed Sun", which begins in a flurry of mathy metalcore, replete with panic chords and wiry guitar leads that remind me of early Cave In, before settling into a spacey, bouncing riff that reminds me again of that band's latter, more progressive period(s), and also maybe Thrice—who are a band I really should like/listen to more than I do—and finally settles upon a Norma Jean-esque breakdown built around that one thrash rhythm (you know the one!). Elsewhere the record maintains a more relaxed, almost gazey atmosphere, that reminds me again of Cave In but also The Beatles, by way of Failure and Fugazi.

That unanticipated heaviness is never far away though, with these mellower tracks being interjected with hardcore rangers like "Beware the Centrist", which sounds like a mix of Turnstile and Fucked Up. Then there's "Captagon", which drops into a sullen, prog-rock deterioration, only to explode out of it in a defiant Ghost Inside-esque, mathcore stomp, and "Reject All and Submit", which—no shit—opens with the same sort stabbing chords as Rivers of Nihil's "Silent Life". Deftones, of course, provide another major point of comparison. Yet while the Sacramento alt-metal titans new album might easily eclipse all their imitators, it sounds entirely uninspired next to this and has perhaps the best ending to an album I think I've heard since best ending to an album I think I've heard since Kardashev's Liminal Rite (2022).

Those more familiar with the band are likely raising a lot of eyebrows at all the comparisons I've made here. I'm clearly coming at things from an outsiders perspective, and there are likely a ton of more fitting comparisons to be made to other bands within their more immediate scenes and genres, of which I remain extremely ignorant. Nevertheless, all of the more extreme and unexpected elements I have identified exist as well, alongside them, making for one of the most intriguing and immediately impressive records I've come across this year. I don't think I've been as struck by and enamored with an album to emerge form this corner of the musical map since Brand New blindsided me with Science Fiction back in 2017. Hopefully this story has a happier ending.