Top Pick
Crystal Lake – The Weight of Sound (metalcore)
While there's no doubting they're Japan's biggest modern metalcore export, Crystal Lake haven't really impressed me outside of 2018's zumba-powered* Helix. That they've also never had a particularly Japanese style is also perhaps a fair criticism, with their sound often being likened to or overtly chasing that of their Western counterparts. That distinction is even less apparent now that they're fronted by American vocalist John Robert Centorrino, formerly of Pennsylvanian deathcore crew The Last Ten Seconds of Life, along with an array of American guest vocalists, including David Simonich from Signs of the Swarm, Taylor Barber of the most-terribly named Seven Hours After Violet, Myke Terry (Volumes, Fire from the Gods), Misery Signals' Karl Schubach and Killswitch Engage's Jesse Leach. Talk about an identity crisis!
This is also some of the best and nastiest metalcore I've heard in some time, regardless of region. Sure, there's still plenty here that sounds a lot like The Ghost Inside and other modern metalcore giants, but it's done to such a high, kinetic and concise standard that few of those overt influences have managed to reach recently. "Everblack" goes shockingly hard right out of the gates, as do the following tracks, with the Terry-featuring "Neversleep" throwing back to his (rather underrated) time with Bury Your Dead and "King Down" sounding like a djentrified While She Sleeps (non-derogatory). Conversely, the title track is a melodic anthem, in the vein of Killswitch Engage or Parkway Drive even, which is sure to become a setlist staple. It's kind of strange that it comes halfway through the record, rather than as its triumphant climax.The album is hardly over by the time it arrives, however, with later highlights including the surprisingly thrashy "Crossing Nails"—which sounds a lot like In Hearts Wake's "Spitting Nails", even beyond their similar titles—while "Dystopia" channels While She Sleeps again, giving a glimpse of what could have been if that band hadn't gone so severely off the rails.
The Weight of Sound is technically Crystal Lake's first proper album since Helix—excluding the re-recorded Voyages (2020) collection and a few other singles here and there—and with this seventh-overall album, they've delivered two of the best back-to-back metalcore bangers of the last decade—even if there's eight years and half a hemisphere between them.
*I think Bad Omens might owe them some money...
Release Roundup
Alkaloid – Bach Out of Bounds (live/classical prog-death)
Archvile King – Aux Heures Désespérées (noisy meloblack)
Autumn’s Child – Melody Lane (AOR)
Backengrillen – Backengrillen (farty “doom jazz”)
Barbarian – Reek Of God (traddy grind-metal?)
Dagger Threat – Bleed///Reboot (nu metalcore)
Bone Weapon – Chaos Marked by Death of Sun (death metal/doom)
Cadavrul – Necrotic Savagery (death metal)
Casket – In The Long Run We Are All Dead (groove death-doom)
Concrete – Absent Mortality (death metal)
Concision – In Due Time (alt/nu metalcore)
Coronatus – Dreadful Waters (whale metal)
The Damned – Not Like Everybody Else (grandpa punk/rock covers)
Death Dealer – Reign Of Steel (speed thrash)
Deathraiser – Forged In Hatred (death metal)
Draag – Miracle Drug (weird/posty prog rock, alt-gaze?)
Dreamkillers – Proiphys Cunninghamii (hippie punk-metal?)
Elwood Stray – Descending (metalcore)
Furi Helium – No Altar Stands Eternal (death thrash)
Funeral Language – Thank You For The Dead Body (ETID-core)
Gavial – Thanks, I Hate It (rock)
Graves for Gods – Last Light Fades (mellowdoom)
Gros Enfant Mort – Le Sang des Pierres (post-hardcore/metal)
Guyođ – Death Throes of a Drowning God (blackened death-doom)
HamaSaari – Pictures (progressive post-rock)
Hellrazer – Serve the Machine (thrash)
In Lacrimaes et Dolor – Autumn (funeral doom)
Juodvarnis – Tėkmės (progressive blackish/post-metal)
Karloff – Revered By Death (blackened punk-metal)
Knights of Round – Against All Odds (power metal)
Kyle Gass Band – Live In Palmdale (Jack Black is a bad friend and corporate sellout)
Ligation – After Gods (sludge death)
Megadeth – Megadeth (hello fellow kids thrash)
Meteora – Dissonance (symphonic metal, melodeath)
New Mexican Doom Cult – Zaggurat (doom metal)
New Miserable Experience – Gild The Lily (synth pop, prog rock)
Nite Stinger – What The Nite Is All About (melodic rock, AOR)
Palace Of Mourning – Palace Of Mourning (beatdown hardcore)
Paranoid Void – Action (math rock)
Pelican – Ascending (post-metal/hardcore?)
Poppy – Empty Hands (empty sounds)
Ritual Arcana – Ritual Arcana (stoner doom)
Rocky & The Sweden – Punks Pot Heads (punk, hardcore)
Rotting Christ – Aealo: Re-Recorded (epic powerish/black-metal, y tho?)
Sacri Suoni – Time To Harvest (doom metal)
Sacrificial Death – Absolute Katharsis (death metal/thrash)
Sad Whisperings – The Hermit (blackish doom)
Scythed – Resistance (heavy/power metal)
Shadowmass – Wastelands (prog death/metal)
Skruta – Скрутне становище (weird industrial)
Sky Valley Mistress – Luna Mausoleum (stoner rock/metal)
Slowrepeat – Aqua Haze (stoner doom)
Spiral Fracture – Grace In Decay (heavy metal)
Stalwart – Tempvs Edax Rervm (death metal)
Strikehammer – Midnight Inferno (black thrash/speed)
Syrion – Symphony of Horror (speed thrash)
Temptress – Hear (alt doom)
Textures – Genotype (it exists! ...kinda)
Trash Pillow – Raw (alt/indie rock)
Turbo’s Tribunal – Mills Of Tribunal (heavy/occult metal)
Vanishment – And Now We Die (heavy metal)
Virtue In Vain – Nothing Is All I Am (metalcore)