Top Picks
Exist – Beyond Purpose (proggy prog-death)
I was going to write up the new Warforged album, but I've been in bed sick all day, so I don't haven't had the time or energy to listen to it yet, let alone think about and evaluate it. Instead, I'm going to recommend this new Exist EP, which not only had the courtesy of dropping a couple of days earlier, but is also only a polite three tracks and seventeen minutes long!
This more compact presentation goes a long way toward making this sort of music more easily digestible, and also might just be the best seventeen minutes Exist have put out yet. I very much appreciated the more progressive direction they took on previous full-length Hijacking the Zeitgeist (2024), and the band have only leaned harder into that direction here, while also bringing a more modern-sounding, heavy edge to things. If nothing else, it serves as a fantastic appetiser to this week's more substantial and dense progressive metal offering(s), and hopefully Exist's future direction as well.
Show N Tell – Eyes of Evil (heavy metal)
Heavy metal rules.
Release Roundup
Abyssal Rift – Relics Of Great Ash (disso black)
The Absolution Sequence – Dread Cycle (blackened death metal)
Archetype – Silo (progressive alt/groove)
Barbarism – Predetermined Extinction (brutal death metal)
The Blade Itself – Black with Blood (death metal)
Burial Ruthless – Held by Evil (death metal)
Bloody Cumshot – Libidinosis (surprisingly decent melodeath)
Coma Control – Shed the Sleep (progressive metal)
Coyote Man – Prosthetic Memories (sludge)
Cutthroat – The Purge (groove metal)
Death Kommander – The Great Offensive (death metal)
Dead Tired – Hornets Of Fall (hardcore)
Death. Void. Terror. – To The Great Monolith 2.5 (sludge doom/drone)
Destroy My Brains – Wilt (doom sludge)
Echoes Of Theia – Moonwake (djent)
Emery – Styrofoam (emo)
Evil Island – Terraform The Afterlife (punk, rock)
GeminiiDragon – Greatest Misses (rock)
Glu – Pony Boy (gothy electro/pop-rock)
Holissstik – Chapter 1: This Endless Solitude (progressive post-goth)
Invocation Ritual – Altered Reality (death metal)
Ironflame – Worlds To Conquer (power metal)
Living Weapon – Death In The Family (brutal hardcore)
Maidenhead – Maximum Clonage (black metal/thrash)
Mean Green – Castle (stoner doom)
Megascavenger – Toxic Noxious Undeath (death metal)
Observers – The Emerald (progressive melodeath)
Only Echoes – Born Adrift (melodoom)
Open Mike Eagle and Kenny Segal – Doomed! (hip-hop)
Phoebe Bridgers – Lost Weekend (indie-pop)
Raunchy – Prisoner (modern metal)
Ryan Perdz – Can’t Cry (gothy mumble-rock)
Saliva – Breaking Through (who even listens to this?)
Shadowmare – Transfiguration (death metal)
Shush – Vow of Silence (deathcore)
Silence Before the Storm – The Road to Oblivion (melodeath)
Soulgrind – Ad Pulchram Mortem (progressive/melodic death metal)
Storm Force – Truth (heavy metal, hard rock)
TTNG – Juggling Moves (Beginner) (jazzy math-rock)
Unprocessed – Lost Tapes (y tho?)
Warforged – The Grove | Almanac (progressive death/core)
Wizards of Hazards – Point of No Return (heavy metal)