Top Pick?
Game Over – Face the End (2025)
No, that's not a mistake. Nothing's really doing it this week. Once upon a time, a Carly Rae Jepsen double-abum would be cause for celebration, but not in September of 2026. Similarly, while I seemed to enjoy 2016's For All Kings a lot more than most, and while the new Anthrax album isn't as bad as its AI Babadook magician-laden promo cycle suggested it might be, it's still far from recommendable.
The need for some better thrash had me looking in the direction of Italian thrashers Game Over, but their new one—while perfectly fine— isn't really all that either. However, I remember referring to last year's Face the End in our Discord as "the best Anthrax album in years", but never ended up actually writing about it anywhere, so I'm choosing to give it a belated highlight here, in lieu of any better options.
Going back to it now, my assessment of the album still stands. New vocalist Danny Schiavina gives hints of both John Bush and Joey Belladonna and the riffs are about as righteous as you can hope for from a longrunning re-thrash band these days. The quality of Game Over's records has always hovered "decent but not exciting", but I'd say Face the End sits only behind Crimes Against Reality (2016) in their discography and is well worth a listen if you overlooked it last year, or—like me—are just looking for a good thrash fix.
See also: that Harlott album from last week.
Release Roundup
Aletheya – Chance To Reborn (prog metal)
Anoreksi – Insignificance (melodeath)
Asenblut – Urgewalt (ass, butt)
Anthrax – Cursum Perficio (thrash)
Beck – Ride Lonesome (folk)
Bees Made Honey In The Vein Tree – In Between Strides (shoegaze)
Blackment – Pandemonium Portrait (melowdic metal)
The Bleeding – Godless Communion (death metal)
Carly Rae Jepsen – Day and Night (indie pop)
Burial Site – Deathdrone (doom drone)
Cemetery Wildlife – Herfst 2 (blackish doom-drone)
Cenobia – Lethal Devotion (baddiecore)
Ch’ahom – Anthropic Rites of Sublimation (try finger but hole)
Cor de Lux – Year Of The Horse (post punk, alt-gaze)
Creeper Bud – Creeper Bud (sludge doom)
Currents – Worlds Away (acoustic metalcore, y tho?)
Dead Express – Almost Forever (rock)
Dead Sea Apes – Psychic Tension (psych doom)
Deviated – The Altar of Absence (death metal)
The Drowns – Harsh Reality (punk)
Early Moods – Ready for the Grave (heavy rock/metal)
Echo and the Bunnymen – Apples for Isaac (rock, post-punk)
Embers Of Dawn – Infernal Culture (gothy prog-metal)
Emma Ruth Rundle – These Killing Times (folk rock, alt-gaze)
The Eternal – Obscured Horizons (progressive/melo-doom)
Exile of Heaven – Tides of Destiny (heavy/prog metal)
The Forest Forgets – Godweight (post/prog metal)
Game Over – When Darkness Falls (thrash)
Garota – Strąceni w Ciemność (black metal)
GodFrost – Hanging Doll (nu goth metal)
Hanging Garden – Dream Death (progish blackened death)
Hardbone – Hardbeat (hard rock)
Hav Norn – Laniena Animarum (prog rock/metal)
The Hirs Collective – Empty Urn (queer/chaotic hard/grindcore, covers)
Holding Absence – Modern Life Is Lonely (pop rock, emo)
I Waved Back/Life/Ythgrp – I.L.Y (post rock, screamo)
Impure Faith – Infected by Evil Manifestation (brutal death metal)
Like Moths to Flames – Does Heaven Ever Mourn for Me (hardcore, metalcore)
Kai Hansen – Born With A Hammer (heavy/power metal)
Krallice – Scour Order (progressive?/noisy black metal)
Kissin’ Dynamite – Kissin’ Dynamite (bad hair metal)
Komutator – We Don’t Owe You Anything (death thrash)
Kärbholz – Sturm Zieh Auf (folk rock/punk, the riff from P.O.D.’s “Alive”)
Laser Dracul – Hin Håle Blues (doom)
LUGOSi - The Scars (screamo, noise rock)
Manifest – Nothing Left to Kill (death metal)
Maunah – Hjarta (doom)
Memories of a Lost Soul – Lost Memories (progressive melodeath)
Miasmes – Violence, blasphème et pourriture (black metal/grind)
Mittags-Abgrund – Mittags-Abgrund (deathened black metal)
Monterey - it always passes over me (screamo, post-rock)
Nasty Insects – Bite ‘Til They Bleed (groove thrash)
Necrocene – Scumocracy (death metal)
The Noctambulant – Revival (black metal)
Nonpoint – The Last Word (nu metal, alt rock)
Novae Militiae – Apocryphon of the Unborn Light (blackened death metal)
Old Ruins – Mount Arreat (posty black metal)
Olive Vox – Trace It Back (alt rock)
Ombra – Night Terror (groove metal)
Onelinedrawing – Rainbowmachine (pop punk, emo)
Pam Risourie – I’ll Never Be Human (indiegaze/doom)
Pandaemonic Descent – The Weight of Being Nothing (blackened death metal)
Playgrounded – A Flower To Water (post mello-doom)
Plèvre – Cité mouroir (blackened post-metal)
Porch Light – Hush (alt rock/metal)
Remote Viewing – State Violence (sludge doom)
Respiratory Secretion – Painfully Blissful Atrocities (slamish brutal death metal)
Revel in Flesh – Flesh for the Kult of Death (death metal)
Rise From Your Grave – Choose Your Scare (heavy metal, horror punk)
Runemagick – After Chaos: Nocturnal Vigil (progressive/folky death-doom)
Ryan Oakes – Scary Stories After Dark (Nettwerk)
Saturna – Light And Shadow (prog rock)
Sea Sleeper – Burden of Antler (noisy prog-death)
Stinking Lizaveta – Cassandra, Prophet Of Doom (heavy metal, doom punk)
Submasq – Spirit Animal (culturally appropriative? prog-metal)
The Spacelords – Uranus Omnibus Sanctus (stoner/psych prog)
Suffering Quota – Sisyphean Life (good grindcore, that already came out?) Review
Taskforce Toxicator – Countdown to Death (thrash)
Terra Black – Mirage (stoner doom)
Titan Blood – When the Tide Subsides (heavy metal)
Trenchwar – Overlords Of Cold (sludge)
30,000 Monkies – Super Rebound (alt/blackened/noise sludge)
Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats – Shapes Of Midnight (psyche doom) Review
Valkyrie’s Fire – Out of Darkness (symphonic power metal)
Velveteen Queen – The Greater Good (rock)
Villagers Of Ioannina City – Venceremos (folk metal)
Violent Omen – Locomotive Of Chaos (progish death metal)
Voodoo Highway – The Satan Inqviesta (stoner rock)
We Are to Blame – Omega Origin (melodeath)
The Well – …and Flames Ran like Living Animals (psych rock/doom)
Wellness - Wellness (mathcore, emoviolence)
Yammer Jaw – Burth (noise slude)