Release Roundup: 10/2/26

Top Pick

To The Grave – Liberation Front (brutal deathcore)

To the Grave have been gradually refining their sound across their career, with previous outing Everyone's a Murderer (2024) being both their best and most uneven release yet. That album's development of a more traditional death metal sound made for some of their strongest single compositions to date, yet the album as a whole was hampered by a handful of misguided experiments that let a lot of fans, myself included, longing for more of the former and a lot less of the latter. Liberation Front does just that, continuing the band's enhanced trajectory by offering up 10 tracks of inhuman(e) brutality that each easily rank among their best and most belligerent. In that sense, it is probably To the Grave's most consistent record to date. At the same time though, there is a sameness to proceedings that makes the record somewhat less remarkable, and certainly less memorable, than each of their preceding releases.

For all their vital volatility, this band seem to have a real problem with pacing and variation. Case in point is epic album-closing duology "Terrorfire" and "The World is a Slaughterhouse", the former of which is a moody manifesto and the later of which is perhaps the best and most ambitious of their compositions to date. They're the kind of tracks I'd love to see open a record and set the standard for what's to come, rather than being buried behind a wall of exhilarating yet highly exhausting preambles. The band themselves seem to be aware of this, having done almost exactly that when I caught them live last month, when they opened with "Terrorfire" into new track "Nail Mary". However, they still haven't worked out that they need to then drop the rabble rousing "DxE or Die" immediately afterwards to max out the momentum—instead frustratingly (and rather disappointingly) berating the crowd for being a bunch of "bitches" for a few more songs, rather than giving them a reason to really go off.

Don't get me wrong, Liberation Front is still a monstrous record that accurately excused the outrage its subject matter ought to induce. It's just that, like pig-headed frontman Dane Evans himself exclaimed at that same show—and as the more digestible Still EP (2025) shows—"Holy shit, this is a lot of fucking brutal deathcore!" Like the common (mis)conception of the album's namesake, To the Grave continue to be a band defined more by their shortcomings than their successes, while still being one of the most exciting and ferocious modern deathcore bands in the game. Hopefully Liberation Front is simply an over-correction and the band will nail it next time, like a trio of grizzly bears gobbling down on a golden-locked intruder.

Brymir – What We Leave Behind (progressive/symphonic viking-melodeath) Review

The new Amon Amarth album is much better than their previous two, but still a long way off the run of seven or so records before that. This, on the other hand, fucks most immensely, and goes to show that viking-themed melodeath doesn't have to be the same sort of ploddy, oar-inducing formula repeated ad nauseam, via welcome doses of Dark Tranquility-style progressiveness and Ordan Ogan-esque symphonics. Also... how much is the fish!