Rolling Metal 2016

new Khanus track here, where they up both the Finnish folk quotient, and general occult vibe. Maybe closer to dark ambient than metal actually
https://khanus.bandcamp.com/album/dance-of-the-shaman

if the Cultes des Ghoules doesn't trump them, 2016 may go down as the year two metal EPs (Khanus & Cadaveric Fumes) topped my best of list.

about to buy the hell outta the new Ulcerate, one of the best death metal bands in the world

It's really dope. Nice Halloween soundtrack

hey hey the new DSO is streaming in full

https://deathspellomega.bandcamp.com/album/the-synarchy-of-molten-bones

They have not gone pop metal, in case you were worried.

Oh, the Lifespell Omega conversion album is going to be amazing.

Ditto the tropical-metal album from Blut Aus Sud.

Sweet Hollow by Them is pretty fun King Diamond mimicry. The vocals, the horror album concept... they actually pull it off not too badly.

https://them6.bandcamp.com/ (whole album is on Youtube)

This Bhavachakra album... scrapy, trebled out guitars (with that modern underdriven distortion sound I'm not super fond of), discordant, DsO, probably own "Obscura," yeah yeah. Some of the riffing attempts eloquence successfully but the production's kind of distracting - sounds like the guitars were recorded on a cassette four-track while everything else was done in a pro studio. Especially those drums.

That's not to say I'm not going to listen to it a lot for a week or so, though.

xxpost
That's the second mention of Them I've seen in the last day or two and it finally jogged my memory of this bizarro world, Brazilian, Christian KD clone, with pretty much plagiarized music and song titles, and album art that dips far enough below the threshold of embarrassing to flip around and become awesome again. Anyway, turns out that they, like apparently every other band in existence, have a new one out this year. As usual, the music sounds stiff and almost programmed, esp compared to something like the actual KD. And haha those verses of "Silent Tears" are outright stolen from "A Mansion in Darkness." I binged on this band a couple years ago when I first saw them mentioned at metal-archives and I wish I'd remembered in time for Halloween this year.
https://visionofgodrecords.bandcamp.com/album/dark-night-day-of-the-dead

but I mean this is really the purpose of this post:
http://i.imgur.com/S7koot5.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/W3GyLYm.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/49RQ6rs.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/hVIUJYx.jpg

Amazing covers!

just in case any of you wanted to hear some synth-heavy, dreampop-vocall'd welsh psych-doom then you may wish to get in touch with your inner mammoth weed wizard bastard*. it's really quite something. heads-up courtesy of tt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y2g0g3r6hY

*british humour

I countersign Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard, although it took me some serious psychological effort to get past the name.

The new Madder Mortem is out, and I won't be terribly surprised if it ends up being my album of the year. What a fantastic band. They're like a midpoint between djent and Voivod and Nightwish, which is a pretty good targeting formula for me.

https://open.spotify.com/album/2rXW7pX2XlPi23Gs97rIOI

Also, if you like big happy turbo-melodic power-metal, give the new Theocracy album a listen.

https://open.spotify.com/album/3asAAUyg67JJa8VAvsfmVK

I think I'm about ready to put this Ysengrin/Sartegos split in my cart

https://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/resvrrezionespiritval

2 songs apiece, plus interludes
Ysengrin offer cavernous doomy BM with lots of textural and dynamic shifts, big spooky choirs, some of the weirdest snare hits this side of the Shaggs, hideous clanky bass, and a dash of rawk swagger.
Sartegos are I guess blackened death? (deadened BM?) with refreshingly bright guitar solo breaks -- lots of up/down fast 8ths verging on explosions in the sky-style post rock territory

Both bands are new to me and I'm curious to hear more from both.

more metal with crayon covers plz

Great album covers. They do promise some darker-than-average nights.

MWWB are great

digging the first couple of tracks from this EP by Rivette from Finland - NWOBHM for softies p much. not as good as High Spirits but worth an ear

https://rivette.bandcamp.com/album/in-vertigo

Just booked tickets to see MWWB tomorrow, supporting Ufomammut. I expect to be doomed into space

I was just listening to that Rivette EP today! Not bad. The Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard made our Doom Chart last month - https://doomcharts.com/2016/10/11/the-doom-charts-for-october-2016/. New one should be out by the weekend hopefully.

Glad to hear someone is enthusiastic about Madder Mortem! I reviewed it and raved about it elsewhere and it's been crickets.

Dark Night album art made my day thank you!

Here's another UK stoner doom psych band that has an interesting release: https://spiderkitten.bandcamp.com/album/ark-of-octofelis

Ya good call on Dark Night. I mentioned them in my Halloween piece where I also offered up Hail Spirit Noir and Slasher Dave as ideal additions to yr Halloween mixes. I guess I should have posted before Halloween.

I've been so anticipating the new Furia full length that I didn't notice they'd slipped another of their oddball EPs into the world earlier in October. Says it was recorded in an actual mine 300+ meters below the earth, so, uh, ok. Sort of droney, jangly, folky, but seething with that Polish black metal life force that seems to be powering half a dozen brilliant bands right now.
https://paganrecords.bandcamp.com/album/guido

Speaking of, according to W.T.C. there's a new Medico Peste album coming. Their wonderfully diseased debut Tremendum et Fascinatio got overshadowed by everything else coming out of Poland, but it's quite good for fans of that slithering, visceral strain of black metal akin to Glorior Belli's Manifesting the Raging Beast or for that matter Polish stuff like Cultes des Ghoules or Blaze of Perdition (or even Arioch-era Marduk when they're not full speed ahead).

Decibel is streaming the new Ruinous album. One of my favorite death metal albums of the year.

the new Furia finally appeared and made my album of the year decision a lot easier
https://paganrecords.bandcamp.com/album/ksi-yc-milczy-luty

good god

Furia is a great band that should have a much higher profile than they do, I'm looking forward to the album.

Furia's last album was kinda drifting into the sort of "post black" (or whatever) that didn't really hit me, but this fucking thing. This fucking thing. It's like a black metal version of an Earth album. I'm on my sixth listen just today and I can't even remember the last time something like that happened.

Songwriting aside, the sound of it is just ...

why the hell couldn't this be the Polish black metal band to put out an hour and a half long album this year

to be fair, no album really needs to be an hour and a half

Ulcerate's new album is boring me to tears

Do I just not like avant-death any more? But I like Gorguts. And I quite liked the Dysrhythmia, which is basically a Gorguts spin-off. So idk. Maybe you have to be Gorguts. Will check out DSO shortly but ugh tbh

Ulcerate are always hyped but I've always found them pretty boring too, not even going to bother with this new one. Gorguts are on another plane entirely.

I think the new DSO is awesome but if you haven't been convinced by them before, I don't think it'll change you mind

oh I have been convinced by them before. so far this is great. far, far better than ulcerate

the ugh was just residual disgust at ulcerate being boring

OK cool :D

ha wow the new furia sounds kinda like a metal gvsb

imago yr wrong about ulcerate but I don't think you'll ever see yr way clear to that because for metal to work for you personally it has to have several this-is-not-from-metal elements in it and ulcerate is all metal. no shame in that alloys are fine too but I wish you could get yr mind free enough to hear how great ulcerate is because damn they're great.

Dysrhythmia, which is basically a Gorguts spin-off

lol no btw

it's 2/3 Gorguts! point taken that they're doing something v different

will try again with Ulcerate soon too. it probably requires a dark room and lots of space to contemplate. it is true that I often find it hard to like pure metal, so I'm sorry for ruining yr thread

in the next chapter, i will express incomprehension at the new Meshuggah

tbh somebody sent me a promo of Vermis when it was new and I played it and went "ho-hum, honestly I love death metal but I'm not hearing anything that sets this apart" and it sat in a box for a year or more and then I was cleaning out the box and found the disc minus the packaging and said "ok what's this, am I keeping this" and listened and about halfway through I went "fuck...this is pretty interesting actually" and I dug up the packaging and now they're one of my favorite bands. but my initial reaction was "who gives a fuck"

death metal strikes me as one of those things that you pretty much have to be a sommelier of to have any clue what you're talking about

I think you just have to know what you like and don't like. Ulcerate don't appeal to me either, but there's plenty of death metal that does.

A good, thoughtful Invisible Oranges piece on power metal disguised as a Hammerfall track premiere.

fucking GREAT piece, that. I have my own theory about why the metal press ignores power metal ("the metal press consists disproportionately of music nerds for whom novelty is more important than craft or tradition, and their coverage reflects this thirst for novelty") but anyway I'm very happy to see this.

What is the good power metal this year? One that I've been playing a lot is Dark Forest's Beyond the Veil, which might be more heavy metal. It doesn't have the glossy production I associate with contemporary power metal, but it's as cheesy and triumphant as anything.

Theocracy! Temperance!

I think I was born without the neuroreceptor for power metal.

But I am enjoying this Psychotic Waltz reissue. A Social Grace. Awesome.

is the band Battlecross good?

I went to Steve Earle & the Dukes and there was a guy* sitting in front of me that had a shirt on that said MOTOR CITY THRASH on the back and I tracked it down to Battlecross

*he looked exactly like Stone Cold Steve Austin and him and his gf left after Earle made a crack about Trump

Got the new Venom Prison CD. Feminist death metal. Unfortunate name. Once they get over some stereotypical -core stuff in the first one-third to one-half it gets pretty good.