Rolling 2021 Metal Thread

thx for the heads up. there's a new LP pressing of dar de duh on the prophecy shop as well.

so this new Suffering Hour is quite good but did the guitarist leave his chorus pedal on for the entirety of the album or did LAME just encode this poorly

i appreciate the audacity but i almost wish he had gone for an Only Theatre of Pain level of chorus where it feeds back and detunes

It's a feature not a bug imo. Great album.

Vindsval (aka Blut aus Nord) is dropping a new one next week under his latest atmoblack moniker, Forhist.

No discussion of the Th1rt3en record that came out in January?

I concede it's more rap than metal but there's definitely some crossover here - "666 (Three Six Word Stories)" uses a Sabbath sample as a backbone, there's a ton of Eddie Hazel-gone-skrong guitar too.

I know it's kinda "Old man yells at clouds about a rap album he likes" but so is RTJ and this does a much better job of hitting the same rap/metal hot spots.

The Ad Nauseam album is excellent, probably the best skronk-metal I've heard in quite some time. It's also kind of melodic for its type!

It’s very good and scratches that post-Gorguts itch but I haven’t been able to get into it completely. It’s only a matter of time.

Just got a promo of the new album from The Crown, Royal Destroyer, which will be out March 12. It sounds like The Crown. The first video is for "Motordeath":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gP8YfOSu2Dc

There’s a new Furia out and I can’t imagine it being of much interest to non-Polish speakers due to all the theatrical declamation involved. I liked the musical bits, at least.

Re: Ad Nauseam, their first album is equally excellent, I'm finding it hard to choose between the two.

On a completely different note, here's some shoegazey/ambient/drone metal for solo guitar:

https://gauntemperor.bandcamp.com/releases

It's quite beautiful, really.

Serena from Svalbard has apparently made a black metal album about Skyrim. I kinda dig how clean-sounding this is, her vox are great, and you gotta respect the sheer dorkiness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUnxqczBQoA

i really like the Daius record and appreciate how well woven-in the "folk"/"atmospheric" elements are -- such a contrast with "here's the soft part, now here's the loud part"-metal

Glad you liked the Gaunt Emperor, NYCNative, and the Daius, roxymuzak. The year is still young but there's a good chance both of these will make it onto my EOY list.

paranorm's empyrean is essential listening for progressive thrash likers, one of the more accomplished and fun takes on this style I've heard in a minute

In an uncharacteristic move, Krallice just posted the following on Facebook to give us something to look forward to:

"Demonic Wealth"
the 10th album
written in isolation, recorded in isolation, listened to in isolation, released in isolation.
out next week, hopefully..

Maybe some day Krallice will fully click for me. Some day.

I haven't really cracked the recent releases tbh, but I always give the new ones a pass or two just to check in

ooh very cool. Krallice/Marston has been very active with promoting and releasing music on Bandcamp Friday's. seems like thats the idea for this one too. its been great. he's been promoting a ton of awesome projects throughout all of this.

Not metal, exactly, but it doesn't fit anywhere else: Lucifer have covered Dust's "Pull Away/So Many Times" for a split single with Kadavar (who cover Fleetwood Mac's "The Green Manalishi"). It's pretty good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7OMvGoMTMQ

Much of the new Melvins sounds like a superannuated comedy rock album. The opener is a Beach Boys send-up whose 'humour' is derived from its copious use of the word 'fuck'. Uh...

'I Fuck Around', geddit? Geddit?

wah wah oooooh

Tbf 'much' is a bit of an overstatement.

Yeah, this is not good. Curious to hear what the Gen X crew makes of it.

Melvins have sucked since they let the Big Business guys walk away.

New Big Brave LP out in April. Here’s an appetizer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CgK5w6E2ns

Love it, can't wait for the album.

Same. I can’t wait to see them live, hopefully next year?

I'm a total sucker for Jón Aldará's vocals, so much so that I find myself otm'ing Angry Metal Guy for once:

https://www.angrymetalguy.com/iotunn-access-all-worlds-review/

There's a new Abominable Putridity album, their first since 2012. (When that album was reissued in 2015, I reviewed it for The Wire.) Parasitic Metamorphosis Manifestation has Ángel Ochoa of Disgorge and Cephalotripsy on vocals, and it rules.

https://inheritedsufferingrecords.bandcamp.com/album/abominable-putridity-parasitic-metamorphosis-manifestation

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0851292490_10.jpg

I just bought it, u gotta stop feeding my addiction

God help me I'm actually kind of enjoying this one. I thought I hated brootal death stuff.

Speaking of Brootal SLAMZ, the new releases from Korpse and Insect Inside are both excellent scratchers of that itch as well.

Yeah, the Insect Inside album is really good. I reviewed it.

Abominable Putridity album is dope. vocalist sounds like like Sylvester Stallone if he had 47 years of black tar in his chest and was also slowly decaying from within

there is a band called Anal Stabwound on the same label. and the "n-a" is censored, so it appears as "A**l Stabwound".

is this some "google for ***** and find Jorel" shit?

"Weird A**l" Stabwound

Don’t forget to vote, folks!

2020 Metal ’n’ Heavy Rock Poll: VOTING & FURTHER CAMPAIGNING thread (open until March 5)

The Ad Nauseam is very impressive. Thought I might lose interest amid the sheer technicality, but it's full of interesting turns and textural variety, and obviously an enormous amount of production care.

If you liked that Ataraxy debut from like a decade ago -- and the sort of Finndeath that it channeled -- this Chinese death metal band should appeal to you

https://mvltifission.bandcamp.com/album/decomposition-in-the-painful-metamorphosis

or if you just like death metal generally, I guess; it's very good

and I just realized Mefitis has not been mentioned in this year's thread (can't remember if the new album was anticipated at the end of 2020)

https://thetruemefitis.bandcamp.com/album/offscourings

They're both (sort of) in that same bouncy, shimmery, slimy ecosystem

Don’t forget to vote in the 2020 poll! We need *you* to keep the flame alive.

Knoll
Interstice

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/92TjD7Z6lkg/mqdefault.jpg

http://open.spotify.com/album/6UKXm1UJNFttknobiabdNy?si=ov0eBFvRT_OemJ6QpwWlPg
http://knollvhs.bandcamp.com/album/interstice-2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92TjD7Z6lkg

Grindcore from Memphis, Tennessee. Reminds me of a modern take on Brutal Truth what with varied tempos and nods to influences outside grind but in Knoll's case, those influences are sludge and mathcore. It took me by surprise how damn good this was.

Nice--that Knoll has been on my wishlist docket for a few days now. Smart slam FTW! On a related note to some aspects of their approach (instrumentally, not really vocally--esp how they incorporate Black trem riffs w/o being orthodox BM), am looking fwd to the new Krallice set to drop this Friday.

That Mefitis above is a real frontrunner/standout for me so far this year--am a sucker for the thrashy/early-death (and also a bit early [early-mid?] Death, in their case?) approach to riffs and production, especially when it's done as well as that.

Everyone who's posted itt (and everyone else, e.g. Siegbran – where art thou?): please help us uphold our yearly metal poll tradition by voting for your 2020 favourites. Don't worry about the length of your ballot:

2020 Metal ’n’ Heavy Rock Poll: VOTING & FURTHER CAMPAIGNING thread (open until March 5)

Also, prompted by the posts upthread from a couple days ago, I looked into the band Anal Stabwound on a lark and not only is their debut from a few weeks ago a pretty good example of techy brutal death that doesn't wear out its welcome over an epic for the genre 55 minute runtime, but the band itself is just one kid from Connecticut who plays all the instruments himself (apart from a couple guest vocal spots) and who recorded and released the album while he was still just 15 years old. His youtube channel is worth a look if you want to feel humbled about your own musical accomplishments when you were in high school.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QZU7Ri7y6o

hahahahha really? goddammit i was hoping for an excuse not to listen cos it's so obviously something i would listen to but I feel silly cos of the name.

welp...guess i will!

Trying to imagine the whirlwind of parental emotions. On the one hand, my kid is an incredibly talented musician who plays at least three instruments and wrote and recorded an entire album of his own music at 15. On the other hand, he did it under the name Anal Stabwound.

maybe that's why it's censored on his bandcamp

"now sweetie, I love you, and I love your....."music"...and I will give you everything you need. but I am not giving you any money to record this album unless you blot out the naughty medical word on your site. this is a dealbreaker, Junior, I won't be associated with an anus!"