Rolling 2022 Metal Thread

Welcome to a new year of metal, friends!

Here are some releases that are on my radar to listen to and maybe like.

14-Jan Fit For An Autopsy, Wiegedood
21-Jan Battle Beast, Boris, Midnite Hellion
28-Jan Earthless, Sunn O)))
4-Feb Blood Incantation, Korn, Saxon, Venom Prison
11-Feb Author & Punisher, Cult of Luna, Hangman's Chair, Napalm Death, Voivod, Zeal & Ardor
18-Feb Immolation, The Neptune Power Federation, Matt Pike
25-Feb Allegaeon
4-Mar Crowbar, Midnight, Sacred Reich, Sylvaine
18-Mar Dark Funeral
22-Mar Eric Wagner
1-Apr The Hellacopters
8-Apr Destruction
15-Apr Fozzy

(Note that some of these I do not expect to like but I listen to everything.)

Is that Sunn O))) the vinyl release date for the live thing that came out last month?

Already heard the Earthless, and pre-ordered the CD; it rules. Several of their back catalog titles are being reissued by Nuclear Blast in January. I bought those, too.
Definitely looking forward to Immolation and Destruction. Mildly curious about the Matt Pike thing, as I'm unclear why it needs to exist unless High On Fire broke up and I missed it.

Yeah the Sunn O))) is just the vinyl for the live thing.

Of course I have sky-high expectations for the new LPs by Priest and Meshuggah.

One 2022 release I've really been into is the new one by Night Cobra over on High Roller. Excellent early-80s style stuff.

https://nightcobra.bandcamp.com/

oooh Wiegedood, nice

Apparently one needs special headphones to hear metal properly.

https://get.heavys.com/

The new Wilderun. Wow.

is that good or bad

i listened to the first couple songs and got bored and kept moving ... admittedly, did not give it a fair chance

Yeah, curious to hear more Neanderthal. I know Angry Metal Guy gave it a perfect 5.0 which surprised me since usually even their albums of the year rarely even garner a grudging 4.0 or 4.5. Missed the last one completely, but some of the praise has me curious.

from someone who thought Veil Of Imagination was a 10/10 masterpiece...the new one is kind of a crushing letdown tbh

but if you like music that abandons a preceding album's majestic (and unusual) sense of melody and pacing in order to have loads of 'impressive' dynamic shifts, incoherent Opethisms, widdly solos and rAnDOm ChANGeS, and basically none of those awesome melodies at all, then yeah, go for it. Literally put me to sleep when I first tried to listen to it, finished it the next day and felt nothing more than a shrug. AMG easily impressed by showy instrumentation it seems

The debut album by Verbum, a doomy death metal band from Chile, is pretty good — it reminds me of very early Esoteric — but it has eight tracks including an intro, an outro, and two interludes. That's not an album, that's an EP.

http://ironboneheadproductions.bandcamp.com/album/verbum-exhortation-to-the-impure

xpost *shrug*, works just fine for me

lol I thought you meant All Music Guide for a moment, I guess Angry Metal Guy has the same initials

the abrasiveness of last year's newest Concrete Winds is doing it for me right now

We doing a 2021 best of this year?

id certainly participate. but its a lot of work so if it doesn't happen I understand.

vote metal in the main poll

That's never good.

https://amenra.bandcamp.com/album/de-doorn-alternate-mix

^ sounds better than the first mix imho

Whoa, had no idea this was coming.

We doing a 2021 best of this year?

― Loud guitars shit all over "Bette Davis Eyes" (NYCNative), Thursday, 13 January 2022 23:44 (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

id certainly participate. but its a lot of work so if it doesn't happen I understand.

― gman59, Tuesday, 18 January 2022 16:06 (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

I hope so! Will contribute some 60-second charcoal interpretations of album covers as artwork if it goes ahead.

new Druid Lord hits about the same spots as their previous releases, I'm just glad to get new music from them.

https://druid-lord.bandcamp.com/album/relics-of-the-dead

The first album of the year that I am buying is the self-titled debut from Maule.

http://www.metal-archives.com/images/9/9/3/6/993688.jpg?5206

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYCRQGQmFVU
http://maule.bandcamp.com/album/maule
http://open.spotify.com/album/0qM8OXofi6vRqScKipZ0mF?si=riwSTFdRSoWoLRRd16j8fA

Still wishing that last Maiden album was more true to their roots? Looking for a band that sounds like the exact moment Thin Lizzy influenced the NWOBHM? These Canadian bangers got you covered. Hella fun.

Would not have predicted that sound based on that cover art. I would have expected Entombed worship and D-beats. I like this a lot. Thanks for the tip!

new moonlight haze track is fantastic if you go in for dramatic power metal -- this band has been showing great growth and I'm excited for the album

two singles out so far from the new mastercastle who are basically my favorite band and just ~barely~ metal -- more hard rock in the 1981 festival undercard vibe. I can't really be objective about mastercastle, I think they whip so much ass and their bassist looks like he's 65 years old if he's a day, just unfadeable I-fix-cars-by-day vibes, but at the same time "this is just a rock band" feels like a fair read on them so idk? I love their melodies & I think her voice is tremendous -- literally every song just vibes me out to exactly where I wanna be, their choruses are peerless imo, like Puccini arias, the second the melody locks in I'm dead

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2MqTnhu-XA

YouTube user jimischild13 with the most brutal comment

still got it , but the clock is ticking for us all never forget that , Best Wishes . BTW i missed you all

That was really nice. I agree about the chorus, and the way the guitar solo kicked in after the little keyboard interlude was great.

yes! the solos on mastercastle records are fantastic. very excited for the new one

loving maule and mastercastle!!

I feel essentially the same way about Magnum as you do about Mastercastle. The new Magnum album is their, I dunno, 180th?

https://open.spotify.com/album/286a0luh0FDCtNoPdQh57A

I really love this Magnum

I mean I love being a lurker on this thread and it's interesting to check out LJ type cool death metal bands who want to be Return to Forever and listen to late period Scott Walker or whatever but I truly only love jean jacket and Camaro shit

Sunday deathcore recommendation: Golgothan's Leech, out 2/4 on Lacerated Enemy.

http://laceratedenemyrecords.bandcamp.com/album/golgothan-leech

They cite Aborted, Cattle Decapitation and Bloodbath as influences, but that's bullshit; they're modern deathcore, bass drops and all. They're from Louisiana and they kinda dress like swamp creatures, half alligator, half GWAR. The track title "Teeth to Eat You" pulled me in, but the new single/video is "Bottomless Pit":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJCu12pvGkw

I'll keep up with tradition (had to read about this on a metal site too even though it could hardly be any further from metal) and post it in the metal thread then: https://40wattsunmusic.bandcamp.com/album/perfect-light

Excitement at seeing Coroner is touring America and playing Philly in May somewhat tempered by the fact that they're playing with overrated boneheaded derps Vio-Lence.

— Brian O'Neill (@NYC__Native) January 26, 2022

New Mizmor "LP" coming out, but it seems to be a single 20 minute track on side A and an ambient rework or something on side B? Already released digitally, vinyl coming in I believe March.

Most of my metal recommendations I've been getting from metal and DIY Twitter, so I miss a lot of stuff but probably get some weird recommendations by the personal friends of complete strangers. I'll let you know if I come across anything really cool.

Also I think between the relative lack of interest year to year in the metal poll and the time commitment, our usual pollrunners have all elected to take a year off. If anyone else wants to run or co-run, it can still happen, just probably won't be Oor Neechy or Pomenitul doing it.

New Krallice out today:

https://krallice.bandcamp.com/album/crystalline-exhaustion

The new Meshuggah song is...a Meshuggah song. They were genuinely pathbreaking 25 years ago, but they're so firmly entrenched in their own thing at this point they might as well be AC/DC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZH9w-U4WJU

u say that like it's a bad thing

It's neither good nor bad; Meshuggah sounds like Meshuggah. (The only time they pissed me off was on ObZen, when I thought they were trying to sound like Tool.) I'm just not sure how much more of it I need, you know? I could just keep listening to Nothing and Catch Thirtythree for the rest of my life. I guess maybe I should try a little harder to be invested in their last two albums, because they were good when I listened to them, they just felt...unmemorable.

the Mizmor is a heavy-ass 20-minute track and then an ambient rework of a Christian worship song the Mizmor guy wrote many years ago before he ... left the faith or whatever they say.

it sounds nice. it sounds like a lot of that kind of stuff. he could make an album of it and rake in that sweet, sweet ambient cash if he wanted.

What else does anyone who enjoys Meshuggah want than new Meshuggah music that sounds like Meshuggah?!

I get it, their days of innovation are over, but that doesn't mean the new stuff isn't worth hearing. The new track is great. Streamlined and groovy but still with those rotating time signatures that always rope me in. Super catchy. I love that band.

Initially the brainchild of AMENRA guitarist Mathieu J. Vandekerckhove, and NEUROSIS vocalist/guitarist Scott Kelly, ABSENT IN BODY formed in 2017. Immediately recognizing their kinship, and with AMENRA frontman Colin H. Van Eeckhout brought in on vocals and bass, what emerged is a reflection of the intervening years of turbulence, extending it's scope as it navigates across five stretches of unstable terrain. From the opening “Rise From Ruins” with ex-Sepultura drummer, Iggor Cavalera’s tribal beat emerging from foreboding, near-subsonic oscillations to explode in a tide of corrosive riffs and feral howls, through “Sarin’s” steadfast, procession-through-purgatory groove, to “The Half Rising Man’s” matrix of organic/mechanic evolution, it’s an album in constant dialogue between the animalistic, the human and the industrial, and a hunger to distill a truth, something unpolluted from the fray.

This is certainly an interesting collaboration.

^ https://www.instagram.com/p/CZcO6rgqzd4/

Ha, thanks, probably more helpful than regurgitating the press release but I was in a hurry.

dammit - Draconian euro tour cancelled :(

New Cloakroom, don't know if it fits here, but it's such a good album. Reminds me of the recent Hum album a bit. Also the Deafheaven from last year. Stonergaze ftw

I dig Cloakroom a lot and my copy of the new one is supposed to arrive later this week, definitely excited for it and comparisons to the recent Hum album only makes me more so.

track from the Amenra/Sepultura/Neurosis side project from a couple of posts ago: Absent In Body

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDhbP2KROJc

in no particular order, here are all of the metal albums from the first half of the year that i would recommend:

Wilderun - Epigone
MWWB - The Harvest
Cave In - Heavy Pendulum
Black Death Cult - Diaspora
Haunter - Discarnate Ails
Tzompantli - Tlazcaltiliztli
Messa - Close
Nite - Voice of the Kronian Moon
Slaegt - Goddess
Tomarum - Ash in Realms of Stone Icons
Aeviterne - The Ailing Facade
Somali Yacht Club - The Space
Devil Master - Ecstasies of Never Ending Night
Undeath - It's Time... to Rise from the Grave
Incandescence - Le coeur de l'homme
Hath - All That Was Promised
Pure Wrath - Hymn to the Woeful Hearts
Krallice - Crystalline Exhaustion
Voivod - Syncrho Anarchy
Konvent - Call Down the Sun
JIRM - The Tunnel, The Well, Holy Bedlam
Absent In Body - Plague God
Earthless - Night Parade of One Hundred Demons

Yeah, I'd add the Hath, Messa and Earthless albums to my list as well.

Did I dream that there's a new Adversarial record releasing this year?

Enjoying the extent to which the new Black Void album Antithesis delivers on the promise of an album called Antithesis by a band called Black Void.

https://open.spotify.com/album/1MrRF4jRDDHLZy45Y6g2WW

There's a new Amon Amarth song and video...and it's got a whole lot of guns and Mad Max-ish vehicles in it. It seems like a pretty big miscalculation, in the season of The Northman, for them to decide that now's the time to come for Five Finger Death Punch's spot. I doubt it'll work out for them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2-_PW4kzQo

Yeah, that seems like odd timing. It would be perfect to lean even harder into the gritty Viking aspect

oh shit they covered the GNR song?

That would actually have been better, because they'd have to include an opening screen explaining who Bob Guccione, Jr. was, who his father was, that Spin used to be a magazine, that there used to be magazines about music...

Listened to that Heaving Earth on Bandcamp and liked it a lot.

RIP Ken Kelly, the painter who suckered so many kids into listening to Kiss's Destroyer. He also painted covers for Rainbow's Rising and about 16 Manowar albums.

Saw Voivod last night. They were really great; Snake especially just seems pumped to be out and playing again. They played songs from all across their catalogue.

Yeah, they were so good. "Astronomy Domine" the highlight for me, though I don't really know the catalogue.

My brother texted me last night that he took his younger son out to his first show — GWAR, Goatwhore and Necrogoblikon. The kid's gonna be 17 in August, so he should have likely been going to shows for a couple of years already, but...you know. His older son, who's in his early twenties now, was there too. My brother and I took the older kid to his first show back in 2007: Heaven & Hell, Judas Priest, Motörhead and Testament.

Doing a music video shoot for a local metal band (Ginko Balboa). I'm the lead character.

It's bizarre and fun.

Xpost helluva first show!

Jmm, the "Astronomy Domine" cover is on Nothingface, my favourite album of theirs. I was excited to see that one too. They didn't do it when I saw them previously, years ago.

Much thanks to Siegbran and made entirely of styrofoam; I'm the fellow who asked Don for Death tracks in languages other than English. "Death (and the afterlife)" is going to be the theme for the July edition of Tom's twitter polls, and I'm always looking for stuff from outside Anglo-America.

I clicked best with the Norwegian tracks, though I don't have any insight as to why. Also a couple from Sweden and Poland. I put several in the spotify Suggestions Box, though since there are 950 (!) tracks in it I'm not optimistic about any getting nominated. But maybe a handful of people will listen.

Artificial Brain is always dope but there's a song on the new one that has a mid-section that sounds like 70s Steve Hackett era Genesis playing death metal

Came here also to thank yall also for those death songs, and to share an ancient preview I wrote, about even more ancient dogz:

The Godz
In the early 70s, when “heavy metal” was still mostly a fancy rock critic’s term, the Godz fed molten tonnage to the bikers of Columbus, and anyone anywhere who felt the need to drive anything. Singer-guitarist Eric Moore’s ever-combustible crew get a well-deserved overview on Twenty Five Moore Years, but the Godz saga doesn’t stop there. We may get some new songs at this show, we’ll surely get re-fueled.
04/16 @ The LC Pavilion, 405 Neil Ave.
7 p.m.

Think this was a different night:

Darsombra
Sunday @Bernie’s Distillery
Darsombra is the one-man-band incarnation of progressive/doom metal veteran Brian Daniloski, whose baritone guitar builds dense, vivid atmospheres, secret passageways of counterpoint and harmonic accompaniment. Darsombra’s new album, Eternal Jewel, seems set in low-budget sound, but the centerpiece, “Night’s Black Agents,” evokes iron wasps, pressing against the window of a cathedral in which classified industrial, surgical and other activities are well underway. Later, the guitar achieves a droning, vocal intonation, and chants its way toward fugues of feedback, fuzz, and bell-like tones. Pedals and loops should animate the live experience too.

I don't really know the catalogue. Don't sleep on Dimension Hatröss!

Also, Wiki sez:

The master tapes for Voivod's MCA-era albums were long thought to have been destroyed in the 2008 Universal Studios fire; this was later disputed by Blacky, who revealed in late 2019 that the master tapes for Nothingface, Angel Rat and The Outer Limits were located in a facility in Pennsylvania, after persistently questioning Universal staff, and claimed that they are now in his possession.[25][26]

It didn't come up in the thread but former ILM Metal Thread heroes Astronoid have a new album of "dream thrash" that came out last week.

No surprise, it's thrashy and dreamy, though a little heavier on the dream part this time out, maybe. Still like it just fine though.

think I'm the only Symphony X fan here but saw them last night. they were tight as hell. I think I like them as much as I do as I was big into Kansas as a teen and they're basically Kansas meets power metal. met Michael Romeo after.

still got laughs at everybody cheering "one more song" before the encore, because they did play 'one more song', The Odyssey - which is the length of 5 or 6 songs.

I love Kansas, so I will check them out. Thanks!

Phrase I encountered in my work today that would make an excellent brutal death metal band name:
Fetal Shunt

I like Symphony X, too.

wow, new Kreator goes harder than they have in a hot minute. I'm pumping my fist while typing with the other hand

The new Kreator album, out in two weeks, is really good. I'm a huge fan — I even like their "weird" late '90s albums — but this one sounds both clean and massive at the same time; quality production really brings out the aggression of the riffs. Lyrically, it's the same old same old (are people really still writing songs called "Killer of Jesus" in 2022?) but musically it's absolutely crushing.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Friday, May 27, 2022 9:29 PM bookmarkflaglink

Angry Metal Guy review is baffling to me, he makes it sound like they made Endorama again.

They're getting more and more audacious

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywcshfrpO3A

Kenny G, but like this. Like this.

Cool song. I love them. Joyously evil-sounding.

Here's another from an old favorite with sax in it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkVCcvQswi8

Thanks beard papa, that led me to learn that KEN mode has a new album due out in September. Always good news.

The new Conan video is hilarious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TFwio0Uk28

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzG-qji05Lc

Graspop Metal Meeting is happening, livestreams https://events.pickx.be/nl/graspop/

"Bevestigde livestreams" = "confirmed live streams"

List will be updated during the weekend but they're still negociating with the bands I guess

the Steel Panther singer has learned the Dutch for "show us your tits"

Krallice released a new album, their second of the year:
https://krallice.bandcamp.com/album/psychagogue-3

not just because they're from my neck of the woods, but man, Amenra live... don't miss if you get the chance to see them. Even on this graspop livestream they were awesome.

saw them once opening for Yob and agree, they're massive

lots of Hellfest live streams coming up over the next two weekends here https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/RC-014483/hellfest/

"Prochainement" = upcoming. Time zone = France (CET or GMT+2)

If you like your metal classic and riffy, with story-song lyrics about an alien invasion, "Dead London" on the new Jorn album (Over the Horizon Radar) is waiting for you.

https://open.spotify.com/album/4CR7GpwpFdR0nuLeGbxk9A

The Desiccation album is very satisfying. Heavy and immersive black/doom with great production, great drumming.

https://transylvaniantapes.bandcamp.com/album/desiccation-cold-dead-earth

Loving the new Baazlvaat album. Lo-fi black folk-metal with almost mandolin-like clean guitar picking at times, progressive song structures, and memorable, inviting melodies on every track.

The Kansas comparison was the first thing to make me want to listen to Symphony X btw.

Lo-fi black folk-metal with almost mandolin-like clean guitar picking at times, progressive song structures, and memorable, inviting melodies on every track.

Guy is apparently v into Irish folk music, which makes perfect sense.

I was really curious about ordering the new Orthodox album on CD, but when I got to the shipping part of the order process the only option given was almost $23 for shipping via FedEx. Uh, no thanks, I don't want to pay almost double the price of the album itself for shipping.

Yeah, I was confronted with the same dilemma. I wound up doing it, for completion's sake — I have all their previous CDs, except for the one right before this one, which is a single 27-minute sax-bass-drums track. I added that to my order and it came out at I think $49 including shipping.

That's a good call, I see they have the 2xCD comp that I never got, that might make the shipping a little more palatable.

And of course, now that I've already placed my order, they've opened a US store.

haha, not even a full 24 hours after I placed mine.