Rolling 2020 Metal Thread

Fear Emptiness Despair is pretty bad I’d say.

What are your 2020 metal highlights so far, Siegbran? I miss your write-ups of old.

I've hardly heard new metal this year. I've liked Thanatos, Sepultura, Sivyj Yar, Ygg, Deathwhite, Paysage d'Hiver, Armagedda and Lustre but I'll probably do most of my metal listening around the end of the year.

The Ygg, Armagedda and Paysage d’Hiver are among my favourites this year but I’ve yet to hear all of those, so thanks.

Any thoughts on the Maggot Heart record?
There's a Beastmilk/Grave Pleasures connection (both bands were/are ILM faves) so I figure they would be on the radar of some people here.
I liked them live with King Dude last March.
I listened to the album a few times and I like the spirit of it but cannot seem to latch onto it.

Does anyone know if that Boris is getting any kind of physical release, or is it digital only? Trying to decide if I should shell out for the digital now, or hold off a little.

(No dice means I didn't get a reply, not that they are not doing a physical release, sorry abou that!)

pre-ordering Duma!

Skeleton's debut, out tomorrow, ticked a lot of boxes. rock solid pünkened black, full of stately mayhem hooks

https://listen.20buckspin.com/album/skeleton

new Sumac coming in september

https://www.brooklynvegan.com/sumac-announce-new-album-may-you-be-held/

now back to the uneasy pantheon of BM for people with big crust punk analog hearts: new Utzalu!!!

https://vrasubatlat.bandcamp.com/album/vt-xxvi-the-grobian-fall

(No dice means I didn't get a reply, not that they are not doing a physical release, sorry abou that!)

Thanks for checking though, let me know if you hear anything!

Definitely excited for some new Sumac, that's good news.

now we just need a new release date for the Carcass album

Thanks for checking though, let me know if you hear anything!

well, let's GET physical!

Thanks, at least I know.

mid-tempo growly underwater doom with dreamy spidery guitars from Markov Soroka. Very very good

https://markovsoroka.bandcamp.com/album/subaqueous

like very very VERY fuckin good. dang

omg this new Lantern

there's 'clean' vocals and the vocalist sounds like Javier Bardem when he sings even though he's Finnish

Finally got around to that Neptunian Maximalism and it's the real deal.

The Regarde les hommes tomber LP Neechy mentioned upthread is very much worth hearing as well.

on second listen, new Lantern is fuckin' fantastic

11 minutes into 'Avènement de l’éon évaísthitozoïque probocène flamboyant' for the second time today and I'm tempted to argue that Éons is the Espaces acoustiques of metal.

I have a lot of catching up to do, apparently.

Actual quote from a PR email I just received: "If you are looking for something polished, advanced, or otherwise consistent with industry standards, prepare to be disappointed." Seriously, what the fuck? "Our music is poorly played and recorded like shit! Excited yet?"

man, poorly played and recorded metal, what an innovation

on second listen, new Lantern is fuckin' fantastic

― I hear that sometimes Satan wants to defund police (Neanderthal), Monday, July 13, 2020 8:31 AM (eleven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

oh man they really killed it

The Neptunian Maximalism (triple?) album is amazing!

Actual quote from a PR email I just received: “If you are looking for something polished, advanced, or otherwise consistent with industry standards, prepare to be disappointed.” Seriously, what the fuck? “Our music is poorly played and recorded like shit! Excited yet?”

They could just say it sounds ‘raw’ and not tie themselves up in rhetorical knots.

what does "advanced" mean in that sentence

The chords don't progress, there's only one chord per song

frankly, i'm in

"we heard you like microtonal metal so we kept it to one tone"

maybe it's like Zaireeka where they make a cd for every note possible on the fretboard and you have to play the cds simultaneously to make the music you want

Name a name plz, this is already sounding like my AOTY.

It's an album by Siege Column, coming out on Nuclear War Now! in August. (Musical merits - or not - of this particular record aside, hasn't NWN thrown in with politically shady folks in the past?)

Just a quick glance at their Bandcamp reminds me that, yes, they've got Lurker of Chalice, Cénotaphe, Goatlord…

Cenotaphe are dodgy? dammit i listened to their album on spotify the other day and liked it

They've put out Goatpenis... but also Agathocles

I think it's safe to say they're not generally an NS focused label but they don't really care about the politics of the bands they put out and probably enjoy the edginess. The owner has some weird ideas about Yukio Mishima.

To be precise, Nécropole are the ones with explicitly antisemitic lyrics, but that's just Cénotaphe with an extra member.

You can run track 2, 'Ferments de corruption', through Google translate:

https://www.spirit-of-metal.com/parole-groupe-Necropole-nom_album-Solarite-l-fr.html

:(

That is, and I say this as a person who's unfortunately seen a lot of antisemitic lyrics, fucking awful

Its neo-late Romantic literary pretentiousness is fairly typical of the French BM scene. I can’t tell whether that makes it worse or is just a different flavour of awful.

https://mcusercontent.com/90ec68132b3c021c2e6819f62/files/5cb6a7c1-7150-4c88-b2cd-3abe0cc8e5b8/fistfulmetal2.pdf

Another batch of metal zines on the auction block! Crazy prices - but a better representation overall (in comparison to first batch I posted about above).

There are no long doom epics on the new Incantation album. There are some slow songs, of course, but they're short. Still, there's a song called "Entrails of the Hag Queen," so it's a must-buy.

welp after that discussion about NWN i am sad to announce they are reissuing the Minotauri album.

and i'm working my way through the Neptunian Maximalism album in sections (yesterday was Earth, tonight Moon) and it's wonderful. gives me JK Broadrick/K. Martin vibes circa Ice and the God stuff, which is a high compliment.

(first Minotauri album that is)

I give you, uh, Belarusian blackened trap:

https://moraprokazasom.bandcamp.com/album/by-chance

This is one of the more endearing quarantine music videos I've seen this year:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3zeW_cEm7I

My copy of the Neptunian Maximalism 3CD set arrived today. It's a really nice digipak. Worth owning in physical form IMO.

If you don't know whether you like gothic symphonic metal or not, the new Dark Sarah album is a good way to find out:

https://open.spotify.com/album/4vPBOxUHgThzl6U87tGHGG