Rolling 2020 Metal Thread

I posted this to my Facebook page at the start of the month.

Midway Point of 2020
Metal(lic) Albums I Really Like

At The Altar Of The Horned God - Through Doors of Moonlight
Cirith Ungol - Forever Black
Cosmic Burial - Impakt
Couch Slut - Take A Chance On Rock 'n' Roll
Dola - Dola
Drottinn - Í helgum dýrðar ljóma
Drown - Subaqueous
Eye of Nix - Ligeia
Feminazgûl - No Dawn For Men
Fluisteraars - Bloem
Frayle - 1692
Haunt - Mind Freeze
Horn - Mohngang
Hyporian - Volume II
Ihsahn - Telemark [EP]
Insect Ark - The Vanishing
Lili Refrain - ULU
Lotus Thief - Oresteia
Lucifer - III
Myrkur - Folkesange
Oranssi Pazuzu - Mestarin Kynsi
Paradise Lost - Obsidian
Paysage d'Hiver - Im Wald
Pyrrhon - Abscess Time
Riot - Rock World (Rare & Unreleased 87-95)
Sightless Pig - Grave of a Dog
Skepticism - Alloy (Reissue)
Smoulder - Dream Quest Ends
Thy Catafalque - Naiv
Tombs - Monarchy of Shadows
Total Fucking Destruction - ...to be alive at the end of the world
Triptykon/Metropole Orkest - Requiem (Roadburn 2019)
Vile Creature - Glory, Glory! Apathy Took Helm!
Violet Cold - Noir Kid
Warbringer - Weapons Of Tomorrow
Witching - Vernal
Wolftooth - Valhalla
Yatra - Blood of the Night
Nechochwen / Panopticon - Split

Half a top 50 so far, unranked:

Armagedda – Svindeldjup Ättestup
Atavisma / Void Rot – Atavisma / Void Rot
Ayyur – Balkarnin
Caverne – Omphalos
Ehnahre – The Scrape of a Keel
Esoctrilihum – Eternity of Shaog
Förfallet – Förfallet
Fortress of the Olden Days – Verlassenheit
Grifteskymfning – Bedrövelsens härd
Horn – Mohngang
Lowrider – Refractions
Nawaharjan – Lokabrenna
Neptunian Maximalism – Éons
Nero di Marte – Immoto
Oranssi Pazuzu – Mestarin kynsi
Paysage d’Hiver – Im Wald
Salqiu – Orfeu
Serment – Chante, ô flamme de la liberté
Sombre Héritage – Alpha ursae minoris
Spectral Lore & Mare Cognitum – Wanderers: Astrology of the Nine
Turia – Degen van licht
Ulcerate – Stare Into Death and Be Still
Utkena – Nex Fornix
Vampire – Rex
Ygg – The Last Scald

It occurs to me that only two of those are American (Mare Cognitum, Void Rot) and both are splits.

whoaa i didn't know about that new ehnahre record! it sounds good!!

my other faves from this year so far have been oath of cruelty, ripped to shreds, body count, and the spectral lore / mare cognitum

2020 metal-adjacent stuff to have gotten 9/10 from jagthony imtago

Victory Over the Sun - A Tessitura of Transfiguration - if andrei rublev was about gender transition & if tarkovsky's chosen medium was microtonal bm
Psalm Zero - Sparta - sick prog metal, depeche mode style, from everyone's favourite medievalist
Slift - Ummon - kosmische heavy psych, 70 minutes in the blink of an astral portal
Azusa - Loop Of Yesterdays - lovely melodic proggy post-hardcore from international supergroup; comes out as delirious psych-pop in its last two tracks
Stabscotch - Twilight Dawn - wildly experimental brutal prog/hardcore outfit who cite coil as their predominant influence and consider themselves magicians (transitioning across this release from black to white magic)

2020 metal-adjacent stuff to get 10/10 from imagony jagthano

fuckin' Oranssi Pazuzu obv

oh yea the new ulthar is out too 🤟 https://listen.20buckspin.com/album/providence

Maggot Heart - Mercy Machine (Rapid Eye)

The bio references Voivod and despite Linnéa Olsson's past in The Oath and Beastmaker, that checks out with noirish, clashing, minor key "Angel Rat" riffs. Her post-punk past is nicely represented as well. https://t.co/C52f4oj2PK

— Brian O'Neill (@NYC__Native) July 19, 2020

finally getting around to Voidceremony. It's good, super good -- that proggy bass is catnip for me -- I'm not sure this is where my head is at in 2020, melodic doomy death has been my comfort food esp. of the established-in-their-craft variety (MDB, Paradise Lost)...but this is worthy stuff

I need to spend more time with it.

(True of 90% of releases I've heard this year tbh.)

This is maybe the first year in ages where I've actually been able to give almost everything multiple listens.

For obv reasons

I was not prepared for the amount of boing-boing jazz fusion bass on the Voidceremony record. But I'm into it, obviously.

Working my way through some things hyped in the thread...

can you guess what kind of music a band called Eternal Rot plays
http://godzovwarproductions.bandcamp.com/album/putridarium
for a death/doom band there's a good amount of imaginative stuff happening and surprising amounts of shambling groove ― With deep regret I remove my bookmark from this thread (GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ), Wednesday, July 8, 2020 5:31 AM

And how can you beat a song title like "Serenity Through Maniacal Flagellation with Decomposing Limbs?"

Kaatayra - Só quem viu o relâmpago à sua direita sabe

Getting Diablo vibes from this, of all things.

Couple of quality releases from last week that haven't been mentioned:

Khthoniik Cerviiks - Æequiizoiikum (oddball and ugly black/death)
https://ironboneheadproductions.bandcamp.com/album/khthoniik-cerviiks-equiizoiikum

Mystras - Castles Conquered and Reclaimed (Spectral Lore side-project; leftist medieval bm)
https://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/castles-conquered-and-reclaimed

The latter is excellent; I struggled to get into the former, alas.

They're an acquired taste!

I’ll give it another spin, it should hook me on paper.

It's sounding better now that I'm in a more apposite mood. If there's weak link here, it's the vocal lines, whose occasional rhythmic crudeness doesn't meld all that well with the (generally) more adventurous instrumental parts – nor is the contrast between the two interesting enough to carry the record. This grievance aside, it's a far less predictable effort than 95% of what I've heard so far in 2020.

Listened to it again with a more Bartókian/Stravinskian/Prokofevian ear. I rescind my previous post.

wow, new Defeated Sanity actually has clarity and doesn't sound like mush.

so far, pretty fun mega-techy death but of the more brutal variety, not the "lol i'm doin paper thin riffs and there's a violin that's gonna join me in a sec" variety

yeah I dig this.\m/

Here’s a Euro-BM twofer.

From the Netherlands, an EP of gorgeously depressing, semi-proggy atmoblack with momentum for miles and a conflagration of a conclusion – pure pap for yours truly:

https://verval.bandcamp.com/album/beeldenstorm

From Portugal, an unapologetically hyper-emotive, full-blooded take on BM. Its ‘cathartic’ genre tag on Bandcamp borders on the ridiculous, and it’s all a bit much, really, but suspension of disbelief goes a long way:

https://gaerea.bandcamp.com

And here's some brutal tech death for unperson, who is probably rolling his eyes at my last couple of suggestions:

https://desolateentity.bandcamp.com/album/deconstruction

god bless Napalm Death for naming a new song "Joie de ne Pas Vivre"

also, new single: https://youtu.be/FFDHuCeaM_Y

One more: a Hell-adjacent post-doom (whatever that means) project featuring Weeping Sores violinist Gina Eygenhuysen. Unsurprisingly beautiful:

https://loweryourhead.bandcamp.com/album/obliviosus

That Desolate Entity is decent but not amazing. It sent me back to the latest Black Dahlia Murder album, which is really good.

I had on my releases to check out list a collaboration with Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou that I thought came out today but I cannot find anything about it.

Does anyone know what happened here? Was it pushed back or am I imagining it?

i just checked out Xibalba for the first time, they sound awesome

Was it pushed back or am I imagining it?

I think it's supposed to come out later this year, but the exact date has yet to be announced.

I liked Xibalba more before I almost got my nose broken at one of their shows.

this is a fairly weird thing, but the drums on the new Defeated Sanity, idk, something the drummer does makes the drums make this chime-y sound in the right headphone, and it makes me think I have a ringing in my ears. very distracting.

I like the album though. might have to listen to it off of headphones though.

Here’s a Euro-BM twofer.

From the Netherlands, an EP of gorgeously depressing, semi-proggy atmoblack with momentum for miles and a conflagration of a conclusion – pure pap for yours truly:

https://verval.bandcamp.com/album/beeldenstorm

This hits the spot, dank Pom! Can always count on you bringing the Dutch goods I've not heard of lol

Haha, I must say the current Dutch scene brings together almost everything I like about BM, so I'm always on the lookout for more. I'm still waiting for Turia to unleash the masterpiece they've surely got in them, though.

Speaking of quality atmoblack with a soft spot for brief post-rock interludes, these guys aren't Dutch (they're from Sweden) but it's some of the best I've heard all year:

https://forfallet.bandcamp.com

The newest Imperial Triumphant advance single is, I have to admit, pretty incredible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_lb8564Kcs

so it's a...triumph, then?

an imperial one

Sounds problematic.

they are all about the contradictions & glorious evils of imperial america, let them rage

Love those guys. Can't wait to hear that album.

same here. I read a the quietus blurb about the new album and assumed it had been released. This week?

Out on Thursday, I think. Reportedly it’s as good or better than Vile Luxury *and* a stylistic curveball so I’m stoked.

I heard that a fairly recognizable metal blog has decided that they would not cover Imperial Triumphant because Zachary Ezrin said he liked Hate Forest in a piece that was posted to Revolver Magazine's website. The piece was removed fairly quickly and Ezrin posted the following apology:

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/EaPI1QnWsAgZxf4?format=jpg&name=medium

But that is all it took for the band to be cancelled by this one website that will remain nameless (I heard this from a friend who contributes to the website so I am fairly confident it is accurate).

I am all for cancelling people who deserve it and truth be told, my personal criteria has gotten more discerning with current events being what they are inside and outside of extreme music. But I thought it was bullshit when the adamantly antifascist Woe was thrown off festivals because they merely played shows with Inquisition and this kind of cancel-by-association seems similarly weak sauce to me.

I don't know how pervasive the attitude will be beyond the specific website, however, but this collateral damage really stinks.

also it's a low bar to clear, I know, but that's an above average apology for a metal musician

At least unperson is consistent in his refusal to listen to black metal. If merely liking a problematic band is enough to get you canceled, even if you’re firmly on the other side of the political aisle, then what the fuck are we still doing here? Anyway, I’ve already said my piece – repeatedly – so just assume that I’ll be rolling my eyes at the sheer hypocrisy of it all for the foreseeable future.

At least unperson is consistent in his refusal to listen to black metal.

TBF the fact that I hate the actual sound of black metal (the guitars, the vocals, the drumming, the production) makes it easier.

I wonder if those are related facts

🤔

Were they really ‘cancelled’? How does one define ‘cancelled’, anyway? This is the first I’ve heard of it but it seems to me, going from the screenshot as posted above, that the band (or this member specifically) was held to account for expressing approval for a known NSBM project, and he’s apologised for it. It looks like an actual apology, too, not one of those ‘sorry if you were offended’ bullshit statements, though it doesn’t specifically mention what he’s been held to account for, so understandable if people take it with a grain of salt.

Do the same people who hate BM for being 'nazi' listen to Pantera and Down plus other anselmo projects?

iirc he was one of the 1st high profile metal musicians to embrace black metal? Look how he ended up.