Rolling 2020 Metal Thread

it reads more like standard horseshoe theory stuff, not good but not notably bad compared to many other bands

Lord, grant me the wisdom to never parse the lyrics on a Max Cavalera album. (More seriously, I don't know why this is considered his thing when Greg Puciato and Troy Sanders are more dominant than ever. And a lot of the songwriting is way more Mastodon-ish than Soulfly/CavCon.)

I hadn’t even realized Sepultura dropped a new one this year and that it’s reportedly Not Bad.

People have been saying that about every Sepultura album since A-Lex. I don't know, though...

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

so, new Emptiness track

http://emptiness.bandcamp.com/album/vide

sounds very Kranky Records to me

These guys shriek in Arabic and claim to be from Iraq, which I very much doubt given the scene’s history with such things:

https://mulla.bandcamp.com/

There’s a twist, though: they’re an unblack metal band, as the lyrics reportedly express their devotion to Allah. The music itself is Darktronesque and involves some solid Middle Eastern riffage and soloing.

*Darkthronesque although the typo is very funny to me for some reason.

Btw don’t forget to nominate your faves here:

2020 Metal ’n’ Heavy Rock Poll: NOMINATIONS Thread (open until the 8th of January 2021)

Can you guess what genre they are?

https://darktron.bandcamp.com/

Ladydarktron?

McMaster has a new band with Gramaglia from Cosmic Putrefaction. you can pre-order it now for a really cool price :D

https://turriseburnea.bandcamp.com/album/turris-eburnea

Exsul debut s/t ep is perfected crispy loud and bizarre dm. cosigning all current & future hype. caligari recs will release its cd version in january

https://exsul.bandcamp.com/album/exsul

Revolver Magazine
Top Albums of 2020

25. Imperial Triumphant - Alphaville
24. Touché Amoré - Lament
23. The Acacia Strain - Slow Decay
22. Ozzy Osbourne - Ordinary Man
21. Avatar - Hunter Gatherer
20. Necrot - Mortal
19. Puscifer - Existential Reckoning
18. Mrs. Piss - Mrs. Piss
17. Mr. Bungle - The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny Demo
16. Nothing - The Great Dismal
15. Gulch - Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress
14. Lamb of God - Lamb of God
13. Marilyn Manson - We Are Chaos
12. Poppy - I Disagree
11. Higher Power - 27 Miles Underwater
10. Ghostemane - Anti-Icon
9. Killer Be Killed - Reluctant Hero
8. Spirit Adrift - Enlightened in Eternity
7. Bring Me the Horizon - POST HUMAN: SURVIVAL HORROR
6. Run the Jewels - RTJ4
5. Loathe - I Let It In and It Took Everything
4. Body Count - Carnivore
3. Greg Puciato - Child Soldier: Creator of God
2. Code Orange - Underneath
1. Deftones - Ohms

http://www.revolvermag.com/music/25-best-albums-2020

I've decided the Melted Bodies album is a better Mr. Bungle comeback than the (actually pretty good!) actual Mr. Bungle comeback.

Skepticism have recorded their next album - some short snippets of the process here - more news about a release date is probably coming in the next couple of years

https://www.facebook.com/officialskepticism

lol

Maciej Kowalski uploaded this on his channel, pretty cool stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MXb8dh-Wkw

Really digging the new Dark Buddha Rising, I love that "Uni" is basically a drum solo right in the middle of the record.

I'm also really enjoying this new Boris with Merzbow album, 2R0I2P0. Might be my favorite Boris thing in a long time. Ranges from surprisingly pretty to nice and noisey.

Seriously, this take on "EVOL" is gorgeous with that soaring guitar solo spiraling up out of Merzbow's noise.

Dawnwalker are pretty good at this whole wistful, proggy post-metal thing. lj, you a fan?

Holy shit, I was not expecting to be blown away by a new prog/tech death metal release this late in the year, but this had the same effect on me as last year's Blood Incantation:

https://omnivortexofficial.bandcamp.com/releases

Kevin has uploaded sheet music for all the guitar parts on Dysrhythmia's Veil of Control to Bandcamp: https://dysrhythmia.bandcamp.com/merch/the-veil-of-control-the-complete-guitar-transcriptions-digital-pdf-book-with-guitar-pro-files . I probably won't pay 10USD for it but still p cool. The tunings on the sample pages are crazy.

Dawnwalker are pretty good at this whole wistful, proggy post-metal thing. lj, you a fan?

― pomenitul, Thursday, 3 December 2020 20:58 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

lmao I used to be *friends* with the guy! should really listen in and let him know I'm still out there

Looks like they're a proper quartet now, per Metal Archives.

yeah this seems to be a much more full-band thing than his previous albums, excited to hear it

lol I bought it and he immediately messaged me asking how I was, how nice

Would I like it, LJ?

bought it anyway as its bandcamp friday

Most brutal DM is an indistinguishable din to me but this right here is some good shit:

https://newstandardelite.bandcamp.com/album/putrescent-seepage-dead-and-demented

Production is pitch-perfect.

good call on Omnivortex. even occasional clean vocals that actually don't suck!

Glad you like it. Prog death that's both cohesive and rifftastic isn't easy to come by. I don't often agree with AMG, but this review is on point:

https://www.angrymetalguy.com/omnivortex-diagrams-of-consciousness-review/

i hate a lot of prog death but this shit has hooks amongst its arrangements, def worthy addition

Kind of unrelated but is there a single ESL metal vocalist who pronounces the word abyss 'uh-biss'? It's always 'AB-iss', it seems.

We need a linguist to write a monograph on international metal English.

AB-iss has been a metal tradition since Celtic Frost on "Visions of Mortality."

Diablo Wind is so good - as in: a well written song! you gotta love Jackie's light air chanting the future is dark- that it made me to re-evaluate the first advance track This Bed: i changed my mind, it doesn't just aimlessly wanders. the middle section could have been slightly edited, though.

new Grayceon in a couple of days: https://grayceon.bandcamp.com/album/mothers-weavers-vultures

very nice sludge/drone/postmetal from my hometown: https://pothamus.bandcamp.com/album/raya

Hey, look what slithered out into the world this weekend...

https://taucross2.bandcamp.com/album/messengers-of-deception

Apparently (there are a couple of interviews and reviews floating around) Miller re-recorded the entire album (omitting one song by a former bandmember who wouldn't let him have it) using a guitarist and drummer who didn't want their real names appearing in the credits.

what a piece of shit. very fitting that this is the only positive user comment so far

Giving the middle finger to cancel culture the Baron roars back with this monstrous record.

that's gonna be a 'no' from me, Tim

I'm gonna be honest. I fucking loved the first two TC albums. When Miller turned out to be a raving asshole, and backed into all the usual depressing brainworms bullshit ("virtue signaling" et fucking al.) when people called him on it, it really pissed me off. And now he's done an interview with some Aussie blog (which I'm not gonna link to) and said shit like this:

“My idea is that the Babylonian exile is where the Talmud seems to have taken shape. It was taken back to the Jewish people in Israel and was very different to the religion they had been used to, viz the Pentateuch and the Torah. I regard Talmudic Judaism as a supremacist Death Cult presided over by Priestcraft and demonic intercession. I believe that the Esoteric traditions were subverted towards an allegiance with extra human forces in the Archontic pantheon, and that rather than the traditional view that the Jews were in captivity in Babylon I believe that they became captive to their own Levitical priesthood subsequent to the introduction of the Talmud, which through the Rabbinical tradition has maintained the apartheid between the Chosen and the Cattle. Christianity dispenses a watered-down version of Judaism to bind the Gentiles to the same stream of Demonic Influences. All roots of the Abrahamic tree are corrupted, despite some glimpses of the older beliefs that managed to survive”.

FTR, the "interviewer" responds to that with "Interesting stuff, perhaps linked in some way to what you were saying with regards to indigenous religion in 'Burn With Me'? Maybe that’s another discussion for another day." Quality music journalism thrives in the metal underground, don't let anybody tell you different.

It's just fucked up and depressing.

unsurprising. no less infuriating. i still own two amebix recs :( the tat i had it removed. afaic he died last year

Brand new metal publication with a list that's a bit more like it imo

https://cursedzine.com/index.php/features-cursed/albums-of-2020/10-1

Not bad, considering, although I'm pretty sure only two of those will make my metal ballot.

Should have linked from 50 onward, oops

It does hew close to the RYM netal consensus admittedly

Make that nine, then. Still, much more to my liking than the usual fare, no doubt about it.

This, from Bandcamp's best metal of 2020 list, might be the most misleading blurb I've read all year.

The bullet-belted thrashers in France’s Hexecutor aren’t above a little showboating. Pretty much every song on Beyond Any Human Conception of Knowledge… indulges in at least one tongue-wagging, knee-sliding, pelvis-thrusting guitar solo. This is Eurothrash made for the big stage, conversant in the machine-gun Teutonic riffing of Destruction and Kreator, but seemingly more enraptured by the overt theatricality of Iron Maiden and King Diamond. Songs like “Tiger of the Seven Seas” and “Belzebuth’s Apocryphal Mark” may traffic in arcane subject matter, but they vamp like Van Halen. It’s was the most fun you could have with a metal album this year.

I'm listening to this album right now and I'm not hearing any Destruction or Kreator, never mind Iron Maiden or King Diamond. At best, this sounds like Tribulation with half the production budget; it's way too black metal-damaged (especially in the vocals) to work for me at all. I'm extremely disappointed. I seriously feel lied to. Anybody else heard this record? Thoughts?

this is pretty fun raw death metal with sick vocals

gets a wee bit monotonous halfway through but it's only 5 bucks

https://altarofgore.bandcamp.com/album/obscure-obscene-gods

I'm not hearing any of those things either. Perhaps the person who wrote that blurb thought 'this sounds like the 80s to me, which I know next to nothing about, so let's just namecheck a handful of random metal bands from that decade'.

xp

my only thought worth sharing is that i strongly disagree with: It was the most fun you could have with a metal album this year