Rolling 2022 Metal Thread

https://rottedlife.bandcamp.com/album/phantasmal-scourge

Digging this Night Hag album, filthy and rotten death doom.

"Piach" was one of my favorite metal albums of 2018, and on first listen, this new one from Gorycz seems every bit as massive:

https://gorycz.bandcamp.com/album/kamienie

Also recommended for fans of Furia.

The title track from the forthcoming Obituary album Dying of Everything is out and it fucking rules:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EhlsxrkzmM

I am unreasonably excited about this album.

Woods of Desolation, Australian melancholic black metal, are (or rather "is" - it's just one guy) back with a new album, out this week: https://woodsofdesolation.bandcamp.com/

his last one - released way back in 2013 - was awesome, imo. i thought that project was done, excited to see it back.

FYI because I know there are (or were?) some Hammers of Misfortune fans around here, but they've got a super limited CD version of the new album up on Bandcamp, 250 total copies and only 22 left as of my post.

Thanks for the tip off.

I guess December is ok by my standards to start listening to metal from the year.
Close by Messa reminds me of Mandylion by The Gathering, that's nice.

very late to the Phobophilic. definitely agree w/ people who said it has a little bit of that ole Demilich/similar bands sound, though the riffs aren't so angular.

just simple, good songwriting, atmosphere galore, plus my favorite lil 90s death metal trick of pairing a power chord riff with a higher string single note riff that propels it.

why didn't anybody tell me this year's Castrator album was so good? all-female, feminist old school death metal.

top quality writing. not anything innovative, but simply a high quality album within the style, with the punch of early 90s death metal riffs, plenty of breakdowns too (but not the annoying kind). I have hit saturation point with death metal but this one was easy to like.

i will admit the chaos from this year has led me to quickly forget about albums that came out, this is what I've bought and am digging from this year nonetheless.

Candlemass - Sweet Evil Sun
Darkthrone - Astral Fortress
Ripped to Shreds - Jubian
Gaerea - Mirage
Sigh - Shiki
Faceless Burial - At the Foothills of Deliration
Bloodbath - Survival of the Sickest
Wormrot - Hiss
Kreator - Hate Uber Alles
The Chasm - The Scars of a Long Reflective Shadow
Pharmacist - Flourishing Extremities on Unspoiled Mental Grounds (I'm an idiot who accidentally bought this twice)
Sentient Horror - Rites of Gore
Corpsessed - Succumb to Rot
Satan - Earth Infernal
Phobophilic - Enveloping Absurdity
Autopsy - Morbidity Triumphant
Venom, Inc - There's Only Black
Blind Guardian - The God Machine
Soulfly - Totem
Krisiun - Mortem Solis
Origin - Chaosmos (lmao I forgot about this entirely)
Devil Master - Ecstacies of Never Ending Night
Meshuggah - Immutable
Dark Funeral - We are the Apocalypse
Ghost - Impera (fuck you it counts)
Midnight - Let There Be Witchery
Embryonic Devourment - Heresy of the Highest Order
Immolation - Acts of God (top tier baby)
Voivod - Synchro Anarchy
Saxon - Carpe Diem
Venom Prison - Erebos
Exhumed - To the Dead

probably a bunch else I forgot about

The metal albums that made my complete Best Music of 2022 list (I put out the first half at the end of June, the second half this past week):

Abhorrent Expanse - Gateways to Resplendence
Analepsy - Quiescence
Antigama - Whiteout
Black Sky Giant - End of Days Pilgrimage
Buñuel - Killers Like Us (noise-rock; it counts)
Dead Neanderthals - Metal
Demiricous - Chaotic Lethal
Early Moods - s/t
Ecstatic Vision - Elusive Mojo
Faceless Burial - At the Foothills of Deliration
Goatwhore - Angels Hung From the Arches of Heaven
Golgothan - Leech
Grave Infestation - Persecution of the Living
Immolation - Acts of God
Imperial Triumphant - Spirit of Ecstasy
Krisiun - Mortem Solis
Mass Worship - Portal Tombs
Maule - s/t
Messa - Close
Misery Index - Complete Control
Mythic Sunship - Light/Flux
Neptunian Maximalism - Finis Gloriae Mundi
Organectomy - Nail Below Nail
Orthodox - Proceed
Oxbow & Peter Brötzmann - An Eternal Reminder of Not Today: Live at Moers
Sahg - Born Demon
Soulfly - Totem
Stabbing - Extirpated Mortal Process
Sumerlands - Dreamkiller
Eric Wagner - In the Lonely Light of Mourning
Wolf - Shadowland
Wormrot - Hiss
Writhing - Of Earth & Flesh

hah! didn't know there was a new Organectomy!

still too sad about the Eric Wagner incident to listen to that one.

still too sad about the Eric Wagner incident to listen to that one

It's so good. I wrote about it at length in March.

he was a funny dude that last time I saw him live (fronting The Skull).

was really drunk but he put on a hell of a show. at one point he said "what's that song Billy Joel wrote about the microphone smelling like a beer? well, this one smells like SHIT!"

i'll get around to checking it out soon.

gosudar & malignant altar split is quite good. love the opener on gosudar’s side.

https://rottedlife.bandcamp.com/album/gosudar-malignant-altar-split

appears this will be the last one from MA, at least for now:

https://metalinjection.net/news/breakups/malignant-altar-broke-up-to-due-health-issues-distance

unfortunate…

Nice to see some love for that Ecstatic Vision record, love it. For the hell of it, here's my longlist of what I'd recommend for this year, not saying each and every one is AOTY contender, but each of these I really enjoyed and played multiple times. Imho it was a great year for metal and heavy music.

Aara - Tirade II: Hemera
Abbath - Dread Reaver
Absent in Body - Plague God
An Abstract Illusion - Woe
Aeviterne - The Ailing Facade
Amorphis - Halo
Artificial Brain - Artificial Brain
Ashenspire - Hostile Architecture
Astronoid - Radiant Bloom
Autopsy - Morbidity Triumphant
Besvarjelsen - Atlas
Behold! The Monolith - From the Fathomless Depth
Big Scenic Nowhere - The Long Morrow
Black Death Cult - Diaspora
Blackbraid - Blackbraid I
Blind Guardian - The God Machine
Blut Aus Nord - Disharmonium - Undreamable Abyss
Bog Body - Cryonic Crevasse Cult
Boris - Heavy Rocks
Bunuel - Killers Like Us
Cachemira - Ambos mundos
Cave In - Heavy Pendulum
Chat Pile - God's Country
Clutch - Sunrise on Slaughter Beach
Conan - Evidence of Immortality
Cosmic Putrefaction - Crepuscular Dirge for the Blessed Ones
Daeva - Through Sheer Will and Black Magic
Darkthrone - Astral Fortress
Devil's Witches - In All Her Forms
Dreadnought - The Endless
Dream Unending - Song of Salvation
Druid Lord - Relics of the Dead
Early Moods - Early Moods
Earthless - Night Parade of One Hundred Demons
Ecstatic Vision - Elusive Mojo
Egregore - The Word of His Law
Elder - Innate Passages
Exhumed - To The Dead
Friends of Hell - Friends of Hell
Gevurah - Gehinnom
Gnod - Hexen Valley
Hath - All That Was Promised
Haunter - Discarnate Ails
Hazemaze - Blinded by the Wicked
High Command - Eclipse of the Dual Moons
Hissing - Hypervirulence Architecture
Imperial Triumphant - Spirit of Ecstasy
Incandescence - Le couer de l'homme
Kaleidobolt - This One Simple Trick
Keiji Haino + SUMAC - Into this Juvenile Apocalypse...
KEN Mode - Null
King Buffalo - Regenerator
Konvent - Call Down the Sun
Krallice - Crystalline Exhaustion
Krallice - Psychagogue
Kreator - Hate Uber Alles
Kvaen - The Great Below
Liminal Shroud - All Virtues Ablaze
Locrian - New Catastrophism
The Lord + Petra Haden - Devotional
Mares of Thrace - The Exile
Mass Worship - Portal Tombs
Messa - Close
Mike Scheidt - The Complexity of Distance
Moon Tooth - Phototroph
MWWB - The Harvest
My Sleeping Karma - Atma
Nebula - Transmissions from Mothership Earth
Negative Plane - The Pact
Night Hag - Phantasmal Scourge
Nite - Voices of the Kronian Moon
Orthodox - Proceed
Oxbow & Peter Brotzmann - An Eternal Reminder of Not Today
The Otolith - Folium Limina
Pure Wrath - Hymn to the Woeful Hearts
Reeking Aura - Blood and Bonemeal
Ripped to Shreds - Jubian
Russian Circles - Gnosis
Sigh - Shiki
Slaegt - Goddess
Somali Yacht Club - The Space
Somnus Throne - Nemesis Lately
Sonic Flower - Me and My Bellbottom Blues
Soulfly - Totem
Telekinetic Yeti - Primordial
Temple of Void - Summoning the Slayer
Tomarum - Ash in Realms of Stone Icons
Tzompantli - Tlazcaltilizti
Ufomamut - Fenice
Undeath - It's Time... to Rise from the Grave
Vanum - Legend
Vitskar Suden - The Faceless King
Voivod - Synchro Anarchy
Vorga - Striving Toward Oblivion
Wake - Thought Form Descent
White Ward - False Light
Witchery - Nightside
Wo Fat - The Singularity
Wucan - Heretic Tongues

Seven years later, Mare Infinitum has finally released a follow-up to their masterpiece of space sludge, Alien Monolith God:

https://mareinfinitum.bandcamp.com/album/cryosleep

Looking forward to spending some quality time with this one.

I don't think this was posted yet but Ulthar announced 2 albums for next year. Pretty stoked for this and basically anything Steve Peacock (Mastery, Spirit Possession) is involved with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcr8EF3GBS8

https://distortedsoundmag.com/ulthar-announce-two-new-albums-anthronomicon-and-helionomicon/

!!! holy shit that's great news!! thank you! xp re: mare infinitum

wooooow ditto! excited to check that one out. didn’t realize they were still active!

I haven't been to a metal show since 2019 (if not earlier) but holy fuck, this Vader/Krisiun/Decrepit Birth tour is seriously tempting.

3/18/2023 Nile Theater - Mesa, AZ
3/19/2023 Sunshine Theater - Albuquerque, NM
3/20/2023 Amplified Live - Dallas, TX
3/21/2023 Come and Take it Live - Austin, TX
3/22/2023 White Oak Music Hall - Houston, TX
3/24/2023 Gramps - Miami, FL
3/25/2023 The Conduit - Orlando, FL
3/26/2023 The Masquerade (Hell) - Atlanta, GA
3/27/2023 Canal Club - Richmond, VA
3/27/2023 Warehouse on Watts - Philadelphia, PA
3/29/2023 Le Poisson Rouge - New York, NY
3/30/2923 Middle-East Downstairs - Boston, MA
3/31/2023 Studio TD - Montreal, QC
4/01/2023 La Source de la Martinière - Quebec City, QC
4/02/2023 Brass Monkey - Ottawa, ON
4/03/2023 Lee's Palace - Toronto, ON
4/04/2023 The Sanctuary - Detroit, MI
4/05/2023 Reggies - Chicago, IL
4/06/2023 Skyway Theater - Minneapolis, MN
4/07/2023 BLVD Nights - Kansas City, MO
4/08/2023 Denver, CO - Marquis Theater
4/09/2023 Metro Music Hall - Salt Lake City, UT
4/11/2023 El Corazon - Seattle, WA
4/12/2023 Rickshaw Theater - Vancouver, BC
4/13/2023 Bossanova Ballroom - Portland, OR
4/14/2023 DNA Lounge - San Francisco, CA
4/15/2023 Backstage Bar - Las Vegas, NV
4/16/2023 1720 - Los Angeles, CA
4/17/2023 Brick by Brick - San Diego, CA

man we got clubs around here but I guess our promoters don't offer a decent guarantee, these shows always skip us. I love Krisiun, it's not like they reinvent the wheel but I happen to like the wheel fine the way it is....maybe a drive to Richmond.

yeah Krisiun came here as an opener last year but it was 2 hours away on a work night and I had classes to teach that week. love pretty much all their albums and they are pretty great live (or were the one time I saw them in 2010).

last time I tried to see Vader I had painful back spasms start 10 minutes into their set and had to leave. but im def gonna catch this one

Vader and Obituary are the two legendary bands I've always wanted to see but somehow never have.

Moonlight Sorcery snuck out another EP this month. The last one drew heavily from Nightside Eclipse, and this one feels a little more like Anthems, production-wise (hard to know if this was intentional). More of a dense neoclassical kind of sound. I think I much prefer the first EP but we'll see.

https://moonlightsorcery.bandcamp.com/album/nightwind-the-conqueror-from-the-stars

didn’t expect to be thinking about nightwish quite this much while listening to the new mare infinitum but that’s what’s happening. i need to figure out if i even like this direction, but if i do, i might _love_ it, if that makes sense.

digging the new Mare Infinitum. theatrical bent to it for sure (which given my background is a good thing).

who is the female vocal on the second track? sounds like Bernadette Peters singing doom metal (a great thing!)

there should be a rolling bad politics in metal thread where those of us who find it grimly amusing can discuss Violet Cold and Venom Prison's latest dumbasseries and the rest of you can ignore it

Saw something about that on Twitter, decided not to even bring it here since Venom Prison are uninspired at best — I reviewed their second album for The Wire back in 2019, and it was unfortunate for them that it was paired with Misery Index's then-new one — and I'd never even heard of Violet Cold.

can someone actually post what it is that happened re: Venom Prison? all I can find is people talking about it and going 'yikes' with no details other than a 4 month old tweet, but as I understand it that's not actually it.

esp disappointing because Larissa positioned herself as a leftist and wrote against transphobia in the past. however, TERFs often identify as leftist and we've seen many such people drift to that cult so it's not a shock i guess.

Violet Cold thing seems more like a weird Kanye-esque breakdown

(don't know anything about that band).

cool, so now even the supposed good guys aren't good guys

wow, this sucks, but now I don't have to keep giving that band chances because of their comparatively "good politics" at least. Very funny that the main person I see defending Larissa on twitter is a PR person from Season of Mist, who clearly can take the moral high ground here.

Violet Cold one is kind of incomprehensible to me.

I get the impression that he thinks he’s so obviously anti-fascist that everyone should give him the benefit of the doubt (?)

main people I see defending Larissa are TERFs, some of whom are actually responding to transgender women and telling them they're not women.

xpost yeah that seemed to be what he was trying to say ultimately. in the end he also tried to criticize actual Nazis that followed him due to the controversial "NSBM is the best metal" post but like....bruh what did you think would happen.

the main person I see defending Larissa on twitter is a PR person from Season of Mist

Some of her own tweets are scary/delusional verging on QAnon territory.

digging the new Mare Infinitum. theatrical bent to it for sure (which given my background is a good thing).

who is the female vocal on the second track? sounds like Bernadette Peters singing doom metal (a great thing!)

It's fantastic. I love the choir and the symphonic flourishes. Not sure who is on the second track, but there are a lot of guest vocalists listed here:

https://www.metal-archives.com/albums/Mare_Infinitum/Cryosleep/1092853

As someone who loves Venom Prison and Violet Cold can someone be more specific as to what happened?
Links appreciated.

VC dude posted "NSBM is the best genre ever" for some dumb reason (link).

Re: Venom Prison, she was following "Gays Against Groomers" (a UK anti-trans right wing group), unfollowed them but liked tweets by anti-trans activists/TERFs, seems to have begun the double-down death spiral towards edginess.

So she unfollowed them but now is reposting shit like this. I think it’s time to leave behind this band cos it’s only a matter of time before she goes down the TERF rabbit hole pic.twitter.com/a7bIEX4AaS

— vampyric rhian 🏳️‍⚧️ 🧛‍♀️ (@urfavmtlhdtgrl) December 21, 2022

goes to show you why it's dangerous to take bands at their word even

My guess is that Emin Guliyev (Violet Cold) is just an odd duck but the Larissa Stupar stuff seems more insidious to me.

I would hate to have to not be able to support either of them since I love both bands quite a bit.

He should stick to hilarious posts like this

first the crypto shit than this but let's not forget his craziest post pic.twitter.com/fM0nzg9roO

— Psych Out (@psychout_) December 16, 2022

I would argue he's making his search way harder by not including INFPs but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What an ugly week for the metal scene. As soon as I heard about the Season of Mist PR's views, I requested my removal from any and all of their press lists.

As for Venom Prison, there's nothing in metal more disposable than a "pretty good" death metal band. They're a dime a dozen, so I have no problem tossing them into the trash.

As soon as I heard about the Season of Mist PR's views

I know her personally. What did she say?