2026 Albums

Grindcore is not generally my thing, but I kind of like this one!

No God, Just Rot is the first album from this Greek band. The songs are all super short and fast, and there is a surprising amount variation here, relative to the sub-genre, at least.

I am willing to admit that part of the appeal of this album for me is the title and cover art, which are both great.

I see this getting categorized as melodic death metal but I would classify it as more like symphonic death metal.

Which would be fine if all the "symphonic" parts did not sound like they are being played on cheap synths. Symphonic metal is not really my thing but that is not my complaint here. My complaint here is that this album is objectively not good. The vocals kind of suck, too.

I gave up about midway through the third the track. Avoid this one.

This Swedish band has been putting out albums for 25+ years, and they seem to be quite good at doing what they do, which is pretty classic melodic death metal.

On the one hand, this album sounds like a lot of other stuff. On the other hand, the songs are pretty varied and interesting. "As Our Days Are Dying" had good stomping groove to it, and I really appreciate the dynamics in "Legion."

The Everlasting Shadows is not a bad album and I am enjoying it well enough while I'm listening to it. If you're looking for good melodic death metal this week, it is worth a listen. That said, it probably another for the "I won't remember it a week from now" bucket.

This Raleigh, NC band has been putting out what they refer to as "adventure" metal for going on twenty years. They clearly enjoy what they do and I gotta say—I enjoy it, too.

Is it ridiculous? Yes, but no more so than anything else in this genre. There are a ton of influences at work on this album (and presumably on their previous albums as well, although this is the first one I've listened to). There's some thrash, there's some NWOBHM, there's some power metal, but mostly it all blends together into very listenable and entertaining melodic heavy metal.

One thing that really works for me here and keeps this album from swerving into the copycat ditch is the vocals. Yes, there are a few Bruce Dickinson flourishes, a bit of Geoff Tate, and maybe even a little King Diamond here and there, but never too much.

From the band name, I was expecting some really gross, splatter-horror OS-style death metal. What I got instead was some very caustic and vaguely political punk/metal, with tinges of industrial.

This album is pretty good. I don't think it is the sort of thing I'm likely to return much if at all, but I appreciate what they're doing and it makes for a good change of pace from all of the death metal and black metal.

Don't be scared off by the gross band name; this one is worth checking out.

Man, this album really puts my "Just say 'It's not for me'" policy to the test.

European symphonic power metal is very much NOT MY THING. I don't like it, it does absolutely nothing for me, and I find it utterly ridiculous. A bunch of very serious looking guys doing lengthy song cycles about elves and wizards? NO THANK YOU, SIR.

But hey—that's me. Is it any more ridiculous than a bunch of very serious looking dudes singing about the devil? Probably not. And I am grown-up enough at this point to admit that while it may not be to my taste, these guys write a good song and play it well. All of which is to say, if that's your bag (and there's nothing wrong with that), Soulbound is probably worth a listen.

This French band bills their stuff as "blackened atmospheric death metal" and I think that is fairly accurate. They have been around since the early 2010s, but Midnight looks to be only their second full-length release.

I liked this one. The band is good at what they do, and it's definitely atmospheric. Midnight never gets particularly fast and it is well toward the melodic end of the spectrum.

These are big songs, even if only one of them breaks the seven-minute mark. There's a fair amount of keyboards at work here and the occasional ethereal vocals, but none of that gets in the way of the metal-ness of it all. Definitely worth a listen.

This self-titled album is the first full-length release from this Austrian band and while there is not much originality to their sound or their songs, I still like it a lot.

In a previous life, this is the sort of album that would have prompted me to pick up a case of cheap beer at the Dairy Mart and head over to some friends' apartment to hang out on a Saturday night. It's straight-ahead heavy metal, unpretentious, but entertaining.

I think this album strikes just the right balance between fully inhabiting and period and feeling of metal without obviously aping a particular band or sound. It's a lot of fun.

As I have noted in a few previous reviews, I'm not a big fan of this trend of retro-metal bands that seem to be aping the NWOBHM sound.

So I was set to not really like this album, but I am finding myself pleasantly surprise as I'm listening to it. There is clearly a heavy Iron Maiden influence here, but I feel like the walk just up to the line without crossing it. I think they also mix in enough thrash to keep things interesting. And while the singer is clearly doing his best Dickinsonian operatic growl/howl, I think the fact that he is singing in Spanish is enough to set it apart for me and not be annoying.

I don't know that I'll return to this album, but it's a lot of fun the first time through.

While Vorago seems to be split between Germany and Mexico, Morulus sounds like it is straight out of the early 1990s black metal underground, albeit with somewhat cleaner production.

This album is scummy and evil-sounding. There are some occasional death-grunt vocals (e.g., track #4, "Negative Response"), but mostly it's black-metal screeching/snarling. They slow it down and change things up periodically, and those dynamics work really well. The songs are long and complex enough to always be interesting, but never drag on too long. There is also no small amount of hardcore punk energy here, but not so much that it overwhelms the black metal fundamentals.

Morulus seems like the first album from this band. I hope they keep going, because I like this one a lot and would love to hear more from the band in the future.

This band out of Sao Paulo, Brazil plays a progressive strain of death/deathcore. There is a mix of clean and death-growl vocals, and plenty of proggy instrumental passages.

I'll be honest, this stuff is like nails on the chalkboard for me. Abstracted is clearly a bunch of talented players, and none of the tracks on Hiraeth is badly done or lacks for creativity. But I find it nearly unlistenable because it's not at all to my taste.

If you're into this sub-genre (and it's totally fine if you are0, this one is worth checking out. They do a good job of it.

I had been pretty sure that the Voidlord album would end up being my favorite new release from last week, but this one is a strong contender.

Aabode is a two-person French band. They play a really interesting and occasionally challenging concoction of experimental death and black metal, with heavy industrial influences. We're talking the Throbbing Gristle/Einstürzende Neubauten end of industrial here, not the lighter, danceable stuff.

I really like this album and have listened to it a few times already in the last three days. I am pretty sure it will end up on my year-end list.

This album probably wins the Album Cover Of the Week.

While I have not spent a ton of time searching, there is very little info available about Voidlord. It seems like one guy, probably Italian (based on the album and song titles), and this album is their first release.

I like it a lot. It's grinding and abrasive and it sounds like it was recorded in a basement. The pace of the songs is slow and heavy, and they are all about weird rituals, interdimensional portals, and the summoning of dark lords. The whole album has a weird and cryptic feel, like an unmarked cassette found in the dead letter office that should have remained hidden.

I'm a sucker for black metal and I generally like "post-" sub-genres of anything, so this one is right up my alley.

Domhain is from Northern Ireland. I am finding this to be a pretty good balance of heavy, drone, and melodic; they're not afraid to speed things up and then slow them down, and the vocals are an interesting mix of black metal and clean singing. The end result is an epic and expansive sound that never lacks for atmosphere.

Track 3 ("Footsteps II") and its follow-up "In Perfect Stillness" will give you a pretty good sense of what this album is about.

AmongRuins is a melodic death metal band out of Athens, Greece that has been around that has been running for a little over ten years now. Advent Of Chaos is their fourth full-length release.

I did not find much of interest on this album. The tracks mostly blend together. There are only two that stand out: "Into the Flame" because it features a guest vocalist, and "Open Wounds" because they slow the pace down a bit.

Otherwise, this is by-the-numbers melodeath. It's a sub-genre I usually appreciate, but there just isn't much here to keep my attention. Everything about this album says "adequate", which just isn't what I am looking for.

My "Always listen to the band from Finland first" policy finally fails me.

This album is just a straight-up Iron Maiden carbon copy. I was going say that it is at least well-executed, but then I got to "The Veil Of Darkness", which is just terrible. And the next track ("Night Creeper") is even worse. I gave up after that one. I guess maybe there's a chance this album gets a lot better on the back half, but tbh I don't even care at this point.

Avoid this album. If you want to listen to Iron Maiden, go listen to one of their albums instead. This one is a waste of time.

Weirdly, a lot of brutal death metal tends to function as a sort of ambient music for me. The wall-of-sound production, the constant drums, the utterly inscrutable death-grunt vocals… it all becomes kind of atmospheric for me and fades into the background. That's not a complaint, mind you.

And that is what I thought this album was for the first few tracks. At about the halfway point, though, Embittered starts changing things up. The structures become more complex and dynamic, like other sub-genres are scratching at the doors, asking to be let in.

I ended up liking this album, but it's a little strange. It's almost like there are two different albums (or even two different bands) interleaved here. It ends up working, though; Embittered is a band I will be keeping an eye on, I think.

These guys are a French band and while I would not say my hopes were high, between the cover art and the early tracks I thought this album might be pretty good.

Unfortunately, I found my interest waning rather quickly. Prophecy is pretty bog-standard dearhcore and while it is not bad, I feel like I have heard about a billion things like it. "Locura" is an okay track though, I guess.

This album is gross, fast, and extremely heavy old-school death metal. And the band is even from Florida!

It's not the sort of thing that I want to listen to over and over, but it's really good and I recommend it.

Track #6 ("Viscera Between My Fingers" 🤣) is probably my favorite.

Sundecay labels themselves as "a progressive Doom band" but I feel like they at least share a border (if not significant overlap) with stoner/desert metal. That's not to get into an argument with them about what they want to call their music, but rather to provide what I think is a better idea of what this Toronto band is about.

The Blood Lives Again is six fairly long tracks (the shortest runs just over six minutes) of heavy guitar-driven. There are some vocals here—mostly (entirely?) clean—punctuating extended instrumental stretches.

I found it all to be listenable but not terribly memorable. This sub-genre is not generally where my metal tastes tend to lie, though, so your mileage may vary. It's definitely not bad, and worth checking out.

The Day Of the Beast is a Virginia 5-piece that plays a stew of blackened, thrash, and death metal. This album marks their fifth full-length release since their 2008 self-titled debut.

These guys have clearly spent a fair amount of time worshipping at the altar of Slayer. While this album features nothing particularly new or original, that worship-time was clearly well-spent, because they play well.

I had fun listening to Nightspawn Descendants. It's your fairly typical devil music, but the songs have a pretty great stomp to them, and I liked the mix of black metal vocals with thrash.

This album was my guaranteed first listen of this week's new releases, and boy-howdy, anything else is going to have a hard time topping it.

I am generally not a fan of a lot of soloing in my death and black metal but for whatever reason, I find that it works really well here. The songs are epic and atmospheric, but not at the expense of rocking. Necropalace strikes (for me) exactly the right sort of balance I look for in my metal.

I will be listening to this album many more times in the coming days, and while the year is still relatively new, I expect it to be on my favorites list come December.

I am not finding much to write home about with this one. It is pretty basic doom, with a mix of death-growl and clean vocals.

A few tracks in, and I am struggling to pay much attention to anything that is happening on this album. It is not terrible, so I guess if you like this sort of thing, it fits the bill well enough. It's one guy, with the usual mix of drums, guitars, keyboards, and mostly slow tempos.

I might make it all the way to the end here, but I'm kind of guessing I won't.

I think this is maybe my favorite release of the week so far.

Through Void is a death/doom band from Portugal. I think this one leans more into the melo-death, but there is definitely some doom here as well. The overall feel is one of vast intelligences shifting in the depths of space and the shadows of night, and it really works.

I listened to this album twice in a row last night, and I think I'm going to listen to it again tonight. I really like it.

This album is not great, but it's not terrible either.

Wicked Smile is an Australian band, playing a style of classic NWOBHM metal that owes basically its entire existence to Iron Maiden. Like, most of this seems to have been lifted pretty much directly from Brave New World-era Maiden.

Personally, if that's what I'm in the mood for, I'm just gonna go put on Brave New World. This is competently done, though, and they occasionally display a bit of originality ("Face Of the Wicked" is probably the best song). I won't be listening to this album again, but I didn't hate it.

Phendrana is a guy in Mexico City, working with a bunch of guest and session musicians. The album is a sort of atmospheric black metal with some more introspective interludes.

I liked this one well enough and might return to it in a few days to see how it holds up.

On the first listen, I found Cathexis to be interesting but not particularly compelling. Some of that could have been that I was driving while listening and could not really focus on it. It's worth checking out, though, if it sounds like your sort of thing.

I think maybe I need to start a standing category "Thrash Of the Week".

Sarcasm is a Slovenian thrash band that has been putting out records since the late 1980s. As with pretty much all thrash bands these days, there is not really anything new or innovative going on with this album; thrash is a fairly constrained sub-genre, so I think good v. bad mostly comes down to attitude and technical execution.

Sarcasm seems to have both of those down pretty well, and I'm having fun with this one. If you like thrash, you will like this album. And I mean, come on—who can resist this cover art?

This album is dumb.

It sounds like an 8th-grader watched Conan the Barbarian and then decided to make music about it. And then made the album cover in Photoshop.

Every track sounds exactly the same, or at least as far as I could tell, since I started skipping through all of them because they were too tedious to listen to.

AVOID.

Buried plays very heavy and rather epic death metal. They're out of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and Imagined Deformation is their second full-length release.

We're talking the progressive end of death metal here, and I'd say there are touches of tech death mixed in (although they're not in-your-face about it). If you don't like a lot of different notes being played very quickly all in a row, then you're probably not going to like this record.

I do like this record, though. Like I said, the tech/prog elements are handled judiciously—enough to keep things interesting without getting annoying. "Auditory Hallucinations" is probably my favorite track, with the preceding track "Decades of Diogenesis" coming in a close second.

Mädätys seems to be a relatively young band—this album looks to be their full-length debut, following a demo released four years ago—out of Finland.

They're on the doom-y end of the death metal spectrum, and I am enjoying the album on the first listen. Some of it is pretty standard-issue death/doom, but there's enough dynamics bubbling under the surface to keep me invested. Some of the tracks fade into the background a bit, but then I'll catch myself bobbing my head along to the groove and the song pulls my attention back in.

I don't know that Kuoleman ulottuvuudet is going to be much of a stayer for me, but it's definitely worth checking out.

This album is a follow-up to the band's 2022 release Fly the Fiendish Skies (they've had a few albums in between). That album told a story of rich people escaping the pandemic on a private jet but turning to cannibalism and becoming zombies. This one picks up the story of the world-wide zombie outbreak they cause as they "embark on a grotesque mission toward the heart of power."

I started out thinking this album was pretty straight-ahead old-school death metal, but there's more going on here than just that. Starting with track #4 ("Shelter In the Darkness"), they start changing things up a bit, and I really like it.

The whole premise of this album is original and interesting, and I am enjoying it a lot more than I expected to when it first started playing.

I think this might be my favorite new metal release from last week.

Vexitum is yet another one-man band, this one based out of Italy. I have not listened to any of his previous works, but this one definitely falls into the "cosmic" end of the death metal realm.

It's a sub-sub-genre I really enjoy, and I am additionally biased by the album cover art that reminds me of the 1980s HP Lovecraft paperbacks from Del Rey. But this album is just really good! It's cavernous and sludgy and heavy, but there is a lot going on underneath all of that; I have listened to it a few times now, and I find new things to appreciate about it every time.

Rave In Fire is Madrid-based metal band; they've been in business for about ten years, and it seems like there have been a few lineup changes. There is nothing original about this album, but I kind of love it.

If you imagine Pat Benetar fronting a Scorpions cover band playing heavy but frothy versions of early Queensrÿche songs, you'll get some sense of what this band is about. To be clear, the singer is not Pat Benetar, they're not a Scorpions cover band, and there are no Queensrÿche songs here, but you get the general idea.

I had a ton of fun listening to this album, and you know what? I'm gonna listen to it again, and I'm pretty sure it's going to be just as fun the second time through.

These guys are a Danish thrash band, and I found most of this album to be a lot of fun.

I always have a soft spot in my heart for thrash; it was more or less my entry point to metal at the tail end of the 1980s, and Hellmaze does it pretty well. Think early Testament, but updated with some touches of the heavier sound they adopted starting with The Gathering.

I appreciated the sense of humor here—I never felt like this band was taking themselves too seriously, as evidenced by the "OOGA-BOOGA MOTHERFUCKERS!" break in the first track.

My only gripe is with the closing track of the album "Moshpit Bukkake", which I could have done without.

I'll be up-front about the fact that contemporary power metal is not really my thing. If I want to listen to Iron Maiden, I'm gonna go put on an Iron Maiden album, not listen to a bunch of guys cranking out their best Maiden impression.

The album cover is the most interesting thing about this band.

I'm not entirely opposed to throw-back metal—I loved the Helm's Deep record that came out toward the end of 2025—but it needs to have some originality and creativity. Death Is Your Master comes across as either bad parody or unintentional parody, and I'm not sure which would be worse.

Maybe things get vastly better after the third track, but I wouldn't know, since that's the point at which I turned this album off and moved on to better things.

Fast and loud death metal from Poland that sounds like it was recorded in an abandoned warehouse.

These guys refer to themselves as punk/death metal, and I think that is a pretty fair characterization. This album is bleak and raw; it sounds like some angry guys making angry music.

Most of the tracks have a surprisingly good groove to them, and I repeatedly found myself nodding along. I'm not sure how this album would hold up after the first listen—the current here is fast but not particularly deep—but I'm enjoying it while it's playing.

These guys are a death metal band from Minsk in Belarus, and the actual name of the band is fifty-one letters long. Do with that what you will.

I'm going to go ahead and say that I really like this album on first listen. It is death metal with some progressive influences. The lyrics—sung in a fairly standard death growl—are in Belarusian, so I have no idea what they're about, but I really like the overall atmosphere and dynamics on this album. It's a good balance between heavy and pummeling drums/guitars and more contemplative, keyboard-driven interludes.

I will definitely be returning to this album for repeat listens.

The very second the first track on this album started playing, I thought "This sounds like Slayer." Now, I loves me some Slayer, so that's not a complaint, but rather just a shorthand for what you're getting with this album.

The songs themselves are all quite short, as is the whole affair, and the technical execution is excellent. Is there much here to set this album apart from the pile of other new stuff out today? I'm not sure. It is fast and aggressive, with vocals in the general region between death and thrash.

I liked Outrage overall, but did not find it particularly distinctive or memorable.

Sticking with my "If it's from Finland, this is the first thing I'm listening to" policy here...

The label says "dungeon synth" and while there is some of that, large stretches of this album lean heavily in the black-gaze subgenre. It might not be to everyone's taste, but I find it to be a good combination.

Old Sorcery is another one-man operation. If you're looking for snow-covered, mist-enshrouded forests hiding dark and mystical goings-on, then this album has got you covered. It looks to be the second in an on-going three-album cycle (presumably about dark and mystical goings on in a snow-covered, mist-enshrouded forest), so now I feel like I probably should go back to the previous album and give that a listen.

I have listened to this album a few times now and I like it a lot. The music is mostly black metal-ish, but the vocals lean more toward metalcore, but with some clean singing mixed in. It's pretty epic stuff, but overall, I found the mood rather somber (which is not a complaint).

Tékmés is a Lithuanian band, and their lyrics are all in Lithuanian. That's cool—I'm glad that the international music scene is becoming less US-focused—but TBH I'm always made a little nervous when I find a new metal band I like but whose lyrics I can't read. You never know what you're going to get, and I find myself always crossing my fingers that it's not something problematic.

Conveniently, though, they provide English translations on their website and I am happy to report that it all seems to be just normal metal stuff.

The main thing I have to say about this album is that it is a very clear cut case of "It does what it says on the tin."

If you look at the cover art and album title, you may find yourself thinking, "I bet this is some gross death metal that doesn't last very long." And you would be 100% correct.

Honestly, though, I like to have an album like this every week. It may be juvenile and a bit predictable, but it is entertaining and it never hits a point of diminishing returns.

I will admit, knowing absolutely nothing about it, I listened to this album based entirely on the band name. Unfortunately, the band name is probably the best thing about it.

I mean, it's not terrible. These guys are from Sweden, and they do stoner music that is on the border between rock and metal, in the same general realm as The Sword and Fu Manchu. Ziggurat is about 45 minutes of that sort of thing, and if that's your bag, I suppose you could do a lot worse.

But man, there's a lot of music out there, and I just found myself repeatedly zoning out while this album was playing. Again, it's fine—I didn't hate it, but I just didn't care about it, either.

Looking for some straight-up doom with some light sprinklings of death? This band out of Adelaide, Australia has you covered.

I thought this album was fine. Nothing particularly jumped out at me while listening to it, other than a fair number of Hex-era Earth influences on a bunch of the tracks.

The closing title track is probably my favorite of the bunch. Otherwise, I think I probably won't remember much about this album or band a few days from now.

Ever since I first listened to Demilich, I am pretty much always there for metal bands from Finland. Thus, this album is my first listen of this week's new metal releases.

And you know what? It's fantastic! It's a great mix of fast and slow tempos, and as with so many Finnish metal bands—and I'm not really sure I can quite put my finger on why—it doesn't really sound like anything else.

The whole album is great, but the stand-out tracks for me are the opening title track, kind of mid-tempo rocker that is super-heavy, "Eruption", which is pummeling to the point of being nearly industrial, and the closing bonus track "Seraphic Glutton", an 8-minute mountain of heavy doom.

This album is on my short-list for favorite releases of the week. If I were to drop it from that list, it would be because of the subject matter, which is fucking bleak.

Blade and Bath is a one-man band from Ukraine, and if you're feeling depressive or bad about yourself and your life, I would not recommend this album or band for you. If you hadn't guessed it from the band name, most of these songs are about depression, suicide, and death, so consider yourself warned.

What really strikes me about this album is how it is simultaneously melancholy and ecstatic. Track after track, it is just orders of magnitude more emotional than most black metal out there, and it all works really well. So if you are up for some psychologically harrowing metal, this album is well worth your time, but I do get that it's likely not for everyone (even as black metal goes).

The first car I ever owned was a 1981 VW Rabbit, and the first new car I ever bought myself was a 2007 VW Rabbit. They were both super solid, extremely dependable, and while maybe not super-thrilling, fun to drive.

I have always thought of Kreator as the heavy metal equivalent of those cars. German-engineered and very predictable, but also dependable and kind of fun. You always know what you're getting.

Having bought tickets to see Kreator when they come through this part of the US with Carcass in May, there was no way I wasn't listening to this album, and while it is exactly what I expected, it is also exactly what I wanted. They are like the KMFDM of heavy metal—found their path and they're sticking to it and friends, I am right there with them.

Funeral Home is a Finnish death metal band that has been around since the late 2000s. I haven't listened to any of their previous albums, but this one is pretty straight-ahead melodic death metal.

Your Funeral a fun listen and I like it. A bunch of the songs have a pretty good groove to them, and it never feels like the band is taking themselves overly seriously.

On the down-side, on a second listen, I wasn't finding much to distinguish one track from the next on this album, and there's not a lot that sets this album—can't speak to the band more broadly than that—apart from a lot of other stuff out there.

However, I think you could certainly do a lot worse than to give this one a listen.

Brutal death metal from Houston, TX, this album is wall-to-wall burped death-grunt vocals over nearly constant blast beats and squealing guitar. The subject matter is what you might expect: serial killers and gross-out violence.

It's fine for what it is, but nothing stands out about it. While I find complaints that "all death metal sounds the same" to be shallow and tiresome, there are, in fact, about a million records that sound like this one, and I repeatedly caught myself kind of tuning it out while I focused on other tasks.

The album is only 23 minutes long, though, so…

Symphonic death metal out of Italy, this is a concept album about a man becoming the first vampire. If that sounds ridiculous, it kind of is, but it's not terrible.

This sort of metal is not really my bag, but this album is well-made, well-played, and doesn't overstay its welcome. It is atmospheric and while I found myself occasionally rolling my eyes, I was also entertained for most of the run-time.

Weirdly, some of it gives Operation Mindcrime-era Queensryche; not in the subject matter or music, really, but more in the mood and feel. "Awakening" is the standout track for me.

I have never been a particularly big fan of Lattimore's stuff but I enjoyed this album well enough.

It's not that I think her music is bad; it has generally felt a bit overly precious to me, but I can understand what is good about it. Here, though, I found that those aspects of her work are tempered by having Julianna Barwick along for the ride, as well as by the additional instrumentation. "Stardust" is standout for me, with its opening synth washes that are almost reminiscent of "1984".

Overall, this album probably remains in the "Not for me" bucket, but it's not bad. If you're looking for some early-morning listening at the far, ethereal end of dream pop, it is worth checking out.

According to the notes, this album was entirely composed by one guy during the COVID lockdowns, and the re-recorded last year with a full lineup.

I like it a lot. It's intense and epic, and feels a lot more in-the-moment and (for lack of better phrasing) up front than a lot of black metal.

All that said, I will point you to the second-to-last track—"Shores Of Extinction"—where they slow it down a bit. It is a heavy, grinding affair like the one last march that the lyrics describe, and it is exceptionally good.

This album was a late addition to my 2025 favorites list.

Lychgate is a UK band; while I find genre-definition a bit tedious, this album sits toward the black metal region of the diagram, with some death and progressive elements.

What I really appreciate about this album is that it is intense and heavy, but also quite atmospheric. Like a bunch of the other metal albums I have been enjoying lately, it has a little bit of a lot of different things in it, with just enough prog sprinkled through to make it interesting but not tedious.

"Hive Of Parasites" is probably my favorite track.

Weft is Texas-based musician Charlie Anderson, who has played violin on some Panopticon albums. This album came out back in mid-December and I totally missed at the time. Luckily it came back up in my recommendations, because it is great.

The Splintered Oar is a bit of a kitchen-sink affair. There are stretches that remind me of Red Album/Blue Record-era Baroness, but there are also strains of death metal and black metal (more of the latter than the former) woven in. There are power metal-style choral vocals, and some prog flourishes too.

It feels like the sort of thing that shouldn't work, and normally I would expect to be annoyed by the crazily eclectic approach here, but somehow it works here. The whole thing holds together even though it takes some pretty bold leaps, and I like it a lot.

This band has a new album coming out in Feb that seems to have some buzz around it, which is what sent me to listen to this one. They seem to get lumped in with post-punk, but given the cover art here that looks like it is straight from some YouTube liminal-space/Backrooms video, I was worried it was going to be some vaporwave nonsense.

While I can see where the post-punk label comes from, I think the music here owes more to the early-2000s art-rock stuff like Bloc Party and Art Brut, albeit with a lot more electronics. It's anxious and edgy and vaguely political, ranging from abrasive but danceable tracks to more ambient/noise stuff (especially in the back half of the album).

I like this album a lot and will definitely be checking out URGH when it comes out in February.

This is the most fun I've had listening to an album in a while, and this one for sure wins the Best Album Cover award this week.

With one guitarist from Saxon and the other from Old Forest (I quite enjoyed their 2024 album Graveside), this band has a great pedigree. While Times of Legend does not break any new ground, if you're looking for some spot-on NWOBHM-style metal, this is the album for you.

I've listened to this one twice already, and I'm still not tired of it.

This is some seriously intense death metal, and quite good. No black metal, no doom. Just all death, all the time.

These guys are from Lithuania, and I have spent zero time looking at the lyrics; they could be awful, but when it comes to death metal, I mostly don't care unless it's some Nazi or white supremacist bullshit—that bunch can get fucked.

There are some really good dynamics on this album and it never falls into the death metal trap of constant tedious blast beats and tremolo picking. The drums are actually really good throughout this album, and I especially love the copious snare.

I have encountered this band name before, but I think this is the first time I have listened to one of their albums. I say "band" and "their", but The Ruins Of Beverast is another one of these one-man-shops.

It puts me in mind of Lamp Of Murmur--whose recent album I really enjoyed--both in style/mood and because that outfit is also one guy.

Tempelschlaf is pretty epic, equal parts heavy and mournful. And honestly, who can resist a song title like "Babel, You Scarlet Queen!"? Even setting aside the awesome title, it's a really good song! I am enjoying this album quite a bit on the first listen, and I think it may be another grower.

On the one hand, this album is a pretty basic offering of black/death metal, filled with gore and blasphemy (although by far not the worst one can find in that regard). Unlike a lot of stuff in this subgenre, though, the vocals are relatively legible.

On the other hand, it's only about twenty minutes long and all the songs are pretty short. About the time this album is starting to wear out its welcome, it is done.

It is hard to imagine I will remember anything about this album or band by the time tomorrow rolls around.

This one is not pure doom, but tends to lean fairly hard in that direction… not generally my cup of tea, but I don't think it's bad as this sort of stuff goes.

There's a mix of deathcore-style vocals and clean singing, and the tempos are relatively slow, with the occasional burst of double-kick.

This album looks to be the band's first full-length release, after a couple of EPs over the two prior years. That may explain why it feels a little disjointed—a collection of songs rather than a cohesive album. Even so, I found this album growing on me over the course of my first listen, so I may return to it at some point to see how it holds up.

Kinda doom-y, mostly death-y. I like the opening track ("A Monument To Fallen Virtues), with its relatively slow tempo and thunder crackling in the background. "Dolos" is a good one, too.

Overall, I prefer this album's slower moments over the parts where they speed things up. Unfortunately (at least for me), the latter constitutes the majority of the run-time. The whole affair does have a cavernous sound to it that I appreciate; I think it works well for their sound.

So yeah—not bad, but not great either. I didn't mind listening to it or feel like my time was wasted, but I doubt I will return to this album.

The 15yo and I were listening to this album in the car on the way into school this morning, and we both agreed that it is squarely in the bucket of "perfectly serviceable."

Ectovoid is a metal band out of Alabama in the US; they've been around for a good number of years now, but this is the first of their stuff I've listened to. It's pretty straightforward death metal, well-played and I enjoyed listening to it.

I will give them extra points for the album title (In Unreality's Coffin) and cover art, both of which seem uncomfortably appropriate for the current state of the world.