It’s Natural that the Spooky Month Would be Good for Metal Releases
Heavy metal and Halloween are natural compliments for each other. There’s little in any of the releases here that I’d call especially spookier than anything else released this year, but there certainly is a high quantity of quality releases. Even though it was a lot to listen to, I was excited to spin all of these. And I was (mostly) rewarded for my enthusiasm.
We have the heralded return of long-dormant acts alongside captivating new blood—a smorgasbord of gristle and gore dug from the graves of killers and kings. Gorge yourself, my children!
Behold! The List!
This year has been good for technical death metal
Between some of the releases here and the likes of Ophidian I, Inoculation, and others from earlier, a genre that can cause a fair share of pretentiousness-induced eye-rolls has had a slew of releases that leverage technical musicianship to their advantage rather than merely revel in wankery.
S-Tier
Cognos - Cognos
This was a surprise. This band was not even remotely on my radar until I began my monthly release scouring. I saw this debut album was getting some good reviews, listened to some snippets, and figured, heck, why not?
Man oh man, this album is exactly what I want from a prog metal album. These are some wonderfully constructed songs that don’t outstay their welcome and are packed full of awesome riffs and hooks. Cognos can alternately rip your face off and make you soar high above the clouds. Highly recommended for anyone with even a passing interest in the metal genre.
A-Tier
Be’lakor - Coherence
Much like Insomnium, I can safely say I “get” Be’lakor now. While I do think this is a great listen, I don’t think it’s quite as amazing as others online seem to. I feel the project really sags in the middle, and yet I somehow still dig it enough to put it at the top of my list this month.
1914 - Where Fear and Weapons Meet
World War I do be like that tho.
Powerful black metal. The orchestral swells really pull a lot of weight in these songs.
First Fragment - Gloire Éternelle
First Fragment is one of the few bands that can pull off utilizing swing rhythms in metal (sorry Trepalium).
What an inventive slice of technical death metal. So many unexpected twists and turns and so much more catchy than tech death has any right to be. It’s also a blast when a metal act puts the bass player so front and center. This band shares DNA with Beyond Creation, another bass-forward tech death act, and I definitely think First Fragment is the superior kinsman.
Creeping Death - The Edge of Existence
This EP is just really good, man what more do you want from me? IT MAKES MY BRAIN HAPPY.
Frontierer - Oxidized
Glitchy, noisy, and never letting down on their pummelling sound for a second, Frontierer operates in a similar vein to acts like Car Bomb. It’s a blend of hardcore, metal, and industrial that unleashes floods of serotonin through the crevices and valleys of my brain.
Archspire - Bleed the Future
Every single album of Archspire’s is a goddamn technical death metal masterpiece and Bleed the Future is no exception. This subgenre gets a lot of stick for sounding robotic and inhuman, but Archspire are so precise and robotic and constructed that it wraps back around to feeling more alive and organic than any other act out there. The dynamism on display is more impressive than the musical talent.
B-Tier
Aeon - God Ends Here
The heathens are back after almost a decade! Just like I remember them!
Aeon holds a special place in my heart for being one of the first death metal bands I learned to enjoy. They are serving up the same dish of god-cursing death metal like on their past projects, although God Ends Here is not quite as consistently enjoyable or compelling as Of Fire.
This is something that’s hard to put a finger on, but they sound a hell of a lot closer to Cannibal Corpse than they used to. When one of these songs came up on a playlist, I could’ve sworn it was a Cannibal Corpse track. I think they traded some of their bigness and theatricality for a more direct sound.
Also, this album has way too goddamn many interstitial tracks. I swear to god, if I ever end up having a breakdown and write a manifesto before doing something horrible, there will be a pages-long screed about how much I hate interstitial tracks.
Whitechapel - Kin
Whitechapel is mellowing in their old age, continuing the more thoughtful trajectory started in their last release, The Valley.
The heavy tracks are as rollicking as always, although with some added melodic elements I can appreciate that reminded me of Fallujah. God, I miss Fallujah. They’re still around, but those line-up changes just killed what was exciting about them. They were one of the most exciting bands of the 2010s and it all got thrown away…
Anyway. The softboi songs on here are really hit or miss. “Orphan” sounds like a B-tier Seether ballad, but “Kin” is a soulful crooner I adore and may consider to be my favorite song on the album.
Havukruunu - Kuu Erkylän Yllä
Not nearly as good as their last album, but it’s still a solid follow-up.
Exhumed - Worming
If you haven't bought into—or aren't willing to buy into—their goofy horror-worship, hopefully you can look past the unabashed goofiness and let yourself be swept away by some solid riffage.
I hate how covers of “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” are just going to be relevant forever.
Helheim - WoduridaR
This album was a grower. I was really unimpressed on first listen, but several spins have shown that some of these tunes can really surprise me with the depth of feeling they instill in my soul.
Grand Cadaver - Into the Maw of Death
I hope you like the Gothenburg melodic death metal sound ‘cause otherwise this is going to be a rough listen. Grand Cadaver proudly wears their Dark Tranquility and At the Gates influences on their sleeve. If you can get over the derivative sound, there’s a good time to be had here.
ATRÆ BILIS - Apexapien
this just slaps what more do you want from me
Enslaved - Caravans to the Outer Worlds
Oh wait, these interludes are good actually.
Full of Hell - Garden of Burning Apparitions
Full of Hell are legends at this point. It’s a shame that this is the first of their releases I’m not absolutely in love with.
It’s still a good album and very much worth the listen, but undeniably a step down from their other material. The back half of this is kind of dull and songs like “Asphyxiate Blessing” sound like uninspired retreads of earlier material. The parts of it I love, I love, and so in spite of some disappointing missteps, Garden of Burning Apparitions has earned a solid B-tier placement.
C-Tier
Mastodon - Hushed and Grim
I like my Mastodon more A Crack in the Skye. I know they’re a very different band now, but that was an album with bangers front to back. Hushed and Grim, by contrast, is padded with a lot of filler. So much so, I think they could have lopped five songs off the tracklist and I may have bumped this album up to a B-tier.
There were moments on here that got me good. “Teardrinker” hits different. I like it. As much as I love guitar riffs, I'm kind of indifferent towards solos. This song gets high marks for making me really enjoy a guitar solo with the smooth distortion (oxymoron, I know) on the instrument.
Thulcandra - A Dying Wish
I’m really struggling to say anything more about this than “It’s fine, I guess,” which some may find more damning than more blunt criticism.
Trivium - In the Court of the Dragon
Trivium is good. Really good. But I’m suspicious of anyone who’d claim them as a favorite band. They don’t do anything very exciting with this new album, but it’s still as fun as any other Trivium release.
Cradle of Filth - Existence is Futile
I have never been into Cradle of Filth. They’re not quite my cup of tea. Not enough riffs for me to enjoy them the way I usually enjoy death metal, not enough chaos or climactic surges or juxtaposition for me to enjoy them the way I enjoy black metal. Despite me just not being on their wavelength, there are a couple of tracks like “How Many Tears to Nurture a Rose?” that managed to break through my defenses and skewer me with a big spear labeled “good shit.”
Dream Theater - A View from the Top of the World
I've also never been a fan of Dream Theater. I find them very boring and soullessly clean. But a couple songs on here are a lot of fun. Maybe I should give some of their older stuff a second chance. That said, even on the songs I like, such as “Answering the Call,” the lyrics can often make me want to roll my eyes and start making a jerking-off motion with my hand.
Now, I’m going to be arrested for thought crimes against prog metal with this next paragraph, but I’ve listened to James LaBrie’s solo stuff and enjoy it more than Dream Theater. There’s something about the Dream Theater mix that completely drains him of soul or anything remotely compelling, but that’s not the case with his solo stuff. The guitar work there is pretty simple and more traditional in terms of riffs than Dream Theater, but you know what? I’ll take it over the sound of someone doing their calculus homework on a guitar neck.
D-Tier
Ministry - Moral Hygiene
For one last band that I’ve just never really “gotten,” we have Ministry. This sort of sound-clip-heavy industrial metal just doesn’t do much for me. I already am wary of audio clips being weaved into regular songs, but this album is jammed so full of news and interview clips of various talking heads and the former President that I just can’t quite connect despite the occasional decent instrumental or compositional flourish.
But more than that, Ministry’s "power to the people" schtick just feels a bit toothless. Billionaires bad. Orange man bad. We will resist. It's very #Resistance: the Album.
Worm - Foreverglade
Like the Cerebral Rot album from earlier this year, Foreverglade has some great moments but is just too plodding most of the time.
Noltem - Illusions in the Wake
I’m puzzled by why I don’t like this more. There are a lot of elements that I should like, but none of it was really able to get a handhold on my brain.
F-Tier
vildhjarta - måsstaden under vatten
vildhjarta! They’re back with their first album in over a decade! They suck so much more than I remember!
Christ almighty, what happened here? This album is SO BORING. Seriously, this is some of the most tedious and snore-inducing djent I’ve ever heard, and I’ve listened to Neosis. The songs are just… chug... chug chug....... chug... HIGH NOTE chug. vildhjarta sound like if Humanity’s Last Breath were on quaaludes. I feel like I should go apologize to Humanity’s Last Breath for even dragging their name into this.
Listening to this album sent me into a bit of a tailspin. It had been a long time since I’d spun their first album, måsstaden, and I began questioning if they were ever any good at all. Sure, vildjharta used to be a bit of a meme band in the metal community with all of the THALL stuff, but they had something going for them. Right?
Just to make sure I wasn’t crazy, I did relisten to måsstaden and yeah, that album is still quite good. What the fuck happened? It's fun, it's groovy, it's playful... what the hell? My enjoyment was definitely not derived from nostalgia as I was never that into them, it’s just that over the last decade of doing nothing they have transformed into suck incarnate.
What a shame. Get it together.
That, uh, that went places.
Thank you for joining me in this journey. Couldn’t do it without you. Your hair looks good that way. I don’t care what he says, it looks good. Don’t let him roll over you, stand up for yourself.