Zobens un Lemess 2020 @ Bauska, Latvia. 07/08/2020

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Nechochwen - Algonkian Mythos

Nechochwen – Algonkian Mythos

While reading Bandcamp Daily on my feed, I came across a black metal band out of West Virginia called Nechochwen.  The article is enlightening, but it got me interested in exploring their music a bit deeper.  This particular album, Algonkian Mythos, is technically a ‘metal’ album, but it is so atmospheric that it could almost count as a neofolk album.  The instrumentation is sparse and has a…

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My 25 Favorite Metal Songs of 2020

There are always a lot of songs worth appreciating at the end of the year, way more than 25, and I have done like 90-song lists before, which is nuts. But I’m trying to not go utterly insane this year; it’s been insane enough on its own. I’m keeping this one kind of on the short side so that I can put more energy not the top albums I want to highlight. As with each list, the weird, picky compulsive side of me has a weird selection process that basically tries to exclude stand-alone singles that could be featured more fully as part of an album in the future, like Gojira’s “Another World”. It’s not perfect, but it feels weird to include songs like that here when they could make a future list as part of an album too. So here they are, my 25 favorite metal songs of the year:

25.An Autumn for Crippled Children - “Silver”

One of the most ethereal and human moments on an ambient black metal album this year, “Silver” in all its fuzzily produced glory captures the genre at its most vulnerable in a rather succinct package and I can only love and respect it.

24.Sylosis - “Arms Like a Noose”

Another standout among many, “Arms Like a Noose” finds the UK act bringing a metalcore influence to modern melodic thrash, and a retro-flavored breakdown that, in better times, would undoubtedly make the pit explode into a frenzy and the rest of the crowd headbang in full unified swing.

23.Carach Angren - “Frankensteina Strataemontanous”

Meshing a marching palm-muted chugging rhythm with unhinged, anxiety-inducing piano chords, the title track to the ever-theatrical Dutchmen’s sixth album is an much of a bop as a menacing symphonic black metal track can be.

22.The Acacia Strain - “Crippling Poison”

With a sick, stomp-dancing riff at its core, this song is a furious deathcore chugger that captures the hardcore ethos that makes The Acacia Strain such a powerful force in deathcore when they’re at their best the way they were on this past album.

21.Trivium - “The Defiant”

This one seemed to be the under-the-radar hit for the band this year, in a few of the same ways “Caustic Are the Ties That Bind” was on In Waves. Indeed the two sound kind of like sister songs in their emotive guitar-powered melodies (the harmonious solo here seemingly taking a bit of a cue from Khemmis) and anthemic catharsis. It ends on a pretty bright and hopeful note, that I was a little cold on at first, but have really come to appreciate now. It’s a bold, beautiful track that captures Trivium at their best.

20.Suicide Silence - “Two Steps”

After the embarrassment of their self-titled album in 2017, Suicide Silence came back hard with the lead single to this year’s redemptive Become the Hunter, which reinvested in the band’s knack for combining tasty grooves and scary breakdowns that made them such a force to be feared in the deathcore world.

19.Undeath - “Entranced by the Pendulum”

It was hard to pick a favorite from the uniformly filthy and delicious Lesions of a Different Kind, but I really liked the vocal hooks, the drum accents, and variety of riffs (especially the low-string-bending at the bridge) of “Entranced by the Pendulum”, which made a consistent standout as I came back to the album over and over again after it came out.

18.Alestorm - “Tortuga”

The way the true Scottish pirate metal outfit expanded their sound to involve trap, electronic music elements, and a rap feature on this absolute party of a song give me hope that there is plenty of treasure left in Alestorm’s chest and that the band will defy all the expectations of those who thought they would run out of ways to make music about the pirate’s life.

17.Lamb of God - “Resurrection Man”

Lamb of God’s self-titled effort this year was a pretty low-risk affair, but “Resurrection Man” was stark exception in the middle of the track list, its more scowling first half exploring a variety of unusual guitar styles for the band to build the tension that breaks into a more quick-paced headbang-fest and an absolutely slamming breakdown that makes it hands down the highlight of the album.

16.Carnation - “Iron Discipline”

The Belgians kicked off their practically illegally heavy sophomore release with an energetic, infectious, growl-along banger that certainly captures their emphatic no-bullshit approach to death metal at its most diplomatic, offering a chance to join in the vicious death metal attack before it blasts every in front of it to death.

15.Humavoid - “Aluminum Rain”

Stirring together off-kilter rhythms, jazzy piano chords, a tasty central Meshuggah-esque eight-string groove into a wicked, and a groovy synth-driven bridge into a dizzying prog banger maybe even too mad scientist for Devin Townsend, “Aluminum Rain” stands out as a bolstering highlight in the Finnish outfit’s breakout LP among several tracks of ambitious modern progressive metal.

14.Nearea - “Carriers”

Another solid cut on an album of gems, I found myself coming back to “Carriers” the most out of any track on Nearea’s self-titled album this year for how it kind of just has it all in terms of what made the band’s comeback album this year so exciting. Combining melodic death metal at its most furious with metalcore at its punchiest, it is a sharp, deadly ripper of a track.

13.Avatar - “A Secret Door”

The highlight anthem from the band’s most recent theatrical musical release, Avatar go big and high-soaring on “A Secret Door”, with a pretty palpable power metal influence that absolutely blows the house down.

12.Khemmis - “Down in a Hole”

The thriving Denver doom optimists released a little compilation EP this year whose lead single was a glorious and synthless cover of Dio’s iconic inspirational synth metal anthem, “Rainbow in the Dark”. But the band put out three cover versions this year, and that was not the cover that blew me away the most. Khemmis took part in a multi-artist tribute to Alice in Chains’ grunge cornerstone, Dirt, and they got to cover the albums depressive acoustic ballad, “Down in a Hole”. While Code Orange were getting props for going acoustic for their live cover of the song earlier this year and doing a pretty good job, Khemmis kept the amps on and the results were stunning. The band make the song come to them and the grungy depression that Alice in Chain poured into the writing of the song pairs so unbelievably with Khemmis’ solemn, but hopeful doom metal; it’s an utterly goosebumps-inducing cover, and I can’t urge everyone enough to check it out.

11.Oranssi Pazuzu - “Oikeamielisten sali”

After its lengthy, but warped string intro’s serving as a breather from all the psychedelic mayhem preceding it, “Oikeamielisten sali” plunges Oranssi Pazuzu’s psychedelic black metal magnum opus into a spinning, spiraling world of flashing lights and disorienting sounds that feel like an unreal, but vivid nightmare’s plunge into a tunnel to hell.

10.End - “Pariah”

The pit-karate-inducing highlight of what I think has to be the metallic hardcore album of the year, End show just why their no-bells-and-whistles approach to the sound is so potent on the fiery and crushing “Pariah”, whose concluding breakdown brings the already chaotic and technically impressive track to a deservedly violent climax.

9.Ulcerate - “Inversion”

Similarly to how the self-titled Nearea album was hard to choose from, picking a favorite off Stare into Death and Be Still was a wonderfully difficult task because the band hit the mark with each song in kind of the same way. The guitar playing across the album is incredibly creative and emotional for such thick, titanium-clad death metal, and the band indeed surrenders not a shred of what makes the genre so great to listen to in its more simplistic forms, which I think the particularly heart-wrenching guitar work on “Inversion” demonstrates the most. It’s a good taster for anyone who might be skeptical that death metal can manage to resonate with your innermost melancholic ponderings on death while still firing on all cylinders.

8.August Burns Red - “Three Fountains”

The grand, gorgeous, and heartfelt metalcore closer to the band’s ninth full-length builds up through already-emotional guitar melodies to a glorious sing-along climax that rounds the album off on such an inspiring note.

7.Emmure - “(F)inally (U)nderstanding (N)othing”

Frankie Palmeri and company went hard this year, and I think the opening track from Hindsight best captures the band’s singular directive of making concussion-inducing, furious bangers from front to back and making everything as aggressive and punchy as possible. There’s no one to push around here at home, but that central riff, that verse beat, and that groovy bridge rhythm all make me go fucking stupid wherever I am. Absolute unit of a song.

6.Oranssi Pazuzu - “Ilmestys”

The slow-building and spooky intro track to Oranssi Pazuzu’s masterpiece, “Ilmestys” captures the band’s impeccable form and creative evolution in its subtle, understated opening passage that ultimately opens up like a blooming kaleidoscopic flower into the colorful climax that sees the track out. It’s a stunning, hypnotizing track that manages to encapsulate everything that the Finnish visionaries have been working toward with their psychedelic black metal sound in one seven-minute bite. Crazy to think that that’s just the first song on the album too.

5.Red - “The War We Made”

2000’s alternative metal often gets a bit of a bad rep and is treated like it’s not welcome here anymore in the metal world, at least among the critic class. Well I’m not in that class so I get to enjoy the open-hearted catharsis of alternative metal anthems like “The War We Made”. And it really is one of the band’s best songs and a great example of the genre in general. I dare anyone to honestly stand in front of those strings, those power chords, and that soaring vocal delivery and not feel something resonating in the core of what makes them human. It’s a beautiful song in such simple ways that don’t really beckon much contemporary critical dissection, but that simple openness has been the style’s biggest strength, which Red show wholeheartedly on this song.

4.Code Orange - “Underneath”

The album it came from may have found the Pittsburgh metalcore visionaries in a bit of a phase of growing pains as they try to enhance the industrial aspect of their metallic hardcore sound, but the closing title track of Underneath showed none of it, finishing the album off on a confident, swaggering, and effectively heavy note that packs the hardcore punch they’ve built their reputation on into an infectious alt metal structure without losing any potency. They may not have nabbed album of the year again or even the metalcore album of the year this year, but Code Orange definitely come away with the year’s best standalone metalcore song.

3.Imperial Triumphant - “Atomic Age”

Capturing perhaps the best on the album the deliriously foreboding forest of towers of the big apple, “Atomic Age” spirals down and around through experimentally jazz-infused and nightmarish angular guitar leads in the back of terrifying screams and growls that only add to the psychosis. It feels like being dropped from the top of the Empire State Building over and over and over again and scrambling for safety as the windows of the countless stories rush by.

2.Oranssi Pazuzu - “Uusi teknokratia”

Not that any song on Mestarin Kynsi is particularly lacking for its length or anything, they’re all incredible acid trips of dizzying black metal, but the album’s longest and most dynamic song has to be the most freakish, deceptively welcoming, and other-worldly of the bunch. This song really does take you to another world and entangle your senses there.

1.Deadspace - “A Portrait of Sacrificial Scars” (parts 1 and 2)

Deadspace hit an incredible new high with their sole full-length this year, and the title track in its two phases perhaps best captures the shivering, transfixing power of their more unshackled depressive sound. Everything about it, the drawn-out screams and bellows; the somber clean guitar passages; the depressive distorted chords; the heavenly choir, all sounds like the chilling but undeniably compelling farewell of a long-suffering soul finally seeing the glimpse of peace and release in its welcoming of an afterlife. It’s a song that confronts the heavy concept that DSBM deals with in the kind of candid and forthright manner that makes it so compelling when done well. The song’s abstract lyrics deal with the general sorrow that has surrounded the band’s music and the way the band as a whole has made use of their scars for their art. Deadspace announced their disbandment with the release of this album back in March, and the lyrics portray this act as one of bowing out through suicide (as a band, by disbanding, not literal suicide) to represent the finality of what they have sung about so much throughout their career. While not pairing with a literal death, this album, and this song serve as part of the departing act the way Blackstar served as David Bowie’s farewell and the way Purple Mountains served as David Berman’s suicide note. A Portrait of Sacrificial Scars and its title track is Deadspace’s suicide note as an art project, and one that comes fittingly after a gradual refinement of their sound that mirrored the depressed mind’s spiral from melancholic sorrow to malignant despair, ending their career on a chillingly glorious high note. Being that I’m giving an incredibly dark, DSBM song my top spot, I’d just like to clarify that I’m not suicidal in any way right now, nor advocating it. My top song in 2018 was Andrew W.K.’s “Music Is Worth Living For”, and all the music this year, despite its crushing atmosphere on all of us, and as dark as much of that music is, still is. It’s just, 2020, you know.

Albums I Missed in 2019

I don’t know if I’ve ever been so eager and excited, yet also hitting myself so much, to write about music I didn’t write about last year. Weirdly, I knew about the vast majority of these projects at the very least and for whatever reason, I just didn’t get around to hearing them until this year, some of which I am very disappointed in myself for missing last year and even for not getting the chance to include them in my best-of list, but that’s what this is for, eh. Anyway, here are the albums I wish I talked about last year.

Lice-Woe Betide You

Nikolas Kvarforth and Teitanblood linked up last year for an album of unstable character. Shifting from soothing ambient black metal to more self-loathing varieties within the genre, Lice only really establish a liquidy planting in black metal, but do alright in surveying the genre through Kvarforth’s ever-committed vocal performances.

Northlane-Alien

Northlane broke through the djenty metalcore ceiling on this album with a combination of tastefully enhanced electronic production, more cleans to balance the screams, and the evolved knack for the sick riffs and calculated breakdowns that any band needs to thrive in the genre. While not every song is a banger, Alien’s is an overwhelmingly stacked track list, and I recommend it enthusiastically.

Humanity’s Last Breath-Abyssal

This is the album that would’ve made my year-end honor list. Humanity’s Last Breath have carved out an interesting little niche for themselves within deathcore and made quite the improvement upon it even without much selective pressure. The band takes a pretty gratuitously turned-up and up-to-date techdeathy approach to deathcore, but their industrial effects-laden grooves and pedalboard-dancing breakdowns have given them a unique identity within deathcore, and on Abyssal, the Swedes put all their chips in the middle and hone in on what makes them difficult. And it’s a winning hand; Abyssal is packed with angular, groovy bangers and creative breakdowns that show that the band are clearly up to date with the fresh rhythm styles of both deathcore and metallic hardcore. Honestly, it’s just an addictive, delicious crop of bangers, and I wish I got to it last year. It’s made quite the addition to my workout playlist though.

Diocletian-Amongst the Flames of a Bvrning God

Apocalyptically war-minded New Zealanders Diocletian made an unfortunately pretty underwhelming return from their brief hiatus, but somewhat lengthy, studio absence through Profound Lore with the chaotic, but aimless blackened grindcore. Aesthetically and productionally it has a lot going for it, but the completely one-note, everything-at-the-wall approach leaves the album with few standout moments and feeling like a vague recollection.

Uniform & The Body-Everything That Dies Someday Comes Back

Uniform & The Body linked up again for another underwhelming collaboration of halfway-committed material last year. I enjoyed both artists’ most recent albums, but after the disappointing diminishing returns of the pair’s Mental Wounds Not Healing the previous year, I wasn’t exactly thirsty for another jam session between the two just a year later. And the second joint effort once again earns the term “effort” rather generously.

Mesarthim-Ghost Condensate

The sole release of the ordinarily far more prolific Australia-based solo studio project Mesarthim, Ghost Condensate’s moderate forty-minute offering split only into two twenty-minute pieces follows the same format of ambient black metal that draws its atmosphere from a very gradual and synthy push and pull. I reviewed the project’s two releases this year and found the spacy sound quite to my liking actually. Ghost Condensate, though, with its much more predictable compositional plot, simply doesn’t reach the same highs as Planet NineorThe Degenerate Era did this year.

This Gift Is a Curse-A Throne of Ash

Honestly, the generic title and generically occult imagery of the album cover kind of put me off and kept me from giving this album a listen until this year. Despite its superficially orthodox look, A Throne of Ash combines a lot of unorthodox sounds and compositional choices to make for a pretty thrilling, unique, and vibrant blackened death metal album.

Dawn Ray’d-Behold Sedition Plainsong

Ireland’s anti-fascist black metal stalwarts, Dawn Ray’d, have always delivered their message through rather subtle means on face value, but through the kind of second-wave-influenced atmospheric black metal that should reach the fans of the scenes they intend to combat. Though perhaps a little too evolved and “Deafheaven-y” for the average chud to get into (though it’s closer to something like Wolves in the Throne Room), Behold Sedition Plainsong is a fine example of the genre and a noble project that deserves support and respect at the very least for helping black metal not be as uniformly of a hotbed of shitty music and even shittier ideology.

The Deathtrip-Demon Solar Totem

Definitely one of the more dynamic black metal albums of last year, Demon Solar Totem takes the dark ethereal sounds of the second wave and today’s sprawling naturalistic atmospheric black metal on a progressive trip. The album does fall into a few typical ruts here and there, but at least it’s a variety of them, making for an interesting enough black metal voyage.

Haunt-If Icarus Could Fly

While the band’s second album felt like a bit of a step down from their beautifully melodic debut, I wish I had covered it last year when it came out, and covered Haunt in general earlier, given that they started up basically when I started this blog up and I’ve enjoyed their output pretty enthusiastically since hearing them. The old-school revivalists burst onto the scene with their full-length debut, Burst into Flames, in 2018 after a few splits and an EPs. I loved the refined melodic approach to the old guard style that the band made on that album. It captures the aesthetic of the time with the informed influence of the modern metal musician’s expanded melodic arsenal. And while “sophomore slump” might be a harsh term for an album that still accomplishes rather well what it set out to do, there’s a clear dialing back of the types of modern influences that the debut had on If Icarus Could Fly in an attempt to more deeply emulate the sound of old, which I don’t really think was necessary to boost the band’s aesthetic. Thankfully they rebounded pretty well this year with the one-two punch of Mind FreezeandFlashback.

Year of the Knife-Ultimate Aggression

This was the quick, but effective 25-minute debut hardcore slugfest from the Delaware-based quintet whose hastily followed-up sophomore album this August I found disappointingly less thrilling. Even in a Code Orange world of metallic hardcore taking charge and stealing the spotlight through industrial means, Year of the Knife follow more closely in the footsteps of bands like Harm’s Way and Knocked Loose, who may not be toying with electronic elements too much but who have taken keen note of the effectiveness of livening up the approach to hardcore’s groove. And Year of the Knife captures that ethos and that approach rather well on Ultimate Aggression, making me wish not just I had covered it in February, but that I had its energy in my workout playlist all year.

Cloudkicker-Unending

Another full-length from the prolific studio project, Cloudkicker, Unending is a pretty unsurprising, but fulfilling the soothing instrumental prog/post-metal album for the purpose it serves. There are few lovely little licks here and there and the album carries a general air of relief very well, so it does work very well for what it is.

Mortiferum-Disgorged from Psychotic Depths

The Washington band’s debut full-length is a decent contribution to the ultra growly, glacially heavy death/doom genre, but unfortunately without a lot of imaginative composition or stylistic shake-up, Disgorged from Psychotic Depths only just checks a bunch of boxes on the rubric. That being said, the album does offer a few glimpses of potential creativity that I do hope to hear more of in this band’s future.

Kmac2021-IMPOSTER

Internet funnyman Kmac2021 is more well known for his home-production tips and tricks to help bedroom djent kids get that savory Misha tone everyone wants and for his comprehensive countdown list of the top ten numbers of all time. But last year Kmac directed some of his talents away from his YouTube memelording and into a candid EP of the djenty deathcore he lovingly goofs on in his videos. The results were pretty standard melodic proggy djentcore, but quite respectable enough to earn Kmac some applause for his juggling of instrumental responsibilities and vocal techniques. I do want to highlight and shout out the title track though, which deals with the specific emotional distress of imposter syndrome, a very personally relevant phenomenon for me this year, and it’s been encouraging to hear a djenty anthem about overcoming that specific form of self-doubt.

The Acacia Strain-It Comes in Waves

The Acacia Strain rather quietly and abruptly released this quick batch of songs just before the end of last year, and it didn’t really flinch anyone. Thankfully the band’s follow-up this year was much more revitalized and got them back on track, but It Comes in Waves was concerningly unexciting for a band actively putting so much hardcore energy into their music.

Fever 333-Strength in Numb333rs

In their externally ascribed quest to be this generation’s Rage Against the Machine, Fever 333 on their debut album hit all the contemporary political notes and issues that they need to, but musically slip a bit too often into becoming a new version of Linkin Park. “Prey for Me/3” and “The Innocent” are absolutely fist-raising anthems for a fight for a more just world, and the rest of the album’s lyrical content, while rather simple and straightforward, is very in touch and aware of what lies at the root of so many problems these days. And while I hope the band kind of weed out those compositional tendencies that make some songs sound more peppy than they should, the concentrated fire they pack into their performances makes me excited to hear where they go from here.

Worm-Gloomlord

This came out just at the tail end of last year, but I wish I had heard it then because I think I would have liked to shout out its nasty, slimy, slow-dripping death sludge, which seems to be pretty in vogue at the moment with prominent acts like Undergang, Primitive Man, and Warp Chamber getting a lot of love lately. Gloomlord is the Floridian band’s second album, and for as ambiguous as its one-word title is, I feel like it lives up to it. The slowly trudging distorted riffs that allow the percussive highlights to feel like they knock you around in a despressed trance that the ominous atmospheric guitar work lays down capture that first part of the compound word, while the punchy, monolithic death metal core gives the music its lordship. Definitely worth a listen for any fan of slow, doomy death metal that hasn’t heard it yet.

The Hu-The Gereg

The Hu’s brooding and unique form of folk metal made The Gereg arguably the breakout debut album of last year. I’ve personally always loved traditional Mongolian folk music (if it’s not a misnomer to call it folk music), and I’ve always thought that the low-register string arrangements and chants and throat singing would sound really good in a metallic setting. Unlike most European or American folk metal, The Gereg is generally more shadowy and gradual, not that it is entirely without its unifying fun moments. But it’s generally more atmospheric in the ways that most listeners of European and American metal would be familiar with. And it does stay generally within these more meditative atmospheric bounds, never getting too heavy or overbearing, using subtle metallic textures to enhance its traditional instrumentation. It’s definitely an interesting listen at the very least and worthwhile for all to check out for its uniqueness.

December 2020 (and more)

Okay, get ready because this one’s a doozy (however that word is spelled).

December is usually a pretty slow month for releases as the year comes to a close and publications start doing their year-end lists and whatnot. And I’m getting to mine, which I like doing at the very end of the year to make sure I don’t miss any December gems. And I’m glad I did that because I did indeed find a lot that’s going on my year-end lists, the bad one too. Indeed, I took December as an opportunity to give a try to a lot of the music I had missed or intentionally avoided in 2020, and a lot of it validated my initial inclinations to steer clear. On the bright side though, my continued digging for gold that I passed by earlier indeed produced some results, and I found me some great albums that I’m excited to be covering right now. Like I said, this is a big one, so I’ll just get in with it.

Lingua Ignota-The Caligula Demos

After offering up harrowing covers of “Jolene”, “Wicked Game”, and the infamous Eminem song, “Kim”, on Bandcamp throughout the year, for the last Bandcamp Friday of this goddamned year, Lingua Ignota mastermind and Cheezit connoisseur Kristin Hayter has released a batch of demos from the sessions from the recording of her noisy, neoclassical industrial darkwave, reverse horrorcore, poetic hellwave masterpiece from last year, Caligula. We get a lot of rough noise precursors to the frightful cacophony that eventually made it onto the album proper, as well as some more stripped back piano demos that highlight Hayter’s classical singing chops, but also a few songs that don’t resemble anything on Caligula and maybe just got cut from the album, like the song “KYRIE”, which features Hayter singing soulfully and relatively softly over a minimally Sunn O))) kind of metallic amplifier drone. While it is indeed a demo album and the roughness that typically characterizes demo scraps does come through in a few of the less put-together pieces here, the demos here offer a great few snapshots of the creative process of one of the most transfixingly terrifying and emotionally raw albums of the past few years for fans of Lingua Ignota.

7/10

Dines X Heafy-Dines X Heafy

The friendship between Trivium frontman Matt Heafy and YouTuber Jared Dines has finally materialized in a 20-minute EP of, disappointingly, some of the most generic and unnecessary metalcore of the year.

5/10

Godthrymm-The Vastness Silent

The band are supplementing the debut album they dropped earlier this year with a couple of new songs to keep their name hot. And I can see why the band wanted to get these two songs out there because these songs do straddle the epic, fantastical side and the more somber side of doom metal with pretty respectable tact.

6/10

Insubria-Harvest Moon

This is the sophomore EP from Italy’s Insubria, an as-of-yet independent act. While it gets off it a slow start with the opening “Heritage”, the ripping blast beats, crunchy riffing, and folky strings of the song “Soil” lead into a pretty promising folky take on melodic death metal that I think the band could build upon and carve out a little niche for themselves in.

6/10

Soilwork-A Whisp of the Atlantic

Don’t let its classification as an EP fool you, Soilwork go big on this release, on the epic opening title track particularly, whose grand proggy voyage would make a band like Between the Buried and Me wet. Out of a lack of feeling a necessity to do so, I haven’t really returned to last year’s Verkligheten, which I remember for its being such a relatively standard melodeath outing. A Whisp of the Atlantic is a much more ambitious affair, and yes, mainly for its sprawling title track, which does deserve the attentiveness one would afford a track from the aforementioned progressive death metal nerds, or Opeth. But the four shorter tracks that follow serve as their own theatrically adventurous act of proggy, groovy melodeath that plays more to the genre’s strengths than their previous full-length did. It’s definitely worth a chance for anyone disappointed by the band’s last album.

7/10

Undergang-Aldrig i livet

I genuinely love Undergang’s general modus operandi of caking death metal in as much mud as possible and slowing it down to its nastiest and most swamp-monster-ish, and the band continue the mission here with aesthetic precision, the only thing lacking on Aldrig i livet being the compositional creativity that would make it a more compelling listen beneath the surface.

6/10

GamaBomb-Sea Savage

You know, having grown up on Metallica, loving thrash in general all my metalhead life, and appreciating its pretty drunken origins, I’d like to think I’m not much of a snob about my thrash. Albums like United States of Anarchy by Evildead, this most recent Anvil album with its song about the chemtrail conspiracy theory (as well as just about 90% of the rest of their catalog), and this new album from Gama Bomb, however, make me question otherwise by reminding me just how stupid a lot of the music was that came out of the earliest waves and challenging me on how much stupid I can take. In my ever-active search for good fresh thrash metal, I have stumbled across what is probably the worst thrash album I’ve heard all year. I’ve never been much of a fan of Gama Bomb’s toddler-sugar-high take on high-soaring thrash metal a la Anthrax, and the seemingly uncontrolled drunken punctuation of operatic tenor screams and uncomfortable coked out hysteria of Sea Savage is not making me any more eager to become one. No fucking thank you!

3/10

Cro-Mags-2020

Topping off their comeback year with another handful of topical songs, Cro-Mags don’t really do anything beyond their usual hardcore punk, save for a more groove-focused approach on the dissonant title track. Otherwise it’s basically just a continuation of what the band were doing on In the Beginning earlier this year.

6/10

Cadaver-Edder & Bile

With a much more thrilling synthesis of thrash and blackened crust punk, Cadaver give us at least one more 31-minute shot of nasty, snarling death metal with no frills around the edges before we peace this year out. The stylistic homogeneity can get a bit tiresome, but I’d say there is enough riff dynamic and performative energy to keep the album lively for as long as it needs to before it heads backstage to puke into and pass out hugging the toilet.

7/10

Eraser-A Deal with the Devil

With a healthy dose of 90’s groove metal influences (as well as some of the industrial and electronic elements their homeland has become famous for, which includes an at least curious dubstep bridge breakdown) to vary up their At the Gates-esque melodic death metal, German six-piece Eraser have burst out of the gate with a brilliantly balanced and head-turning independent debut album that I’m sure will land them on a label in no time. Boasting that sharp, fire-blackened death metal melody that both hooks you in and ties you to the alter it’s about to sacrifice you upon, A Deal with the Devil grooves so infectiously that you’ll find yourself nodding your head in rhythm as it sets the wood you’re strapped to ablaze. I think the band have some ironing out to do when it comes to a sound they want to cultivate, but they’ve laid a fine groundwork in what they’re capable of on this debut here, which is certainly an enthusiastic one that will catch you off your guard, well done.

7/10

Oroborus-A December Dawn

This is a demo album from newly emerged UK act, Oroborus, and it certainly is rough. There’s a foundation there to work with, but it is going to take a lot of work if this band wants to get into the prog metal stratosphere they’re shooting for, in composition and performance, as well as some aesthetic ironing out. The vocal leads especially need some technical practice to sound less nasal-y and amateurish, and they’re not helped by the repetitive parts of the song-writing nor the cheesier, on-the-nose power metal and classical heavy metal the band try to emulate on “Fortress of the Brave” and “Wings of Wax”. Meanwhile, the more brooding “Morphine Queen” features what sounds like an odd date set up by friends of Jonathan Davis and Train of Thought-era Dream Theater and the title track a very clear try at something similar to Opeth’s work on My Arms, Your Hearse. Ultimately, I think the band are biting off more than they can chew, and I think they need to grow some of the teeth necessary to do so as well, but that should not discourage them, hopefully the feedback they get on this demo points them in the right direction.

Revise-and-resubmit/10

Grayceon-Mothers Weavers Vultures

What an album to wait until the end of the year to release! The San Francisco trio’s fifth LP, Mothers Weavers Vultures, is a gorgeously tragic and utterly heart-clutching outing of progressive post-metal. Backed by Jackie Perez Gratz’ ever-present cello playing, Grayceon never let their hands off your shoulders as they stare you down and urge you to find the best of yourself within. My only criticisms of the album would be of when it does occasionally feel a bit understated when the band are building up to something more unrestrained and no-holds-barred expressive. Gratz’ vocals are a bit rough in some places, and possibly an acquired taste for some listeners too, but I think the type of grungy clean (and occasionally operatic or screamed) style she employs contributes to the album’s openness and emotional realness. It’s definitely worth a listen, definitely the kind of album that captures the toll of year’s turmoil on the heart.

8/10

Pharmacist-Medical Renditions of Grinding Decomposition&Thanatological Reflections on Necrotism

SoMedical Renditions of Grinding Decomposition was the Japanese band’s debut record that came out back in August, but for as unrestricted and brutal as that album was, they still had some left in the tank to drop on our asses before the year’s end, with a five-track EP, Thanatological Reflections on Necrotism. I didn’t cover the band’s debut LP, but I’m up to the task now! Better late than never. Medical Renditions of Grinding Decomposition, as any remotely astute listener of the genre would probably suspect, is a disgusting, odious goregrind album, and what a goregrind record it is! Clearly inspired by the early works of Carcass, and perhaps the work of the 90’s Czech band Pathologist, Medical Renditions of Grinding Decomposition is a filthy and unforgiving exercise in savagery, fixated on making the riffs as sick as possible, the bass grooves as nasty as all hell, and the vocals as gargled and unintelligible as any Pissgrave recording. And that’s all fine and dandy aesthetically, but the band have the compositional chops to back it up, a good taste for metallic structural flair and a firm handle on the dynamic instincts necessary to integrate it all without sounding erratic. After hearing a lot of good grindcore earlier in the year, I’m glad I got to hear another great offering (one of the year’s best) before the end of the year.

8/10

And another! The band released another five tracks to supplement their debut album in the form of the Thanatological Reflections on Necrotism EP just on the 19th, which is basically a solid continuation of the groove-filled deathly goregrind that the band exhibited their prowess with in August. Once again it’s no bullshit, no brakes, and no complaints as Pharmacist ooze and grind destructively through another 17 minutes of sickening old-school grindcore with impressive ease and acrobatic versatility.

7/10

Hollywood Undead-New Empire, Vol. 1&New Empire, Vol. 2

Hollywood Undead’s 2017 album, Five, was my least favorite album of that first year when I started this blog, it’s wild to think it’s been four years since then, but the rapcore pack is back again, with two albums this time. The first one came out in February, and I was just not in the mood for it then. But this month, since they had another one coming down the pipe, I figured what the hell, so I gave it a listen. Right out of the gate it really had me worried with that first song, “Time Bomb”, that I was going to be in for another unbearable album’s worth of lame-ass radio pop choruses and butt rock hooks, which this album still is in part. But thankfully, New Empire, Vol. 1 is an improvement compared to its predecessor, with more fiery energy that actually connects more often. There’s still the dumb juxtaposition between the sugary arena rock anthemism and the Eminem-imitating chest-puffing (the two of which I would rather have more of than the other), but the band keep it short and make fewer slip-ups this time, which, perhaps only by chance, makes this one a more bearable experience. The way the album ends with the line “I just spit 32 and I didn’t say shit” isn’t the ironic meta commentary the band probably think it is though, and its foreshadowing did not age well…

4/10

As for the second installment of the series, imagine a lot of distressed preparatory sighing taking place right here instead of this part of the sentence because… fucking Christ. The band start off on a horrible foot again with the absolutely nauseating singalong arena pop anthem, “Medicate”, whose refrain of “meda- meda- medicate!” is both cheesy as fuck and just astoundingly lazy. The difference between this volume and the first is that there are even fewer redeeming moments to tip the scales the other way. Whereas the first installment had some bangers to at least be on the scale to be outweighed by the Eminem rip-offs and stupid fucking pop choruses, on volume two the only breather we get from this auditory water-boarding comes from the consecutive features from Killstation and Tech N9ne on “Monsters” (which even still mimics Em a little too much to be ignorable, this time one of his token pop-feature crossover ballads that this track even practically shares a name with) and the sole heavy banger, “Idol”, which Tech N9ne’s standard feature counts as the most invigorating performance across the entire two volumes. Apart from those two songs, part two is mind-numbingly untasteful and packed with an onslaught of poorly curated combos of expired trendy styles that even Linkin Park on One More Light might have had the tact to avoid. Goddamn it, the first volume had me thinking that this was just going to be mildly, tolerably bad and that we were gonna be okay. I’m rubbing my squinted shut eyelids medially as I write this damn thing, as I did pretty much though my entire time listening to this damn album. I knew I should have avoided this. This might actually be worse than Five, which I know is longer, and I know that might be my angry recency bias talking, but I’m not about to go back and side-by-side these two shit piles. Corporate King 810, Hollywood Undead, came off the bench in the last minute to snatch, undoubtedly, one of the coveted top spots on the year’s worst-of list.

2/10

Well being that that last one was from this past month and from February, I suppose now is a good time to move into the stuff from earlier in the year that I missed, but I’m excited to be covering now. How about a pallet cleanser after that trash album, something good:

Sinira-The Everlorn

With its eight tracks covering an hour of impressively progressive and technical ability even for the style, The Everlorn is one of the year’s most elegant displays of black metal and melodic death metal, and not through gratuitous technical wankery, but through carefully crafted songs that present the style the band plays in such enveloping and glorious fashion.

8/10

Thrown into Exile-II: Illusion of Control

After aping Trivium’s approach to thrashy metalcore a bit heavily on their 2016 debut album, Safe Inside, which still produced tremendously fun and head-banging results, Thrown into Exile ease off those melodic elements that showed their influential cards on their sophomore effort here, and while it is indeed a little more homogeneous than its predecessor, the band’s second full-length keeps the pit circling and the heads banging rather consistently.

8/10

Killswitch Engage-Atonement II: B-Sides for Charity

I wasn’t really all that enthusiastic about Atonement when it came out last year, and I wasn’t super eager to jump on a new EP of B-sides from that unmotivating album, but I can’t go too hard on the band for their good-hearted intentions here, and the songs here actually aren’t too bad; if anything, they’re a step up from the album they came from, at least as a whole for the diversity they present. It does come with the over-reliance on the clean-scream trade-off and style of guitar melodies that has characterized their music and became the only feature of last year’s LP, but with just six songs, released for COVID-19 charity, it’s hard to get upset about it.

6/10

Mark Morton-Ether

After his over-collaborative debut solo trainwreck last year being what I named the worst album I heard all year, I was intentionally avoiding this new release here, despite it being just an EP. Well I bit the bullet and came out, not impressed at all, but relieved. Maybe if it went on for another 20 or 30 minutes I might have gotten more irritated by it, but Ether is just a really meek alternative rock album that stays in a safe acoustic zone for most of its time, which is good because there’s nothing really worth amplifying too much here. The country track in the middle with Lzzy Hale gets pretty obnoxious, but it does stay pretty stripped back still, so not too unbearable. Morton kept it safe this time around, and thank god for that. I just hope he settles on a sound he’s more fluent in and can be more authentic and take his time with on whatever solo project comes next.

5/10

Ded-Mannequin Eyes

Wow we’re getting the return of quite a few of my old least faves since I started this blog in this segment here, Ded doing the best job of changing my mind. While the Tempe band’s 2017 debut album felt like it represented too vibrantly so much of what tanked alternative metal in the 2000’s, the two songs Ded offer here are a breath of fresh air in that they are much more up to date, more tightly composed, and less like a caricature of the mistakes of the past. Meshing the alternative nu metal and metalcore of bands like Red and Motionless in White, Ded make a stronger case for themselves with these two songs than their debut did.

7/10

Nightwish-Human. :II: Nature.

I appreciate the Finnish symphonic giants’ always thinking big, but they have such a tendency to bite off way more than they can chew in terms of material. They certainly have the chops and basic arrangement skills to produce the style of music that they do competently, but they tend to have a hard time generating enough in the way of novel musical ideas to span the lengths of their increasingly bloated projects, and that is certainly the case with their first break of the 80-minute mark on this year’s Human. :II: Nature., which is a standard amalgamation of theatrical, folky, symphonic metal that the band has become so well known for, but possibly in its most dilute concentration to date.

5/10

Fates Warning-Long Day Good Night

In a case of maintained consistency, Fates Warning continue trucking along with an album that serves as a tacit reminder of the band’s veteran status that will keep the prog icons’ fans happy for the time being. The band don’t really spice up their sound too drastically or take too many risks, which probably will leave this album somewhat forgettable to passers by, but make no mistake, Long Day Good Night is still an exercise in prog metal fundamentals that most bands would be proud of. Fates Warning are just making it look easy, like a long-time surgeon just doing that shit routinely.

7/10

Benediction-Scriptures

As far as blunt death metal goes, Benediction’s return to the fold after another lengthy break with Scriptures is about as meat-‘n’-taters as it gets, respectable technicality and decent enough energy, which I think is basically all the band was going for, but nothing really beyond the most snack-like appetite satiation.

6/10

Amaranthe-Manifest

Being that I’ve only been exposed to their dance-pop-influenced brand of power metal in small doses (and not being enticed to have more), this was my first full-length experience with Amaranthe, of which I just have to say, “thanks, I hate it”. I have nothing principally against power metal, electronica, dance pop or any if the other styles implemented here on their own, and on paper the synthesis of these styles (united by high potential for unabashed fun) seems theoretically enticing, and there is a sparse handful of moments on Manifest that do manifest that potential. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the album is hampered down by its incredibly formulaic implementations of the styles here that really need that creative energy to thrive and end up with the party sucked out of the room like the arrival of a purposely uninvited guest.

3/10

Elder-Omens

For their follow-up to the psychedelic and progressively winding Reflections of a Floating World, Elder take a much more chill approach that focuses on the other aspects of their sound. While a lot of bands in the field struggle to solidify an identity and exhibit their nuance through overwhelming layers of sludge and might benefit from a more measured tactic, this was never really a problem for Elder, and their dialing back of the heavier elements of their sound to nearly zero leaves the psychedelic prog rock, doom, and stoner rock feeling a little bit incomplete without the sludgy wall of sound powering it all, resulting in an album whose decreased heaviness only spotlights otherwise standard psychedelic rock elements.

6/10

Saul-Rise as Equals

This is the debut full-length album from the Iowan project Saul, which was formed by Blake and Zach Bedsaul all the way back in 2007, and the quartet’s debut sure sounds like it’s struggling to get one of its feet out of the mud of that era and into the present. There’s a good set of bones holding the djenty melodic alternative metal of Rise as Equals upright, but the band are really going to have to vent their songs a bit more thoroughly and break out of the formulaic writing that makes the album tire quickly if they’re to make any meaningful mark on today’s metal landscape (and, for my sake, ditch the Hot Topic pop punk melodic stylings that drag down the songs that they show up on).

4/10

Contrarian-Only Time Will Tell

My earlier tastes of Contrarian’s very Cynic-influenced brand of modern techdeath didn’t really entice me to explore them further despite their being engined by Nile’s percussive speedmaster George Kollias, and as they continue their prolific streak with their fourth album in five years (now without Kollias), my first full serving of their music really hasn’t exposed any novelty they’re bringing to the scene that needs it so desperately. I’ll say, the album does at least end on its best note with the pairing of the two closing tracks, but otherwise, the techdeath here is just too uninspired.

5/10

Voidsphere-To Sense | To Percerive

Voidsphere is an online studio project that has been active as long as I have been active with this blog, releasing an album every year for me to review, and yet, I have missed them all until this year’s because I am an inadequate loser and clearly just a giant poser who can’t find any good underground shit. The fourth installment of the project follows the same “void metal” style (just extra spacy atmospheric black metal that intentionally invokes the feelings of vastness and celestial darkness) that has been making waves on Bandcamp lately and that the previous three have also channelled. Despite the grittily lo-fi mixing of the album, the full-bodied and indeed fittingly atmospheric instrumentation that spans the entire length of the album is powerful in its effect and successful in its intended application. Once acclimated to the mix, the album takes you on a harrowing, trip spiraling uncontrolled through cerebral void in such an immersive fashion. I wish I found this sooner, but I’m glad I get to highlight before year’s end.

8/10

Intervals - Circadian

While guitarist Aaron Marshall’s studio creative brainchild may not incorporate the same subtle hip hop and electronic elements that instrumental math rock cool kids Polyphia do, Intervals manages to find a certain swagger of its own on Circadian through similarly forward-thinking implementation of prog rock’s core traditional elements that make the very stylistically roots-y music lively and not feel so stylistically homogeneous. It’s a fun time and I’m here for it.

7/10

Puscifer-Existential Reckoning

After a big year with Tool last year, Maynard James Keenan returns to his “creative subconscious” project for an hour of spacy, stream-of-consciousness, ambient electronic rock even sleepier than the more soothingly instrumentally minimalist moments on A Perfect Circle’s Eat the Elephant.Existential Reckoning does function well enough as a relaxing electronic space rock album for fans of the softer side of Maynard’s voice, but anyone expecting any kind of super immersive or meticulously planned out album won’t be getting what they want. This album is, again, functional enough and interesting enough in its sonic pallet, but it’s also pretty stream-of-thought and (with a few exceptions) much more about expressive fulfillment for Maynard than songcrafting.

6/10

Necrowretch-The Ones from Hell

As opposed to the more modern and evolved form of death metal that most bands like Behemoth and the contemporaries around them, it’s the thrashier, Morbid Angel-esque old-school death metal that France’s Necrowretch choose to blacken, and given the closeness of black metal and death metal to thrash in their earlier, less divergent forms, the sound feels rather natural and seems to flow smoothly like a babbling brook of vintage melodicism. While I think the band do sometimes coast compositionally on the innate qualities of the concoction of styles, The Ones from Hell is still one of the better and most unique blackened death metal albums I’ve heard all year.

7/10

Dark Tranquillity-Moment

I’ve been hearing a lot of rather convincing melodic death metal lately, and I was hopping that Dark Tranquillity could keep the trend going and get themselves more fully out of their compositional funk with their twelfth album. Fulfilling those dual purposes about halfway, Moment is still a relatively mixed effort from the Gothenburg giants, with some chest-clutching and melodically emotive songs sprinkled in with about as many minor twists of the ankle as the band land right back in the pitfalls that have dotted the ground they’ve travelled further down their career’s road. While it may not be the kind of late-career rejuvenation that Construct was, Moment at least avoid kneecapping Dark Tranquility’s progress and keeps the Swedes’ momentum relatively steady.

6/10

British Lion-The Burning

Led by Steve Harris’ signature galloping bass lines, British Lion takes on a more classic hard rock flavor than the Iron Maiden bassist’s main band, but bears a similarly bombastic approach despite the superficial instrumental tone-down that give the project the feel of a band that might have otherwise been hypothetically active around the time Iron Maiden was gaining early traction and took inspiration from them or vice versa. While on paper the project has a lot going for it gunning its performative engine, unfortunately, the band’s second LP fails to launch its second compositional engine into drive and the album ends of stuck, jetting around, bright as they may be, in circles.

5/10

Turmion Kätilöt-Global Warning

WhileGlobal Warning certainly does a rather generic job of embodying it, the energy with which the Finnish group carry the Rammstein-esque electro-industrial metal of the 90’s into the 20’s deserves at least a modicum of respect, though I don’t think Turmion Kätilöt can carry the torch on their own. I’d be thrilled for them to feed me my words though.

6/10

Havukruunu-Uinuos Syömein Sota

There’s been a lot of good stuff coming out of the Scandinavian country that metalheads tend to forget about, but the third LP from the Finnish pagan black metal ritualists is one of the more middle-of-the-road albums of its style that I heard this year. There are some sweet solos here and there’s and some blizzards of frosty black metal melodicism that do bite a little more sharply than the average black metal album, but I did find myself thirsting for a bit more variety as the album went on, which the longest two tracks on the album close it out with pretty well thankfully.

6/10

Annihilator-Ballistic, Sadistic

With the headbanging party energy of Anthrax and demo-era Metallica and the snarling grit of early Testament, Annihilator have been flying the maple leaf thrash flag from the north with infectious fervor for seventeen full-length albums now, and although it’s not perfect and it has its entirety stoppable corny tracks, Ballistic, Sadistic is an impressively energizing and enthusiastic album for a band that’s been at it for so long, and a genuinely good thrashing time in a tasty variety platter of ways.

7/10

Dark Quarterer-Pompei

I will give give credit to Pompei for at least being the only album of its kind that I heard all year as far as any superficial genre descriptors would be able to set albums apart of from one another. In fact, I’ll give it credit for its pretty fair handling of the lofty sound that band set out to achieve with the album. The Italian group indeed go big and conceptual on Pompei, narrating the cataclysmic tragedy of the titular Roman city’s apocalyptic destruction in the wake of the eruption of the neighboring Mt. Vesuvius. The prog metal opera draws from the intricate instrumentation of Yes, the theatric presence of Led Zeppelin, and the heavier elements of bands like Iron Maiden or even Rush, and it all goes well enough… in the drawing room. Once rubber meets the road, the album is not the heavy prog rock opera masterpiece it set out to be. While not as dilute and lifeless as the unnecessarily massive Therion rock opera I reviewed awhile ago, Pompei is critically short on those vital compositional ideas that keep albums relying on a narrative afloat. So the band charge up a big sound but they ultimately end of blasting it off mark, maybe just grazing their intended target, not doing enough meaningful with it. But the vocals for me are where this album lost me the fastest. After the infamy that characterized the reviewers who mocked Geddy Lee’s voice when Rush was trying to establish themselves, I tend to give a second thought to any vocal style I might just not be accustomed to so as not to embarrass myself down the line in similar fashion. The vocals on Pompei aren’t particularly unfamiliar or boundary-pushing though, they’re just really unappetizing, to me at least. The album is already kinda cheesy on the face of it, and I can appreciate some self-aware cheese, but the vocals here just come off as dorky in a way that was clearly meant more to be bombastic and biblical, with a marring gutlessness behind the wild operatic style that makes it sound like a kid who just learned how to reach those upper notes but doesn’t have the power yet to sing them comfortably. And if it were possible to focus on the other aspects of the music more easily, that would be okay; if there were captivating hooks or anthemic sections to convince me, it’d be a different story. But the ineffectual instrumentation leaves the album sounding, unfortunately, unintentionally goofy.

4/10

The Spirit Cabinet-Bloodlines

And here we have another campy one, made so mainly by the vocals as well: the sophomore album from the Dutch four-piece, The Spirit Cabinet. The band’s 47-minute effort takes a bit of a trip into the older days of classical doom metal similar to that which Candlemass have made their name off of that’s pretty balanced in new and old familiarity, some more modern black metal influences shoveling coal into the instrumental furnace. It takes some getting used to with the semi-clownishly operatic vocal style, but once that’s been acclimated to, there’s a very lively and epic form of doom metal on Bloodlines that I think, with further honing on the part of the band’s craft, could eventually spawn a bonafide doom metal epic.

6/10

Afterbirth-Four Dimensional Flesh

Gurgling and growling through their sophomore effort, the Long Island band bring a fresh sense of technicality and prog-mindedness to the gory grind of brutal death metal that isn’t typically associated with the genre. Sure, it’s recognized for the physicality required to maintain the speeds it’s played at, but the compositional dynamic that Afterbirth showcase and the types of angular solos that they incorporate on Four Dimensional Flesh really sets it apart from other slamming death metal albums in its vein, and I hope there more to come from these guys because this was a wonderfully fresh take on the genre.

8/10

Haunt-Mind Freeze

I’d thought that I had covered their album earlier this year when it came out because I was so frazzled for my having missed out on covering the band’s sophomore release just last March (If Icarus Could Fly), but at least I caught myself before the end of the year for a chance to highlight the old-school revivalists. And when I say old-school, I mean really old school; Haunt reach back in time for a similar melodic version of classic heavy metal in its most primordial form to what Spirit Adrift call back to, though I’d say Haunt rely on even less of today’s advancements (save except for the unavoidable melodic influences that inform the solos that are perhaps the only aspect of the music that would stick out if this album traveled back in time). The solos on “Saviors of Man” and the title track, for example, feel way more emotive than what any band was doing back in the early 80’s, which the speed metal and early thrash influence on songs like “Divide and Conquer” would most reasonably limit the bands time travel to. As far as songwriting goes compared to the material from that era that’s stood the test of time, Mind Freeze holds up pretty damn well, feeling like it really would have succeeded even in the more competitive landscape of the germinating heavy metal scene. Granted, Haunted has the advantage of decades of hindsight, but fuck me if this doesn’t rival the best of that era. If Icarus Could Fly felt somewhat overly reliant on its nostalgic novelty factor as a crutch and lethargic in many spots as a result. But on Mind Freeze ironically, Haunt sprout their winds and soar majestically through catchy and gorgeous traditionally styled guitar and synthesizer melodies with just the right amount of retrospective wisdom from the current epoch. Absolutely brilliant!

9/10

Haunt-Flashback

That’s right, the Fresno band put out two albums this year, two full-size LPs, you know, to really capture the essence of those super prolific old-school bands who had an album out (sometimes two) every year or two for the first few years of their careers. And after the incredible album they started the year with, I can’t blame Haunt for wanting to strike again while the iron is both hot and stuck inside. Frequency aside, Flashback is perhaps the most aptly named Haunt album for the band’s musically rewinding mission. Whereas Mind Freeze felt a little bit more informed by modern doom melodicism, Flashback is much more riff-focused and hook-focused in a way that Iron Maiden, Ozzy, or Dio might have been in the mid-80’s, which the slightly more muffled guitar mix, sure, stays true to, but which I think didn’t need to be altered from what the band had worked with so well on Mind Freeze. The band do employ some more melodic guitar work on “Figure in a Painting” that seems more akin to their previous album and stands out more on Flashback, but I’m not complaining about it. With a second LP, Haunt notch themselves a second critical hit and a big win that they deserve to feel on top of the world for (as it crumbles) this year.

8/10

Eternal Champion -Ravening Iron

Oh the nostalgia trip doesn’t end there. Haunt dropping two stellar trips down memory lane was not the only push in this “new wave of traditional heavy metal”. Enter Eternal Champion, whose sophomore full-length this year goes all in on the fantastical comic book grandiosity in spirit and lyricism, while letting very naturally flowing riffs and committed clean vocal performances do the talking musically with the ballsy move being the minimal modern supplementation. There is a taste of some Sabaton-esque power metal in there, but it’s not nearly distracting enough to take away from the tightness of the songwriting and the consistency of the old-school vibe the Texan band gives off. While I might personally gravitate more toward the Spirit Adrift/Khemmis-informed classic heavy metal of Haunt, I sure don’t deny the truly raw steely power of the clean-cut trad-metal on display here.

8/10

Paradise Lost-Obsidian

This is the sixteenth studio album from the British death-doom pioneers, and sixteen albums into their gothic metal career Paradise Lost are beginning to sound a bit fatigued. Now when it comes to death-doom, a lethargic, melancholic sound is kind of a feature rather than a bug, which means discerning whether Obsidian’s sluggish gothic death-doom sound embodies an artistic melancholy that the artists were intentionally amplifying or if it rather more embodies an artistic fatigue on the part of the band. While the album has some moments that do shine pretty bright (the gorgeous “Fall from Grace” in particular), Obsidian does find the band frequently dirging in circular ruts that do mar the experience of the album as whole by disrupting the formation of any kind of cohesive feel or atmosphere beyond the basic downtrodden head-hang of the genre.

6/10

Sons of Apollo-MMXX

The second album from the A-list prog metal supergroup finds the collective focusing primarily on the hard rock and groove aspects of the music: heavy metal first, progressive metal second. Still, the winding prog waltzing of Dream Theater from Mike Portnoy’s and Derek Sherinian’s times in the band can’t help but leak into MMXX, but they never lead the music too far for Billy Sheehan’s rumbly bass lines and Jeff Scott Soto’s full-bodied soaring vocals to reel everybody back in. Balancing the technical exhibitionism of prog metal and the heavy instrumentals at the core rather well, Sons of Apollo certainly have the potential for more longevity than the usual supergroup.

7/10

Kaoteon-Kaoteon

Sporting a strong enough performance energy but little in the way of stylistic or compositional creativity, the Lebanese band’s eponymous third album is a pretty forgettable blackened death metal affair.

5/10

Glorious Depravity-Ageless Violence

This is the debut album from Glorious Depravity, a Brooklyn supergroup formed from the death metal underground seemingly to help satiate a gargantuan appetite for death metal of these guys. I’m being a little facetious; the album only constitutes a half hour of crisp, nasty death metal. But that’s plenty of time for Glorious Depravity to rail against incel sexism, wage slavery, and drone warfare in familiar deathly fashion. Incredibly straightforward in its instrumentation, Ageless Violence isn’t going to be turning any heads, but it’s a pretty tight half hour of no-nonsense death metal for anyone in the mood for it with only so much time on their hands.

6/10

Countless Skies-Glow

Countless Skies may have gravitated to many of the same ingredients that their contemporaries have in the quest to maximize the impact of their melodic death metal and take it to a more epic height in the stratosphere. Not just for the uncannily similar operatic vocals, Glow takes on an adventurous prog ethos that feels strange to not be coming from Devin Townsend. I’m supposed to believe Devin Townsend isn’t bankrolling this with his big Canadian bucks? It’s not possible. It’s definitely a conspiracy by big coffee to establish a colony in the UK under Ziltoid’s control. My biggest complaint of the band’s sophomore effort here would probably be the jumbled structure of a good few songs on here that lead to parts of the album flowing less logically than they should. And I get that with the wide pallet of Iron Maiden-esque melodic guitar lines, grand choirs and symphonic elements a la Dimmu Borgir, and a lot of progressive stylings to balance, there are bound to be a few compositionally sloppy moments from a band only two albums into their craft, but not adjusting for the band’s rookie status, Glow is an incredibly accomplished and enticing album with so much gorgeous and cathartic instrumentation (and singing) to enjoy and appreciate, even if it’s arranged oddly sometimes.

8/10

Hallas-Conundrum

The sophomore LP from the Swedish quintet falls more in line with the prog rock of the 70’s that bands like Kansas, Rush, and Yes, but the sheer energy it has should surely be enough to win over metal heads the same way the band’s prog rock grandfathers did. Boasting gorgeous swelling synths and ambitious song structures with shimmering guitar passages acoustic and electric, complete with big prog solos to match, Conundrum is in many ways the answer to the creative staleness of Yes, as it not only builds this fantastical world of naturalistic prog rock sound, but it does something worthwhile with it.

7/10

Within the Ruins -Black Heart

Injecting quite a fair dose of creative instrumentation into their sixth LP, Within the Ruins come through with a deliciously refreshing technical deathcore album. With actually moving guitar melodies and chest-beating grooves, Black Heart is quite possibly the best technical death metal album I’ve heard this year. The instrumental track, “Eighty Sixed”, perhaps best captures the band’s musical imaginativeness with its many twists and turns through such novel sounds for the genre, but there is so much here to groove to, headbang to, and air-sweep-pick to.

8/10

Convulse-Deathstar

Though definitely one of the more stylistically daring and dynamic progressive metal albums of the year, Convulse’s incomplete melding of death metal with the various other out-there elements and occasional riff-borrowing (Sabbath’s “Children of the Grave” on the opening track and Sepultura’s “Roots Bloody Roots” uncannily on the title track) on Deathstar holds it back from being a more sure-fire experimental success.

6/10

Hexecutor-Beyond Any Human Conception of Knowledge…

If Quarthon were to pull a Jesus on us and come back from the dead, his musical ventures would probably sound something like this second Hexecutor album here. The French band offer a well-modernized and remastered take on the thrashy first wave of black metal that Bathory kicked off in the 80’s, blending with some of the intricate instrumentation that it led to less than a decade later in the 90’s death metal scene, though the mood of the album avoids the brutal darkness and harshness of the early death metal it draws influence from, staying pretty upbeat and occult in a way that first brought to my mind the work of Tribulation. Indeed, the instrumental work on here is dazzling and elaborate to a point where my earlier hypothetical situation about Quarthon creating this in a world where he was still alive kind of falls apart. Beyond Any Human Conception of Knowledge… is as meticulously written and compositionally impressive as its title suggests. I think a little more dynamic in the album’s mood would have been beneficial, but there’s not a whole lot to complain about for an album of its type, and even though I don’t gravitate toward this type of black metal as heavily as latter forms of the genre, I still found myself thoroughly enjoying this one.

7/10

Sea-Impermanence

After a promisingly soulful self-titled debut EP back in 2015, the Bostonian band made their full-length debut way back in January of this year, Impermanence being a forlorn, but empathetically human take on the doomgaze sound the band birthed from. It may not have hit the same melodic gold that the EP did, but what Sea offer on Impermanence is more than just gloom. There’s a much-needed sense of hope and solidarity too, and I do hope the band keep it up.

7/10

Wake-Devouring Ruin

The fifth album from the steadily improving Wake finds them getting a little more compositionally confident and bold enough to branch into some more atmospheric territory as the Alberta band continue hone their blackened death metal chops. There’s a little taste of the kinds of atmospheric elements that made Numenorean’s album last year such an open-hearted affair, though Devouring Ruin remains rooted in its more traditionally deathly motives. Make no mistake though, there is a good serving of interesting guitar work on this album, especially for an album of its type, and it all feeds pretty well into the uniquely elegant blackened death monstrosity of the band’s sound.

7/10

Psychotic Waltz-The God-Shaped Void

Well damn, show this album at a seminar for old-school bands trying to make a comeback, and at a prog metal conference too because Psychotic Waltz have made the prospect of a progressive heavy metal comeback look easy with The God-Shaped Void! The album doesn’t have to go crazy with technical wankery or even excessively long and meandering songs to hit its prog quota; rather, the album lets the prog come naturally into the classically inspired 90’s heavy metal the band play as they let the grandiosity come naturally, without artificial flavors or shortcuts. And the result is indeed a well-balanced and immersively addictive prog metal record that lets its very organically glorious composition speak for itself, one of the year’s very best in fact.

8/10

Neptunian Maximalism-Éons

I was so on the fence with this one, not about if I liked it or not (I quite love it), but with regards to how I covered it on here, as a “metal album” or an “outside album”, because it’s certainly got enough there to justify invoking metal in a review of its aircraft-carrier-sized slab of material, but so much else and lots of everything. Ultimately, with how much it’s been making its way through metal circles and getting appreciation long the likes of Lingua Ignota and Oranssi Pazuzu, I figured it’s enough to justify me giving it a “metal review”. If I have time, I might give this thing a more long-form review later because trying to capsule review a more-than-two-hour-long mammoth that I really really like feels unjust. That being said, I should probably get on with the review. To give Éons a predominant genre feels a little weird, but I don’t think anyone would have any objections to classifying it first and foremost as a jazz album, being that jazz is the solvent that the majority of the other musical elements are swimming around in on this record. Not your grandpa’s jazz: wild, disorienting, unsettling big band jazz that contributes greatly to the otherworldly atmosphere throughout the 2-hour odyssey, supporting by plenty of manic percussion that keeps you on you toes, but not so much that the hyponotic underlying rhythms and entrancing atmospheres don’t lure you like a siren into the colorful void it all creates. And a substantial part of that void is the big wall of sound the metallic drones help create, similar to the amplifier drone of Sunn O))), but it’s not always just accomplished with ultra-sustained distorted guitars. Sometimes the swell of sax and tuba create the mounting wave of sound that towers over you and consumes you effortlessly. Either way, you’ll completely lose track of space and time as this album sucks you into another weird dimension that never really lets up on the gas, and that’s totally fine.

8/10

Völur-Death Cult

Regardless of the somewhat slow start it gets off to with the shyer doom of the first track, Death Cult is one of the year’s most creative post-metal albums, whipping up a frenzy of unnervingly jazzy string arrangements and well-paired blast beats to make for a very dark, nightmare-world folky experience. It indeed feels like being lost in the woods and stumbling upon a deranged dystopian cult whose put-together exterior veils its ritualistic sacrificial practices or something. All you know is you have to run, but you’re already lost. Yeah, really interesting blend of styles on this album.

8/10

Uada-Djinn

I realized with this album that for my writing about it, I’m going to be doing something that I have unusually not done much of this year, and that is going against the grain, as the rain on the parade. Djinn is the third album from Portland’s Uada, who have been gradually solidifying what I can acknowledge to be a rather uniquely melodic sound within black metal that pulls from funeral doom as well as the kinds of shoegazy ambient black metal melancholy that Deafheaven and their contemporaries pedal, but I what I’m having a hard time with on Djinn is the melodic approach. The combination of the less overtly sinister stylings of black metal with the often more dragging aspect of doom, with a big focus on the melodic product of the synthesis of the two, to me makes for a very counterproductive team-up. And the band can get away from this when they do amp the speed and energy of the music up, but when they’re going for the slow-burn doom metal approach on most of the record, it just highlights these really meandering and emotionless guitar melodies that are strewn all across the record that just do nothing for me. I really do not get what fans heaping praise onto this album hear in these guitar lines that evokes any kind of strong feelings whatsoever. They’re not particularly somber, or heartfelt, or psychedelic, or ethereal, or anything that adds to an atmosphere or vibe that the album is building around; they’re just tremolo-picked (or worse, just metronomic quarter notes the whole way through) chord progressions that seem selected for no reason in particular. I don’t particularly like being the sourpuss in the room, but I’ve listened to this album over and over again to see if something clicks for me and it’s only redundantly highlighted the moments and aspects of the album I do find somewhat enjoyable, but nothing about the vast majority of mindless, demo-level Pallbearer doomgazing with some pretty much negligible black metal flair is at all appealing to me. Like I said, a lot of it comes down to how spotlighted the guitars are in the sluggish bulk of the album and how seemingly little was put into the melodies they have to carry. Maybe the next one will be more convincing, but the presentation of the band’s style that Djinn gives is really not selling it well, and I think they have to do a lot of work on that melodic approach that’s so central to their sound.

4/10

Cirith Ungol-Forever Black

Awakening in 2015 after almost a quarter century of slumber, the Californian heavy metal occultists have really come down the stairs to quite the Hell’s Kitchen to cook up their breakfast album in, and if I had made a bet on how well I though my Forever Black would turn out from the groggy, bed-headed Cirith Ungol, I would have lost some money because the band’s shrieking, soaring comeback album is fiercely energetic, tightly composed, and way better than I would have expected it to be, and I’m glad I got to hear it before year’s end.

7/10

Aseitas-False Peace

After the independent release of their debut album in 2018, Portland, Oregon quintet Aseitas find themselves up to bat for Translation Loss Records in 2020 with their massive sophomore effort, False Peace, an album of death metal and hardcore muscularity steeped in cerebrally tormented experimentation. Indeed, hardly anything on False Peace goes normally or by the books, and that’s the intent, which sometimes leads the album into territory where it gets a little bit lost in the weeds, but never too long to find itself back on something intriguing that you’re glad you came along on the ride for: weird style experiments that you don’t usually associate with metalcore and death metal, weird rhythms and dynamic shifts. It’s a wild ride to say the least, and at 72 minutes it’s definitely a long ride too, but the commitment definitely pays off and proves more than worthwhile as it is an album to digest with concentration.

8/10

Autonoesis-Autonoesis

This debut album from the Toronto-based act has been getting a lot of hype since its release back in August for the tightness and engaging writing of its deliciously lick-filled melodic thrash/death metal sound, and for good reason. The solos are majestic and the riffs indeed abundant on the self-titled debut; I’ll add that the band seem to take a good bit of progressive ambition and inspiration (as well as compositional influence) from the likes of Death and Orchid-era Opeth, to make for a well-above average debut for an act in this field.

8/10

Pyrrhon-Abscess Time

Last on my long list of albums I tackled for the end of the year is the fourth album from the Brooklyn-based four-piece, Pyrrhon. The band have been relentlessly pushing death metal into new territories since 2008, but Abscess Time is my introduction to their work, and what an introduction it is. The band’s aim is to expand the definition of what metal can be, and they make that no secret. Right out of the gate, the title track careens seemingly drunkenly, but enraged and dangerous, through punchy bursts of bassy strides in off-kilter rhythms that feel reminiscent of Swan’s early work in the no-wave scene. The track feels as much like noise rock as it does avant-garde death metal, and not far off from a song like “Stay Strong” from Swans’ Filth record. The music across the album is familiarly heavy and rooted in the core elements of death, but the disfigurement the band puts it through really makes the adequate term “experimental death metal” quite the understatement. The album takes on a hectic and tormented quality rather similar to what Imperial Triumphant do in their most high-energy moments, and it draws a lot of its vertigo-inducing immersion from completely unconventionally harrowingly jazzy dissonant guitar work, as well as wild rhythms and percussive accents out of nowhere that embody the dystopian plethora of anxieties it highlights lyrically. Indeed, the lyrics on Abscess Time, and the thematically relevant film audio samples, peel off the inadequate bandages covering the social rot, alienation from labor, and dehumanization in the infected wound of late-stage capitalism. The album feels like the claustrophobic nightmare world of a Darren Aronofsky film, and its utterly sensorily discombobulated reaction to the hell of capitalist wage slavery and the demons in charge of it is fucking terrifying to witness because it just amplifies the reality of everyday anxieties that one’s catastrophizing under the implicit threats of violence under capitalism keeps them trapped within. The deep, stressful panic that the album portrays is so real; it’s the fear we all operate under that ceasing to participate in alienated labor will incur the consequential violence of the loss or seizure of basic human needs, and that’s what’s so horrifying about this album’s experience. Well done Pyrrhon! Truly the embodiment of the COVID-19-ridden hell world of 2020 where the profit-generating machine refuses to cease even momentrily and burns what it treats as disposable human capital in the furnace of a pandemic to keep the engine turning.

9/10