Eternal breach ( self portrait )

Split

lo-fi magic creepy forest )

Burning

Instagramfb site

Dark Buddha Rising-Mathreyata

Dark Buddha Rising, who paired up with Oranssi Pazuzu last year for the mind-warping Syntheosis under the name Waste of Space Orchestra, return to their own solo ventures, just as their fellow psychedelic black metal collaborators did earlier this year, in injecting a little bit of magic mushroom hallucinosis into black metal through spacy, freakish synth work.

While not quite as psychedelically wild as Oranssi Pazuzu’s transforming of more traditional black metal Mestarin Kynsi,Mathreyata follows a similar pattern of progression through heavy, dizzying atmospheres that build to fulfilling climaxes with a more ambient, droning, and meditative form of blackened post-metal that the band of course give a little dose of LSD to.

And the results are intriguing at the very least. I would highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys atmospheric black metal at its most meditative or Sunn O))) for the enveloping atmospheres their music can create.

8/10

October 2020

Six Feet Under-Nightmares of the Decomposed

I wrote a full-length review of this disaster of an album earlier in the month, and yeah, wow. Between the phoned-in performances from the instrumentalists who have proven themselves far above this joke of a band and the half-assed production this would have been a pretty crappy album even without Chris Barnes’ milk-aged vocals. But he’s here, and he’s managed to actually get worse too, gasping his way through the whole album and littering it with these ludicrous “high” squeals that would make Smeagol sound like a more competent death metal vocalist. It’s the worst thing I’ve heard all year, and what’s worse, I don’t think Six Feet Under is stopping.

1/10

With that out of the way, let’s cleanse the pallet right away with some really good shit.

Greg Puciato-Child Soldier: Creator of God

Ever reliable in his artistically integrity, explosive former Dillinger Escape Plan frontman, Greg Puciato, has been pretty sonically and artistically adventurous since the honorable dissolution of the iconic mathcore outfit, his most notable music project being the ethereal, synth-heavy The Black Queen. This year, however, Puciato has gone fully solo for a full-length project, and something told me to get ready for a wild ride, and boy was I right on that hunch. Borne out of an exponentiated process of songwriting that produced songs Puciato deemed unfitting for any of his current projects, what was planned as a small release to ship these songs out of the writing room eventually spiraled into a full-blown debut solo album clocking in at over an hour. A lot of solo projects play like clearly indulgent amateur hour sessions from an artist whose ego has been boosted pretty well from significant success from their main project, leading them to overconfidently try their hand at music they have no business trying it at. And it’s often approached under the understanding that it is a victory lap, more or less, and a satisfaction of creative impulses for the sake of it. Sometimes the resultant material is clearly inspired and showcases a side of an artist that certainly deserves some spotlight. Other times it feels like being trapped in an awkward situation with an acquaintance where they just show you all their newest pedals and production software and you’re just stuck there watching them fiddle around while you nod along and offer the occasional “wow, that’s pretty crazy” every now and then while they don’t pick up on the obvious cues that you are just waiting for them to finish playing with their toys. While Puciato was open about this album being borne from the very creatively borderless mindset that so often damns solo projects, Child Soldier: Creator of God is an actual realization of the type of grand, genre-spanning album that so many solo artists envision themselves making and set out to create, and it’s hardly a whimsical, amateurish crack at the styles within either. Puciato’s foray into sludge metal, industrial rock, harsh noise, darkwave, synthwave, and shoegaze, (1) makes for a hell of a dynamic and exciting track list, and (2) shows a much deeper than average respect for and relationship with the styles being played here. This isn’t some frontman thinking his charisma can carry him through a whole rap solo album; this is a well-rounded artist (also a hell of a frontman, no denying that) giving the most comprehensive look yet into his creative mind. The album leaps around in patches of different styles, strung together mostly by ambient connective tissue of various types, all with a great attention to detail paid to both texture and progression. We get early patches of smooth ambiance, but also aggressive industrial and sludge metal, eventually moving to more soothing and meditative synthy stuff around the middle, finishing with some serene, Have a Nice Life-esque shoegaze. But really there’s no way to sum up this album stylistically without breaking down every single song on here, and that would just ruin the fun and the experience. You really just have to experience it for yourself.

9/10

DevilDriver-Dealing with Demons I

Embarking on a conceptual double-album, Dez Fafara and DevilDriver’s first installment in the pair is a scoop of the, indeed, slightly above average, but unfortunately still plain and predictable modern groove metal they always offer up. I’ll give the band credit for keeping the pace up and clearly putting substantial energy into the performances on this album, while also trying to squeeze in a few shake-ups to their sound, like the clear Gojira-inspired riffage on the opening track. The album loses steam, unfortunately, as its punches lose their impact as it goes on.

6/10

Anaal Nathrakh-Endarkenment

While certainly cultivating a unique sound, Anaal Nathrakh’s unholy fusion of nasty modern blackened grindcore with sweeter metalcore and melodic death metal elements has its mixed results. And while that might at first sound like a relatively critical assessment of the Brits’ eleventh album, I’d say that there is actually a lot to enjoy and take in for at least the interesting mix of styles, most of which are hits rather than misses as well.

7/10

Enslaved-Utgard

Having been a fan of a good amount of their recent output, especially 2015’s In Times, I came out of Utgard moderately disappointed with how infrequently Enslaved galvanized their potent brand of Viking folky, progressive black metal effectively; the few moments the band do channel their strengths cohesively and purposefully left me wanting more rather than savoring those moments.

6/10

In Cauda Venenum-G.O.H.E.

It’s hard to, and indeed seems kind of in just to, sum up a heaping prog metal serving like G.O.H.E., comprised of two 22-minute halves, in a capsule review, but that is kind of the format my current busy circumstances have forced me into. French outfit In Cauda Venenum made a self-titled debut in similar two-long-track fashion back in 2015, and the band’s gothic and somewhat theatrical brand of atmospheric post-black-metal is continued on their sophomore effort here, drawing the obvious comparisons to Opeth and Katatonia, as well as Der Weg Einer Freiheit, Numenorean, and Sólstafir, and apart from the more frequent sample usage and extra drawn-out songs, there really isn’t that much to differentiate In Cauda Venenum stylistically. The band’s second album, unfortunately, resembles so many others in the field with big aspirations and the same inadequate means of getting there.

5/10

Apparition-Granular Transformation

A much more bite-sized early two-track offering, Apparition’s debut EP offers a more promising glimpse into a heady, atmospheric, yet still visceral manipulation of modern death metal that I would be curious to hear in a more long-form format. In a genre as extreme as death metal in recent years has been, finding artists effective at working with negative space can be difficult, but the two songs on Granular Transformation showcase a formidable dexterity from Apparition that I think can take them places.

6/10

Molasses-Through the Hollow

While indeed marred by some rough performances on songs with sometimes more desert to cross than water to make it there, there’s an undeniable occult hypnotism about the Dio-era-esque doom metal hollow that Molasses ritualize their way through.

7/10

Death Angel-Under Pressure

While certainly an odd choice on the surface, Death Angel’s acoustic EP and cover of the famous Queen song actually comes out pretty alright. The acoustic version of Act III’s “A Room with a View” comes off with the energy of something like Rush whenever they went acoustic, and the original acoustic cut, “Faded Remains” isn’t too bad either. The acoustic format did not, however, mask the drabness of “Revelation Song” from last year’s overall disappointment, Humanicide.

6/10

Necrophobic-Dawn of the Damned

The Swedes’ melodic brand of blackened death metal is nothing if not thorough on the quintet’s ninth full-length, Dawn of the Damned, covering all the ground that their fans expect their style to cover and doing so with more compositional and performative stamina than their average contemporary. While the band’s broader compositional approach is akin to the beating of a dead horse, I can’t deny it produces some tasty motifs in the process.

7/10

Bloodbather-Silence

After coming onto the blossoming metallic hardcore scene in 2018 with a standard, but potent enough 14-minute EP, Pressure, Bloodbather are back with another 14 minutes of similar, yet less promising material, doing little to set themselves apart from or on the same level of the likes of Jesus Piece, Vein, Knocked Loose, or Harm’s Way.

5/10

Infera Bruo-Rites of the Nameless

The Bostonians’ fourth full-length is, at the very least, a rather well-executed forty minutes of modern black metal a la Craft or Watain, but beneath the seams the band’s progressive tendencies twist what would otherwise be a fresh, but standard, slab of black metal into a more head-turning offering of the usual shrieks and blast beats.

7/10

Touché Amoré-Lament

While somewhat shaky in their compositional exploration in their fifth LP, the firmness of their emotive post-hardcore foundation allows for Touché Amoré to build upwards relatively steadily without losing that raw vulnerability that has made them so captivating to begin with.

7/10

Gargoyl-Gargoyl

This is the self-titled debut from Bostonian four-piece Gargoyl; a novel blend of dirty nineties grunge and gothic prog metal, Gargoyl come through with one of the more impressive genre fusions of the year, meeting the lofty sufficiency for dexterity with excessive vocal harmonies in a manner so uncanny that would make habe to Layne Stayley proud. While there is the expected room for improvement on the compositional end that many debut projects come with, Gargoyl have laid the groundwork for themselves fantastically and started off on a good foot.

7/10

Crippled Black Phoenix-Ellengæst

Through creative gothic flair and full-bodied guest vocal contributions that bolster the somber atmosphere beyond the typical post-metal album, the UK band’s most recent offering of “endtime ballads”, despite its few low points that undo its otherwise immersive atmosphere, serves as one of the more engaging releases under the broader post-metal umbrella of the past year.

7/10

Wayfarer-A Romance with Violence

The Denver-based quartet follow up 2018’s strong emotive case for the potential for evoking cathartic power of the atmospheric black metal which has so saturated the American scene to the point of numbness, their Americana-tinged third LP, World’s Blood, unfortunately, with a fourth LP whose compositional homogeneity and mere few intermittent bursts of enthralling atmospheric instrumentation more represent, rather than advocate the merit of, the saturation of the American atmospheric black metal scene.

6/10

Armored Saint-Punching the Sky

Though I think the structural homogeneity and John Bush’s similarly limited vocal delivery holds it back, with crunchy bangers like “Do Wrong to None” and “My Jurisdiction” alongside more tempered tracks the clearly grunge-influenced “Lone Wolf”, Bush and company provide a relatively stylistically diverse traditional heavy metal album for an age that could use more contemporary representation of classic styles (beyond the entire stoner metal genre LARPing as Black Sabbath too).

7/10

Spirit Adrift-Enlightened in Eternity

But it’s not just the old guard representing their era of classic heavy metal robustly; a year and a half after their energetically melodic third album, Divided by Darkness, which took a triumphant melodic approach to classic heavy metal and doom metal similar to that of Khemmis on their excellent third album, Spirit Adrift ease up a bit on the hyper-soulful approach to guitar melody that had led me (and others I’m sure) to draw the comparison to Khemmis, and instead dive deeper into the headspace of the genre’s earliest progenitors to achieve that unabashedly glorious rallying cry that is evoked by the very front cover of Enlightened in Eternity. While I am personally pretty partial to the very vulnerable and heartfelt melodic approach that characterized Divided by Darkness, the effectiveness with which Spirit Adrift are able to wield the sometimes Maiden-esque, sometimes Testament-esque sounds of the 80’s on this album is undeniably impressive.

8/10

Fever 333-Wrong Generation

Providing the correction to this generation’s answer to Rage Against the Machine (after Prophets of Rage’s insufficient attempted revival) Fever 333 follow up last year’s debut of heavy, fired-up and modern take on rapcore with another 14 minutes of righteous anti-racist hardcore anger that’s attuned to the issues to a level that I wish more artists would at least express in their art. While the EP is 18 minutes long, the last two songs, “The Last Time” and “Supremacy”, don’t match the sonic energy of the first six tracks. The somber piano-led snippet-length ballad, “The Last Time”, should have been the conclusion of the album, but the closing track, “Supremacy”, while as conscious as the tracks before it, is basically a late-stage formulaic Linkin Park track that flatters neither of the two bands. Despite botching the landing though, Wrong Generation is a ripping batch of songs that well represent the current unrest and provide a positive hypothetical idea of what it might be like if Rage Against the Machine were in their prime and active today.

7/10

Mörk Gryning-Hinsides Vrede

The Swedes return from their 15-year disillusioned absence from the studio with a concise and clearly renewed enthusiasm for the energetic black metal that they put forth on Hinsides Vrede. Dynamically bolstered by folk-metal compositional tendencies and more than a dash of that famed Gothenburg melodicism (I know they’re from Stockholm and in fact their melodic approach often does heaven to that of their close neighbors from Uppsala, Watain), Mörk Gryning’s seamless return to music finds them jumping into the modern black metal scene’s advanced compositional rubric with relative ease.

7/10

Zeal & Ardor-Wake of a Nation

Having covered their output since their debut and being a big fan of Manuel Gagneux’ project, it pains me to say, especially given the noble pretext and occasional momentary flashes of sobering messaging, that this six-song mini release really doesn’t capture the unique sonic pallet that has made Zeal & Ardor such an interesting act to listen to for the past few years in the most flattering light. The title track is possibly the least of the offenders here, but all the songs here function by taking a little snippet of sound that samples Zeal & Ardor’s broader stylistic range, and drawing it out across these short, but all too minimally composed tracks in such a way that they lose their momentum very quickly. Like I said, I wholeheartedly appreciate, sympathize with, and support what Manuel Gagneux is doing to lend his band’s platform to the addressing of the dire issue of today’s racism through musical means with this project, and when its social motivation is at the forefront, it’s at its most potent, but musically, unfortunately, it’s just desperately underwritten in a way that doesn’t fairly represent how accomplished Zeal & Ardor really are with their sound.

5/10

Sevendust-Blood & Stone

The flashes of crushing grooves reminiscent of their earlier work on Blood & Stone that highlight how well Sevendust can harness nu/alternative metal to execute pummeling attacks with the right crunchy guitar tone, unfortunately, don’t come frequently enough on their twelfth LP to mirage the exhaustion that has come of the band’s writing process after such frequent, unrelenting output and the all too apparent desperate need for a recalibrating, refreshing break, which they certainly deserve for their tenacity.

5/10

Undeath-Lesions of a Different Kind

In one of those cases where the ridiculously gratuitous album cover actually represents the album’s sound quite well, Rochester, New York five-piece, Undeath mince neither words nor sounds on their debut LP in their 100% upfront, no-nonsense, and wonderfully nasty delivery of death metal. Eschewing even the slightest sense of snobbery or pretense for aimless ambition, the band simply compile the genre’s tried and true elements of bellowing growls, filthy riffs, mean-ass down-tuned chugging, and blood-pumping double-bass with blast beats into an addictive slab of raw, uncured death metal that serves as a testament to the merit of not overthinking shit.

8/10

Griffon-Ὸ Θεός Ὸ Βασιλεύς

On their sophomore LP, Parisian quintet Griffon channel the world innovative ethos that has become rather prominent in their scene into a somewhat short, but definitely sweet offering of modestly ambitious black metal that captures much more effectively than most albums of similar style and lesser imagination, the divine grandeur that the genre so often tries and fails to embody.

8/10

Bring Me the Horizon-Post-Human: Survival Horror

After taking the hard left into current pop music trends very transparently on their controversial, which was at least partially intentional on their part, and ultimately really patchy, but not wholly awful, 2019 album, amo, Oli Sykes and co. walk it back substantially for this smaller release here, back to That’s the Spirit, even Sempiternal, a prospect that might get a lot of the band’s more long-time, metalcore-centric fans excited, but I would suggest those fans temper their expectations of Post-Human: Survival Horror. The band reunite with the anthemic metalcore/deathcore that put them on the map for a good chunk of this album, and the intro track, “Dear Diary,”, might even give some false hope of the prodigal sons returning home. But songs like the cookie-cutter single, “Teardrops”, provide strong evidence that, while the band have re-embraced their old aesthetic, they have not kicked the pop vocal or compositional habits. And the project really does run out of energy in its final third because of this compositional homogeneity. I do want to highlight the song, “Kingslayer”, which features a very in-form Babymetal (I loved their album last year), because their fun, not-so-serious approach to the crossing of J-pop and metal music in their feature on this track among the other songs around it provides a contrast to the more formulaic, disinterested radio pop swagger that Bring Me the Horizon have been trying to jam into their sound that could perhaps inform Bring Me the Horizon’s artistic approach to integrating pop music if they really are so hellbent on doing so. Ultimately though, as much as they want to move into newer territory, this trajectory-revising release shows just how much more solid Bring Me the Horizon are in their metalcore territory than they were on amo. It had its predictable hiccups, but this thing wasn’t too bad.

7/10

Pallbearer-Forgotten Days

With the slow, sludgy, down-tuned riffing of the menacing opening title track and the similar chug of “Vengeance & Ruination” being the sole exceptions, the remainder of Pallbearer’s fouth full-length largely sees them operating in the same niche they have in their three previous albums. And while this could invoke accusations of playing it safe, the brimming heartfelt sorrow and resistance to succumbing to despair across Forgotten Days is enough to wave that away, as Pallbearer showcase just how emotive doom metal can be.

8/10

Bleeding Out-Lifelong Death Fantasy

The very new act and fresh Profound Lore signing, Bleeding Out, certainly display more dynamic capability than your average local grindcore scene’s biggest names here on their 18-minute debut for the label, but as of now it is still just a glimpse of potential for more effective future implementation. It’s a good start, though, and I’ll be looking forward to a more long-form project from these guys.

6/10

Evildead-United States of Anarchy

Every year we get the resurrection of some long-inactive old-school band who seem to have found that missing spark at last; we’ve seen the return of smaller bands to the studio like Angel Witch or Sorcerer and long-awaited revivals of iconic acts like Possessed. This year, Los Angeles’ Evildead has seen fit to make their commentary on the massive ongoing sociopolitical upheaval. Despite my love for the 80’s thrash scene they were born out of, the combination of the utterly lame band name, logo, and covers for either their ‘89 or ‘91 albums never really made me want to check them out, but seeing the horridly cheesy and incoherent cover of United States of Anarchy (I mean how much more on-the-nose can you get), my morbid curiosity got the best of me. Maybe I’d be wrong to have judged them by their cover, plenty of my favorite 80’s albums have particularly goofy cover art. So what do we get from Evildead in 2020 with this fucking album? Well, it’s not as poorly performed as the past few Anvil albums I’ve had to review have been, but Jesus the lyricism is similarly cheesy 5th-grade-level stuff and smacks of silly political incoherence that essentially boils down to “enlightened centrism” with mix of that good ol’ Illuminati-conspiracy-theory belief that no political thrash album is apparently complete without. I mean there’s just basic acknowledgment of the prominent problems of the day and the fact that both major political parties are bad and that corruption is rampant all throughout DC, but Evildead not only barely scratch the surface, they apply the same level cynicism to the “both sides” they criticize with no substantiation to their criticism despite that mindset being a big reason for our being where we are right now, mixed in with the occasional conspiracy-paranoia about the shadowy underworld running everything, so no real solutions or even proper addressing of these problems. Like, the same level of criticism is levied at right-wingers and communists, like communists are at all why this country has gone to shit. And the generic Anthrax/Megadeth type of thrash instrumentation, while rumbly and mixed well to highlight its bass heaviness, doesn’t exactly make it easy to get past the commentary deficiencies on here.

4/10

Emma Ruth Rundle&Thou-May Our Chambers Be Full

Rounding off their year (at least I think), with a long-teased collaboration with Emma Ruth Rundle, Thou finally present their massive sludge-doom sound in a much more flattering light than the previous cover albums this year did. Thou’s original material continues to highlight just why their relatively stiff sound is much more cut out for that, original material, than for trying to bend beyond its flexibility to tribute grunge songs. And while Thou being back in their more effective department, Emma Ruth Rundle’s contributions, beyond just her gorgeous and ethereally haunting vocals, to the album’s atmosphere, dynamic, and structuring really take the collaboration to the next level. Not to say that Thou are completely overshadowed and relegated to the background on this record or that they don’t contribute to a fair share of the legwork here; the workload is shared pretty equally, and both collaborators have their moments of prominence, but Emma Ruth Rundle’s ever-present gothic/folky influence really directs the music in a way that plays to Thou’s strengths in a way I’m not sure they would have been able to on their own. It’s great work from both of them, and I’d be eager to hear Thou find more collaborations like this in the future that push them into doing more interesting things with their crushing doom sound, as opposed to the rather tepid collaborations with The Body.

8/10

Auðn-Vökudraumsins Fangi

Sadly, three albums in, Auðn have only barely exceeded the bare minimum for naturalistic atmospheric black metal, with no signs of significant improvement to be found. The Icelandic band earn points for their earnest delivery, but they never seem to fully make it out of the rut that the genre’s many contemporary acts have dug.

5/10

Botanist-Photosynthesis

The black metal traditionalists might have had to accept that the floodgates to bright ambience and serene shoegaze in the genre have been opened and that there’s no going back now, but even as an avid Deafheaven fan, I’m sometimes momentarily surprised at just how heavenly some black metal has gotten lately, and this new album from Botanist is one of those albums. And while it sometimes slips into some of the current wave’s typical ruts, the sheer blindingly illuminating aura of this album when it reaches those high points (and it does so frequently) is enough to pull it out from those gutters and high into the cosmos. Yeah, another splendid offering of nature worship from Botanist.

8/10

Mr. Bungle-The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny Demo

Making their return after over a decade, Mike Patton recruits both Dave Lombardo and Scott Ian for the long-awaited fourth Mr. Bungle album, which is titled in homage to the first Mr. Bungle demo which it is comprised largely of much clearer re-recordings of. Ever impressive, Mike Patton balances aggression and eccentricity like a tightrope walker on this project too, while his bandmates do the same with thrash metal’s natural adrenaline rush while pushing the genre into new compositional and stylistic territory without sacrificing that crucial whiplash. It’s a great time, and definitely one of the year’s best thrash albums.

8/10

Carcass-Despicable

While they’ve been much less prolific since their reboot than they were prior, Liverpool’s melodic death metal pioneers simply continue to demonstrate their excellence in this seemingly effortless four-track appetizer to next year’s Torn Arteries. Anyone familiar with the band’s brutal form of melodic death metal will certainly be pleased with the four quite sufficiently pulverizing cuts here; those who may only be familiar with some of the band’s many less muscular imitators might be surprised, and pleasantly so, with the Englanders’ ability to lay on the infectious guitar melody without sacrificing an ounce of force.

8/10

Greg Puciato-Child Soldier: Creator of God

Ever reliable in his artistically integrity, explosive former Dillinger Escape Plan frontman, Greg Puciato, has been pretty sonically and artistically adventurous since the honorable dissolution of the iconic mathcore outfit, his most notable music project being the ethereal, synth-heavy The Black Queen.

This year, however, Puciato has gone fully solo for a full-length project, and something told me to get ready for a wild ride, and boy was I right on that hunch. Borne out of an exponentiated process of songwriting that produced songs Puciato deemed unfitting for any of his current projects, what was planned as a small release to ship these songs out of the writing room eventually spiraled into a full-blown debut solo album clocking in at over an hour.

A lot of solo projects play like clearly indulgent amateur hour sessions from an artist whose ego has been boosted pretty well from significant success from their main project, leading them to overconfidently try their hand at music they have no business trying it at. And it’s often approached under the understanding that it is a victory lap, more or less, and a satisfaction of creative impulses for the sake of it. Sometimes the resultant material is clearly inspired and showcases a side of an artist that certainly deserves some spotlight. Other times it feels like being trapped in an awkward situation with an acquaintance where they just show you all their newest pedals and production software and you’re just stuck there watching them fiddle around while you nod along and offer the occasional “wow, that’s pretty crazy” every now and then while they don’t pick up on the obvious cues that you are just waiting for them to finish playing with their toys.

While Puciato was open about this album being borne from the very creatively borderless mindset that so often damns solo projects, Child Soldier: Creator of God is an actual realization of the type of grand, genre-spanning album that so many solo artists envision themselves making and set out to create, and it’s hardly a whimsical, amateurish crack at the styles within either. Puciato’s foray into sludge metal, industrial rock, harsh noise, darkwave, synthwave, and shoegaze, (1) makes for a hell of a dynamic and exciting track list, and (2) shows a much deeper than average respect for and relationship with the styles being played here.

This isn’t some frontman thinking his charisma can carry him through a whole rap solo album; this is a well-rounded artist (also a hell of a frontman, no denying that) giving the most comprehensive look yet into his creative mind. The album leaps around in patches of different styles, strung together mostly by ambient connective tissue of various types, all with a great attention to detail paid to both texture and progression.

We get early patches of smooth ambiance, but also aggressive industrial and sludge metal, eventually moving to more soothing and meditative synthy stuff around the middle, finishing with some serene, Have a Nice Life-esque shoegaze. But really there’s no way to sum up this album stylistically without breaking down every single song on here, and that would just ruin the fun and the experience. You really just have to experience it for yourself.

9/10

2020 ALBUM STATS!

I know it’s a good week into 2021 now, but I had too much fun on Excel to not post these STATS!

2020 was a wild year for everyone, and I had plenty of life changes going on amidst the pandemic, the economic collapse, the social unrest to make it an even crazier year. Despite being busier than ever, 2020 (potentially due to shelter in in place) ended up being my most prolific year ever, reviewing 301 METAL ALBUMS that came out just this past year.

And that’s not counting the 10 non-metal albums I also reviewed, the albums from 2019 that I had missed that I went back to shout out, or the other 55 non-metal albums I enjoyed and various metal albums I heard but didn’t get around to reviewing. It felt apt to put a few graphs together, which are below.

The resolution is high enough on my end, so I think they should be nice and discernible. But I graphed the genres I listened to and the ratings I gave.

I’ll make sure to explain the process well enough to make the numbers make sense.

First up are these genre tables which should be viewable. It’s pretty self-explanatory, but I did also account for albums that extended into multiple genres. In the “Subgenres & Blended Genres” graph are genres like blackened death metal, ambient black metal, deathgrind, etc. Each of those I factored in to parent genres proportionally (i.e., 1 blackened death metal = 0.5 death metal & 0.5 black metal). Its not perfect, given that those proportions aren’t the same for every blackened death metal album, but it worked well enough. Naturally this got pretty tricky with albums that combined several genres or just ran the gamut of genres like Greg Puciato’s solo album. So I went through ALL 301 ALBUMS THAT I REVIEWED, and added up their proportional genre components. It was messy and I did end up with a lot of decimals, so I smoothed it out a bit by doing some rounding that I don’t think affected the data all too significantly, which is why there are all whole numbers of albums per each genre.

The results really weren’t too surprising; death metal and black metal at the top, with a good focus on progressive metal, metalcore, doom, sludge, and thrash. If anything, it shows me where I can turn some more of my my focus: folk metal, power metal, industrial metal, etc.

In a world where I had time, I might see about doing separate charts to see where I rated albums of a certain genre, but I don’t have that time and I think this overall rating histogram is pretty good on its own.

The right skew was not surprising, with most of the albums I reviewed being positively so. 7 was the mode, with 8 being pretty close. Naturally, I wasn’t looking for shit music, but if I was, maybe this graph would shape up a little more normally. Even so, the right skew is probably also indicative of just how much I naturally gravitate to and enjoy metal music as a whole.

Well, cheers to 2020, good riddance to all of it except for the music, and here’s to 2021, which will come with some changes that I’ll make a different post about.

November 2020

System of a Down - Protect the Land / Genocidal Humanoids

The Armenian-American nu metal revolutionaries reconvene after 15 years of studio silence for a quick two-song punch to raise funds for their war-steeped homeland. The songs are a good warm-up-sounding appetizer of two very distinct sides of System of a Down that certainly do not on their own set up the precedent for any further new material. For now though, I’ll take whatever positives I can get out of this year, and a couple of new System of a Down songs are certainly that.

Celebrity Sex Scandal - The Fundamental

I don’t want to be too hard on this album because I genuinely don’t think it’s particularly ill-conceived or transparently lazy; it just kinda didn’t work out. Celebrity Sex Scandal are a pretty hefty eight-member ensemble from San Antonio, Texas who got their start partially through an online crowdfunding campaign. The band dazzled eager fans with their odd, cockeyed approach to the gratuitous genre layering of progressive metal and experimental rock, and the band’s third album unfortunately just goes to show that experimental doesn’t always equate with good, of course, because not every experiment is a success. In fact it’s kind of suggestive in the name that most of it isn’t. The thing that makes The Fundamental not such a hit as an experiment is that it’s really more messy than experimental. While it tosses together the disparate likes of funk rock, sludge metal, southern rock, and swing into a blender with a bunch of unusual instrumental components, at the core of it all and most prevalent in the mix of styles is this stale post-grunge alternative rock/metal that also dictates the direction the music goes in, which ultimately leads to the individual compositions being surprisingly predictable for an eccentric experimental album (and not in a flattering way). There are a few pretty rough performances throughout the album too. I get that this album is obviously pretty tongue-in-cheek and that some of its forced oddity is meant to serve the purpose of parody, but it doesn’t exactly salvage the mostly unappealing compositions and performances throughout, not that there aren’t a few relative bright spots. Overall though, I’m just not feeling the band’s superficially wacky genre-orgy style on this album. Still, I will be eager to hear whatever the band have in store for us next; hopefully this was just a hiccup in the grander scheme of things. And I hope they keep at it with their experimental ambition.

4/10

Blood from the Soul - DSM-5

If not outright masterful, nearly everything Jacob Bannon touches is at least vibrant as the sun itself. The prolific Converge frontman teamed up with Napalm Death bassist Shane Embery to revive the latter’s long-defunct moniker from the early 90’s, Blood from the Soul, which had but one industrial metal to its name before its resurrection through Bannon’s Deathwish Inc. Embery had originally paired with Lou Koller of Sick of It All for the first album’s industrial hardcore leanings, and with Bannon in the other chair in the cockpit two and a half decades later, Blood from the Soul takes on a much different life with DSM-5. It’s rather predictable and holistic blend of the types of aggression of both members’ main bands isn’t necessarily a bad thing on the principle of it being foreseeable, and the album does cross-breed pretty well the death-metal-leaning grindcore of modern Napalm Death with the fiery chaos of first-wave metalcore of Converge, two genres that marry quite well to the surprise of no one watching.

8/10

Surma - The Light Within

Making their debut for Metal Blade Records after making some pretty noticeable noise from the tiny Faroe Islands, Surma go big and theatric with their take on symphonic neoclassical metal on The Light Within. And I can see why their label saw Surma as a promising prospect (though Metal Blade also shamelessly milk Six Feet Under and the hotly disputed “fake” Batushka for whatever cash is in those udders, so make of that what you will), but Surma’s writing chops with the huge pallet they choose to paint with are clearly still maturing, their appeal coming largely from the natural grandiosity of the medium they work with. A few exceptionally compositionally accomplished songs like “The City of Winds” and “The Selkie (Kópakonan)” do suggest that this band can indeed live up to their expectations; it’s gonna take a lot of work though.

6/10

Ghostemane - ANTI-ICON

As much as it may get metal’s puritans’ panties in a bunch, yes, musicians who create largely outside the realm of metal can also have some metal cred up their sleeve that we just don’t see too much. And Floridian rapper Ghostemane has plenty of prerequisites in metal to justify his presence in the scene and his wielding of the genre. The 29-year-old got his start in the music world in local hardcore bands and has taken a ton of influence from nu metal and industrial metal, and that comes through in no uncertain manner on ANTI-ICON. Bristling with an unregulated darkness, Ghostemane traverses ANTI-ICON with brooding, Manson-like, low-register moaning as well as amped up hardcore quick-spit rap verses about the most self-loathing depths of depression and the depravity of the most aggressive and sinister intrusive thoughts. And sure, the edginess is pretty over-the-top across the whole album to the point of including an extended and rather isolated sample of someone choking severely that slightly repulse even a death metal fan, but there’s something so fresh, honest, and addicting about the unabashedly masochistic mesh of sounds here. The consistency of the gritty industrial center and the punchy metallic hardcore accents across the album are mountainous evidence that this isn’t some quirky side quest for Ghostemane. He knows his shit and he’s not messing around. With no high-brow filter over the cup, Ghostemane’s pitch black brew on ANTI-ICON is an upfront and captivating illustration of a disturbed mind in its lowest of lows that puts brutal emotional honesty before poetic eloquence, and it makes you appreciate it for its willingness to be unattractive and unembarrassed.

8/10

Of Feather and Bone - Sulfuric Disintegration

After an explosive sophomore release in 2018 (Bestial Hymns of Perversion) Of Feather and Bone suffer only a mild third-album slump in their pivot toward the more hazy, cerebral tendencies of other bands on the Profound Lore label. The more cerebral Sulfuric Disintegration points the band in a more cavernous, more compositionally abstract, and potentially more promising direction within death metal’s foggier waters for future releases. While I do prefer the band’s debut for their current label, I think this album sets them on a course for things ahead that will soon outshine what they have released so far. That being said, there are plenty of nasty riffs and filthy bass lines to salivate over on this, so enjoy the present too.

7/10

Sólstafir - Endless Twilight of Codependent Love

Apart from the heart-wrenching character that the sometimes strained vocal performances across it give it, Sólstafir’s seventh album isn’t all too stylistically different from most albums in their catalog or their post-rock/metal field. Yet the band make quite the case for why they are indeed one of the most vital participants in the echo-soaked genre after its peak, and with a variety of styles. “Dionysus” recalls the band’s earlier black metal era, while “Úlfur” recalls White Pony-era Deftones. The stoic folksy post-rock closing track, “Hann For Sjalfur”, ends on a fitting, somber note, but the top prize has to go to the heart-crushing “Her Fall from Grace”, whose standard post-rock guitar melodies serve as a stark reminder of just how powerful the saturated genre can be. Endless Twilight of Codependent Love captures well all the themes its title implies in a raw, cathartic, and open-hearted stream of emotive post-metal sorrow and blackgaze languish.

8/10

Dark Buddha Rising - Mathreyata

Dark Buddha Rising, who paired up with Oranssi Pazuzu last year for the mind-warping Syntheosis under the name Waste of Space Orchestra, return to their own solo ventures, just as their fellow psychedelic black metal collaborators did earlier this year, in injecting a little bit of magic mushroom hallucinosis into black metal through spacy, freakish synth work. While not quite as psychedelically wild as Oranssi Pazuzu’s transforming of more traditional black metal Mestarin Kynsi,Mathreyata follows a similar pattern of progression through heavy, dizzying atmospheres that build to fulfilling climaxes with a more ambient, droning, and meditative form of blackened post-metal that the band of course give a little dose of LSD to. And the results are intriguing at the very least. I would highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys atmospheric black metal at its most meditative or Sunn O))) for thee enveloping atmospheres their music can create.

8/10

Jesu - Terminus

Embodying the creative rot of the genre as a whole on this album, Jesu are back with another offering of forgettable, unconvincing indie-post-rock-influenced post-metal.

5/10

Live Without-Mannequin

Colliding filthy guitar tones a la Bloodbath or Cannibal Corpse with the visceral rage of hardcore and lyricism even more blunt and less poetic than what is usually associated with the genre, it’s good to hear Live Without still sounding lively and fucking shit up while swearing gratuitously and emphatically. This quick, 5-track EP isn’t doing anything innovative or particularly interesting, but goddamn can you feel the commitment to the metallicization of hardcore and the hardcorification of groove metal. I do hope they keep at it because they have quite an energy that can be deadly if they harness it to its fullest.

6/10

Ghøstkid-Ghøstkid

Jumbling together the bristling melodic metalcore of Architects with the focus on cool of amo-era Bring Me the Horizon with a writing style that hearkens to being in a Hot Topic in the mid-2000’s, Ghøstkid’s debut album has a lot that just doesn’t appeal to me without a lot of convincing, and Ghøstkid’s unspecial, average performances aren’t doing any of that necessary convincing.

4/10

Killer Be Killed - Reluctant Hero

The, possibly, most high-profile metal supergroup, Killer Be Killed, are back after a lengthy break following their self-titled 2014 debut with a rather similarly well-rounded sophomore effort. Sepultura founder and current Soulfly leader Max Cavalera, dynamic frontman of the late Dillinger Escape Plan and The Black Queen Greg Puciato (who just put out a fantastic solo album a month ago), Troy Sanders of Mastodon, and Converge drummer Ben Koller make for a rather promising and lineup. Though it takes some time to break into its shoes, a few songs in to build some momentum, Reluctant Hero is a pretty boisterous display from the star-studded alliance, who really have no excuse to fail with their combined pedigrees in the album’s thorough combination of relatively straightforward thrash, groove metal, and sludge metal. The multi-vocal attack serves some of the more dynamic trade-offs well, but with three of them singing, I think they could have gone a little harder on layered vocal harmonies and dizzying trade-offs. Indeed, the album’s greatest weakness is perhaps how unambitious it feels for a project made by the joining of four metal giants, especially in comparison to their works with their respective main bands. Despite feeling largely like a less-proggy, safe version of an early Mastodon album, Reluctant Hero delivers the no-nonsense thrashers and groovy bangers it needs to, and any complaints about it are mild and largely overshadowed by the exciting dynamic exchanged among the four superstars here.

7/10

Tombs - Under Sullen Skies

After whetting our pallets with their EP, Monarchy of Shadows, back in February, Tombs are back with their main course of the year, Under Sullen Skies. I was a little lukewarm toward the Brooklyn band’s first release this year, but this LP really steps it up for them not just in terms of its more comprehensive look into their sound and their ability as a band, but also in the performances. The band virtuosically juggle black metal, death metal, and doom metal on Under Sullen Skies with impressive fluidity across the album without the track listing coming across disjointed. There’s also a greater sense of conviction and emotional potency on the performances here compared to this year’s earlier EP. Tombs more than delivered after what they teased earlier this year suggested they would come through with, showcasing an expansive range of stylistic talents through dazzling and constantly engaging performances, and I’m glad the longer format of this LP lent itself to a better showcasing of their abilities.

8/10

Liturgy-Origin of the Anomalies

Just a year after the surprise release of H.A.Q.Q., the polarizingly bright and philosophical Liturgy are back with another offering, albeit somewhat shorter, of heavenly, awe-inspiring transcendental black metal. Though the first few songs in the album traverse an odd array of neo-classical ambient styles, the album does eventually settle in to the sound Hunter Hunt-Hendrix formed on Aesthethica. Origin of the Alimonies is almost entirely instrumental though, and it’s jumbled flow and composition make it feel a lot like an afterthought from H.A.Q.Q. and its creative process.

6/10

My Dying Bride - Macabre Cabaret

After a satisfactory, but hardly thrilling thirteenth LP after a five-year gap, My Dying Bride bounce back quickly with a bit more potent and raw of an EP, capturing the sorrow that surrounded the band for the past half decade more fully than their LP did.

6/10

Sodom - Genesis XIX

We’ve long known what to expect from Germany’s blackened thrash pioneers basically ever since M-16, but album after album Sodom keep the riffs coming and the pit circling with ample energy, Genesis XIX being wonderfully no different. Lobbing one riff-laden screamer after another drizzled with a the war-themed commentary that they and thrash in general have come to be known for and a tasteful amount of aged cheese, Genesis XIX makes up for its predictability with a forceful demonstration of confidence in what continues to motivate the Teutonic thrash titans to stick to their Gatling guns on the metallic battlefield, and the reward for their undying dedication is victory in securing one of the year’s best thrash albums.

8/10

MSW-Obliviosus

While the majority its slow, somber dirge plays more like a stream-of-consciousness therapeutic processing of the tragic loss its creator experienced through the medium of doom and ambient black metal, Obliviosus has its flourishes of beautifully solemn instrumentation (particularly the build in the middle of the closing title track), and an open-hearted listen easily lends tangible insight into the sorrow that inspired it. What it lacks in structural cohesion and musical wealth it supplements well enough with candid expression.

6/10

King 810-AK Concerto No. 47, 11th Movement in G Major

Flint, Michigan’s rapcore representatives have had a hard time connecting their intentionally controversially violent lyricism and live presentation to the systemic ills that have plagued their tragically notorious hometown, but the band did tone down the machismo a bit on last year’s oddity-laden Suicide King in favor of a more solely musically ear-catching strategy. While I wasn’t particularly into that album, it might have been just the reset that King 810 needed to recalibrate on this year’s more meat-and-potatoes rapcore album, AK Concerto No. 47, 11th Movement in G Major. It might not have been a super sudden or even conscious decision to ease off the edginess this time around, which might be a tough choice to make for a band basing so much of their identity on their bravado, but the result of the band’s turning the spotlight away from their theatrics and more fully onto the music is an album that feels more honest and more focused. The brutal truths of their environment aren’t smoothed out or whitewashed, and honestly, if this is what their independent journey is going to look like, I’m here for it.

7/10

Psycroptic - The Watcher of All

Teasing with a little two-song taster, Psycroptic flex their techdeath muscles indeed, but they’re doing the bare minimum when it comes to refreshing the hype that built around their name after 2018’s As the Kingdom Drowns. The songs here are solid enough in the basics of technical death metal, but they provide just an inkling of the keen compositional instinct that bolstered their prominence in 2018. I’d say I slightly prefer the greater intricacy of “A Fragile Existence” to the speedy, but more predictable, title track.

6/10

Lie in Ruins-Floating in Timeless Streams

Lie in Ruins have failed to really dazzle me with their early output so far, after two full-size albums, despite their now-extensive experience in the field. But bubbling with a whole lot more energy and a more palpable sense of confidence in their direct approach to (slightly blackened) old-school death metal the Finnish band’s third LP here might be change in tides for them, a potential start of a new era in their career. Floating in Timeless Streams finally captures the raw, gritty sound of 90’s death metal in a more flattering light, hopefully giving the band some momentum heading forward.

7/10

Scour-Black

Another prominent supergroup (if we count Phil Anselmo’s many musical projects as such), Scour, which started back in 2015 and only put out two EPs and a Bathory cover barely eclipsing a half hour of material total until this month, is the Pantera frontman’s intended venture into black metal. I say “intended” because it’s not as pure of a black metal venture as the genre’s finicky purists might grant it; for my money, there’s no point really deliberating it pedantically. It’s black metal. But the various members’ pedigrees with grindcore and death metal from experience with bands like Misery Index and Cattle Decapitation do show through here, and while that would lead naturally to the suggestion that what Scour produce would be under the banner of blackened death metal, I don’t think that label really captures it. Epecially on Black, whose sound is intensely focused on sinister darkness and evil, just whose players can’t help themselves from breakneck speed and nasty growls, Scour are clearly playing black metal. Black plays much like a Watain album just with even faster elements and more death growls influenced by Cattle Decapitation’s semi-blackened deathgrind. There’s also the occasional groove-focused section like the rhythmic riff of “Propaganda” and the delicious palm-muted groove of “Flames”, but it never feels unlike black metal. Regarding Anselmo and potential valid concerns about his (hopefully just drunken) racist shenanigans (to put it generously) potentially coming through in the lyrics, there’s nothing to really worry about here. The guy has clearly been loving him some Portal lately (as shown by his wearing their t-shirt in the bands promo photos), and the lyrics here mainly just mimic the heady, ultra-abstract (kinda nonsensical) surrealism that that band employs. I think this project’s brevity is a clever move on the band’s part, leaving a thirsting for more, making me really hopeful for a full-length sometime in the future, because this extremely grindcore-influenced, and rather fresh, approach to black metal is so savory and addictive.

8/10

Hatebreed - Weight of the False Self

While Jamey Jasta might have become more well-known as a podcast host than hardcore frontman for the past few years, that hasn’t lessened the impact of Hatebreed’s blood-pumping, grind-motivating, weight-slamming, room-cleaning metalcore. In a way, perhaps his visible juggling of his label-owning business ventures and his career with Hatebreed alongside his newfound role as the Joe Rogan of the metal world is what gives his life-coaching lyricism weight and Hatebreed’s individualist motivational ethos its life, or at least its cred. Weight of the False Self is a familiar half-hour motivational speech through hardcore for anyone who’s come into contact with Hatebreed or the scene they emerged from, and that’s not a bad thing here. The band continue to get their reps in on their metallically muscular sound and on the rhythmic grooves and hardcore breakdowns they need to maintain their technique and musical physique. While still being just another day pumping iron, gym analogies aside, this album is a great representation of how invigorating standard, but committed hardcore can be, and I’m sure I’ll be lifting to it a lot in the coming future.

8/10