This week's new heavy metal releases include bedazzled birds, spring time spookiness, prog, and more!
To the metals…
Big Business – The Beast You Are
Genre: Heavy metal/stoner rock
Origin: Seattle, Washington
Label: Joyful Noise
Washington's two-headed, guitar-less, fuzzed-out monsters have returned. This time they're bringing a bedazzled bird on the album's cover. I don't know if it gets better than that.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIsyTxgSxwo][/youtube]
Inter Arma – Sulphur English
Genre: Post-metal/sludge
Origin: Richmond, Virginia
Label: Relapse
Inter Arma are returning to their roots a bit on this album. I feel like their early albums were slow, and this one brings back a lot of that lurching goodness. Fans of recent albums won't be disappointed though. This feels like a career spanning album despite being all new material.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y41Vyb4tD0c][/youtube]
Felix Martin – Caracas
Genre: 14-String guitar progressive
Origin: Los Angeles, California
Label: Self-released
Felix Martin's Caracas features Martin slapping, tapping, and shredding on more strings than you could shake a stick at. I looked into it once, and it turns out the most strings one can shake a stick at is thirteen. The videos of this guy are always to hard to turn away from, because he's so good, and how he plays is so odd.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQgXGormGng][/youtube]
Suldusk – Lunar Falls
Genre: Post-rock/Black metal
Origin: Melbourne, Australia
Label: Northern Silence Productions
Emily Highfield's Suldusk is an ethereal, blackened project in the realm of Alcest, early-Myrkur, Falloch and the likes. Lunar Falls certainly touches on folk elements, but seems more grounded in mood and spooky tones.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bC8qksTMNjQ&list=PLXZ5kL3Z-Yxtb-n99e_SwIfYGBL8Lzzvk][/youtube]
Tronos – Celestial Mechanics
Genre: "Apocalyptic Ambient Psych Doom Metal"
Origin: "R'lyeh"
Label: Century Media
This album has so much going. It's the debut for the supergroup trio of Shane Embury (Napalm Death), Russ Russell (Reformat), and Dirk Verburen (Megadeth/ex-Soilwork). Also, the album is full of guests like Troy from Mastodon, Snake from Voivod, Billy Gould from Faith No More, and several others. The band then describes themselves as "Apocalyptic Ambient Psych Doom Metal," which means it sounds like madness, and it does.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxgOYeL5RLQ][/youtube]
Valence – Cognitive Dissidents
Genre: Instrumental progressive metal
Origin: Westchester County, New York
Label: Self-released
If Felix Martin wasn't enough instrumental prog for you, here's Valence. This young quartet collectively weave through a number of genres on this album with moments of Latin-inspired fusion, Between the Buried and Me-progressive passages, parts that sound like video game battle music, and more. They do this all with song titles that are nods to Archer, The Big Lebowski (a trio of songs actually), and others.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6MBFEMF6Ek][/youtube]
Also dropping today…
American War Machine – Unholy War (Bridge Nine) – Hardcore
Andy Black – The Ghost Of Ohio (Lava/Republic) – Rock
Bloodphemy – In Cold Blood (Black Lion Records) – Death metal
Cracked Machine – The Call of the Void (PsyKa Records) – Psychedelic rock
Darkcell – Darkcell (Dark Tunes Music Group) – Heavy metal
Death Therapy – Voices (Solid State Records) – Hard rock
Devil's Gun – Sing For The Chaos (Sound Pollution Media) – Rock
Diesear – Bloodred Inferno (eOne) – Melodic Death Metal/Deathcore
Gabriel And The Apocalypse – Alpha Bionic (Pavement Entertainment) – Hard rock/Gothic
Hath – Of Rot And Ruin (Willowtip) – Death metal
Inferi – The End Of An Era | Rebirth (The Artisan Era) – Re-recorded Technical melodic death metal
Ketzer – Cloud Collider (Metal Blade) – Blackened thrash
L'Acéphale – L' Acéphale (Eisenwald) – Black metal/ambient
The Machinist – Confidimus In Morte (Prosthetic) – Deathcore/groove metal
Mist of Misery – Unalterable (Black Lion Records) – Symphonic black metal
Monkey3 – Sphere (Napalm) – Instrumental psychedelic
Nekrasov – Lust Of Consciousness (Prosthetic) – Atmospheric Black Metal/Ambient
Numenorean – Adore (Season Of Mist) – Post-black metal
Posthum – Like Wildfire (Indie Recordings) – Black metal
Scream Blue Murder – Rock Bottom (Stay Sick Recordings) – Hard rock/metalcore
Sludgehammer – Antechamber (Self-Release) – Death/Groove Metal
Theories – Vessel (Corpse Flower Records) – Death metal
Through the Noise – Dualism (Eclipse Records) – Hardcore
Waldgefluster – Mondscheinsonaten (Nordvis) – Black metal
Stuff Dropping tomorrow for Record Store Day
