Ten albums into their career, Underoath have proclaimed a new era for the band. *The Place After This One* sees the Floridian metalcore stars incorporating even more electronic influences into their music while the album’s theme centers around finding a way forward in uncertain times. Lead single “All the Love Is Gone” takes inspiration from British electronic groups The Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy. On “Survivor’s Guilt,” vocalist Spencer Chamberlain examines his sometimes uneasy relationship with recovery: While he stopped using drugs years ago, he says he’s lost many friends to addiction and wonders why he made it while others didn’t. “Generation No Surrender” takes on the lies told by those in power while “Teeth” offers a predator-versus-prey scenario that channels the rock/hip-hop crossovers of LINKIN PARK.
The third Melvins 1983 album sees that year’s version of the band—guitarist/vocalist King Buzzo and his childhood friend/original drummer Mike Dillard—collaborating with electronics wizards Void Manes and Ni Maîtres. As such, *Thunderball* simultaneously booms with towering slow-motion riffs and crackles with interstellar noise. With its squalling intro and soaring chorus, “King of Rome” might be the catchiest Melvins tune in over a decade. Then noise interlude “Vomit of Clarity” erupts into centerpiece “Short Hair With a Wig,” a bleak funeral dirge with a triumphant solo from Buzz. That triumph extends into the first half of “Victory of the Pyramids” before dissolving into the introspective space odyssey “Venus Blood.”
“If I find myself just going through the motions and just trying to forcefully create 40 minutes of content in order to just fulfill contractual obligations, I wouldn’t do with that,” Ghost mastermind Tobias Forge tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “Why waste the energy? Every new album, every new tour, it is very much like a new baby. It’s a new existence that you have to live with, that you want to love. And it takes a lot of effort to do that.” The angelic choir that opens *Skeletá* might seem ironic for a band that openly preaches the virtues of Satan, but such is the upside-down church of Ghost. The soaring “Peacefield” kicks off the Swedish band’s sixth album before giving way to the deadly “Lachryma,” a tale of crying vampires bolstered by a killer metal riff and ’80s synth sounds, as if King Diamond went New Wave 40 years ago. (“That’s one of my favorite songs ever,” Forge says.) The insanely catchy lead single, “Satanized,” wrestles with inner demons and heresy as Latin chants and a throbbing bassline guide the way to an inverted epiphany. Triumphant guitars break through the somber piano that opens “De Profundis Borealis,” a propulsive track that, like many of the songs on *Skeletá*, sees “new” vocalist Papa V Perpetua—Forge in his latest papal guise—addressing a listener experiencing inner turmoil. “Cenotaph” rides what sounds like a sawed-off Metallica riff into a colorful, twinkling vocal melody with ’70s classic-rock guitar stabs. “Marks of the Evil One” beckons Forge’s favorite antihero, Lucifer, for another stomping, jubilant curtain call. Closer “Excelsis” offers a sober meditation upon death not unlike Type O Negative’s “Everything Dies”—only this one has a vocal line like an award-winning Broadway musical. Ultimately, *Skeletá* is proof positive that Ghost is still making infectious, devilishly appealing music nearly 20 years after Forge first hatched his concept. “My career is not really different from any other band,” he tells Apple Music. “Sooner or later, you’ll hit that point where a new record won’t really have any great relevance. And it’s hard to say when that is. It just happens. And when it’s a fact, it’s already a fact. And I am a firm believer that we haven’t really hit that yet.”
