Sleep’s *The Sciences* begins with a three-minute warm-up of the same name. As though revving a long-dormant engine of feedback and distortion, it’s a fitting start to the legendary doom trio’s first album in almost two decades (released on 4/20, no less). Unlike their hour-plus stoner meditation, *Dopesmoker*, *The Sciences* is divided into six colossal tracks, anchored by the comforting familiarity of sludgy riffs and rumbling percussion. Throughout, you’ll find some of their greatest guitar solos (“Marijuanaut’s Theme”) and lyrics (“Giza Butler,” an homage to Black Sabbath’s Geezer Butler), while stunning, reflective closer “The Botanist” is among the best songs in their genre-defining career.
Led by longtime Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Zakk Wylde\'s searing six-string pyrotechnics and soulful vocals, Black Label Society play groove-laden rock with a deep melodic undercurrent. On their 10th album, the band delivers brawny swamp riffs (\"Trampled Down Below,\" \"Seasons of Falter\") and huge power grooves (\"A Love Unreal,\" \"Room of Nightmares\") alongside wistful guitar ballads (\"The Only Words,\" \"The Day That Heaven Had Gone Away,\" and \"Nothing Left to Say\") and the bluesy slow burn of \"All That Once Shined.\"
Grimmest Hits, the band’s tenth full-length studio album and follow-up to Billboard Top 5 entries Catacombs of the Black Vatican (2014) and Order of the Black (2010), Black Label Society submit new anthems like radio single “Room of Nightmares,” the bluesy “Seasons of Falter,” and Southern-fried “The Day That Heaven Had Gone Away” to the BLS faithful; 12 unstoppable tracks to add to that lifestyle soundtrack.
On their fourth album, Swedish goth metallurgists Tribulation explore the underworld with their most thrilling and cohesive package yet. Picking up where 2015\'s *The Children of the Night* left off, songs like \"The Lament,\" \"Nightbound,\" and \"Lady Death\" combine soaring guitars, vintage horror-movie ambience, and frontman Johannes Andersson\'s ghostly death-metal growl with postmortem themes to create something truly awe-inspiring. Meanwhile, \"The World\" and epic closer \"Here Be Dragons\" deliver rich cinematic triumph via strings, darkly elegant guitars, and chilling glockenspiel melodies.
From tragedy to triumph, YOB’s incredible 8th full-length recording was conceived amidst dire circumstances that nearly left frontman Mike Scheidt dead. Suffering from an extremely painful and potentially fatal intestinal disease, Scheidt miraculously recovered and reinvigorated the Oregon trio with a new sense of purpose for Our Raw Heart, an album informed by the will to survive. More exposed than ever both physically and emotionally, YOB bleed out seven riveting tracks of enormous volume and pensive, transcendental beauty across 75 minutes of ultimate doom. A brilliant musical progression in the YOB continuum, Our Raw Heart is the band at their most aggressive, impassioned and eclectic. The riffs are massive, the vocals captivating and the songwriting sublime. Existing in its own organic universe, Our Raw Heart is truly the band’s finest work to date and the apex achievement of what heavy music can accomplish. Our Raw Heart was co-produced by the band and longtime collaborator Billy Barnett at Gung Ho Studio in Eugene, Ore., with mastering handled by Heba Kadry (The Mars Volta, Diamanda Galas, Slowdive).
After 5 years of touring on Pelagial, THE OCEAN deliver their long-awaited 8th studio album, split into two volumes to be separately released in 2018 and 2020 respectively, titled Phanerozoic. The Phanerozoic eon succeeded the Precambrian supereon, spanning a 500 million-year period leading to the present day. It has witnessed the evolution and diversification of plant and animal life on Earth, and the (partial) destruction of it during 5 mass extinction events. Conceptually and musically, The Ocean’s Phanerozoic is the missing link between the albums Precambrian and Heliocentric / Anthropocentric.
Forget everything you think you know about Rivers of Nihil. The Reading, PA quintet announced themselves as one of the most promising and forward-thinking metal bands in the world today with their first two releases, The Conscious Seed of Light (2013) and Monarchy (2015). But on March 16th, 2018, they will shatter all expectations with their third full-length, Where Owls Know My Name. Whereas Seed and Monarchy were thematically centered around spring and summer, respectively, Where Owls Know My Name represents the fall. And although that season is usually associated with death, for Rivers of Nihil, the autumn serves as a rebirth. Formed in 2009 by guitarist Brody Uttley, bassist/lyricist Adam Biggs, and vocalist Jake Dieffenbach, Rivers of Nihil quickly made a name for themselves in the death metal scene, attracting the attention of legendary DM titan Erik Rutan. Rutan, revered for his work as both a musician (Hate Eternal, Morbid Angel) and producer (Cannibal Corpse, Goatwhore), insisted on recording The Conscious Seed of Light. The results were, unsurprisingly, spectacular, with Heavy Blog Is Heavy going so far as to assert that the debut "rivals even the most legendary work of some of [Rivers of Nihil's] peers and influences." They continued along this trajectory with Monarchy, which Metal Injection praised as an "incredibly striking" demonstration of how "Rivers of Nihil have evolved into a monster." The group further cemented their reputation as a young band to watch by annihilating audiences with their live show, which Metal Wani called "a mind numbing force of modern death metal with a vivid darkness in the sound." To date, Rivers of Nihil have toured with such heavy hitters as Whitechapel, Obituary, Darkest Hour, Misery Index, and Cryptopsy. But Where Owls Know My Name represents a massive evolutionary leap for Rivers of Nihil, as different from its predecessors as Homo sapiens are from amoeba. The band - now rounded out by guitarist Jon Topore and drummer Jared Klein - has delivered an album which is often just as punishing as its predecessors while assimilating ingredients from musical genres as varied as electronica, jazz, alternative, folk, and the golden age of Shrapnel Records. The resulting music is indescribably progressive, a multifaceted soundscape that goes beyond the wildest dreams of even the group's most ardent admirers. All bets are off; listeners are simply not prepared for the magnum opus that is Where Owls Know My Name. Says Brody Uttley of the offering: "This record is Rivers of Nihil being exactly who we want to be. Many bands get stuck in a comfortable routine of releasing the same album over and over again. Constantly relying on the same familiar formula may work for some bands, but it does not work for us. Music is art, and art is ever-changing. Without change, there is no progress. Without progress, the very fire that powers art and expression will die. This record is the sound of where we come from, where we are, and where we are going." Adds Adam Biggs: "This time around, the lyrics feel a little more personal than on previous albums. The story picks up several millennia after the events of 'Monarchy', where one person still remains alive, chosen by the planet to be the sole intelligent witness of its ultimate fate. But 'Where Owls Know My Name' is less about overarching narrative than our previous albums. The scenario is just a backdrop for the more emotional material we tried to put forth this time around. Ultimately, this is an album about loss, getting older, and reaching a point where death becomes a much more present part of your life." Where Owls Know My Name reunites Rivers of Nihil with Monarchy producer Carson Slovak, known for his work with a diverse array of bands, ranging from August Burns Red to The Last Ten Seconds of Life to Candlebox. It was recorded in 2017 at Pennsylvania's Atrium Audio, the studio Slovak co-founded with Grant McFarland (Texas in July, Everclear) a decade ago. Also reuniting with Rivers of Nihil once again is Dan Seagrave, the storied artist behind such celebrated album covers as Entombed's Left Hand Path and Suffocation's Effigy of the Forgotten. For Where Owls Know My Name, Seagrave has provided a characteristically stunning illustration. Painted entirely in rich earth tones, the cover anthropomorphizes our planet as a morose old man forever intertwined with a desolate landscape and imposing sky, the line between humanity and its home forever blurred. The existential angst of Seagrave's piece once again serves as a perfect mirror for Rivers of Nihil's music. Where Owls Know My Name is Rivers of Nihil's most visceral, accomplished, and satisfying offering to-date. Few metal bands will ever create anything with such scope and ambition. Circle the date on your calendar: on March 16, Where Owls Know My Name becomes your new obsession.
When Motörhead’s Lemmy Kilmister was still alive, Matt Pike—singer/guitarist in High On Fire and the iconic stoner-metal band Sleep—often found himself compared to the late legend. Once, he even dreamed that Lemmy got mad at him about it. So, three years after the legendary frontman died of cancer, Pike’s Oakland-based sludge trio released a tribute album in his honor. It’s their most diverse—and maybe best—record yet. The riffs are loud, the rhythms are dizzying, and the Motörhead influence is obvious, but it’s still very much a High On Fire album. Land speed record contenders such as “Spewn From the Earth” and “God of the Godless” sit alongside more than 10 minutes of crushing doom in “Sanctioned Annihilation.” The title track, directly inspired by Pike’s dream, pays homage to the late, great Ace of Spades himself. Loud, brutal, nostalgic: *Electric Messiah* is proof that 20 years in, High On Fire is only getting better.
“I had a dream about Lemmy,” says Matt Pike, explaining the inspiration behind the title of High on Fire’s triumphant eighth album Electric Messiah. “When Lemmy was still alive I always got compared to Lemmy,” the gravelly-voiced guitarist elaborates, “so I had this dream where he got pissed at me. He gave me a bunch of shit, basically, and was hazing me. Not that he didn’t approve of me, but like I was being hazed. The song is me telling the world that I could never fill Lemmy’s shoes, because Lemmy’s Lemmy. I wanted to pay homage to him in a great way. And it turned out to be such a good title that the guys said we should call the album Electric Messiah. Although at first the working title was ‘Insect Workout With Lemmy’,” he adds with a big laugh. Electric Messiah, the best and most diverse of the band’s three albums with Ballou, and a record Pike cannot stop gushing about. Justifiably, too. There’s more speed than ever before (the aforementioned title track, the raucous opener “Spewn From the Earth”, and the thrashy, Sir Francis Drake-inspired “Freebooter”) but the dynamics of Electric Messiah hold the listener riveted. Of note is the nine-minute Sumerian historical epic “Steps of the Ziggurat/House of Enlil”, which Pike proudly calls his own “rock opera”. “The song is the creation story of the Sumerians, the weird dichotomy of two gods fighting over power. I put it into two parts because it’s my Sumerian rock opera. At the end I play three different characters: I play the two brothers that clash, and I play Isis, and there’s a high, medium, and low part. It’s very theatrical. I felt like Meat Loaf doing it, but at the same time Bryan Sours at the studio went, ‘I don’t know what you just did, but that’s fucking cool, just keep doing that!” For all the dream visions and historical epics, the state of the real world permeates Pike’s writing on Electric Messiah as well, none more blatantly than on the bluesy closing track “Drowning Dog”. “That one is about the media and the tomfoolery that’s going on,” Pike explains. “You’re either left or right. Do you see how they’ve divided us through the media? I’m basically saying, ‘Do you see how stupid we are?’ Someone’s gotta speak out and say shit like that, or we’re going to continue to be worse slaves over time. They set this shit up so they can keep us under wraps. What they’re afraid of is us ascending and evolving and understanding our past for real. That was the point of a lot of this last album. People not reading the writing on the wall.”
This swashbuckling supergroup featuring Tool’s Danny Carey on drums and Mastodon’s Brent Hinds on guitar resurrects the conceptual, nautical prog-metal album. Much like the briny deep, *Legend of the Seagullmen* is unapologetic and punishing as it is beautiful and pristine. Roto-toms get tattooed and hurricane-force riffs propel songs like “Shipswreck” and the title track. Come for the dramatic tales (“Ballad of the Deep Sea Diver,” “Curse of the Red Tide”), stay for the wicked chops and epic suites.
Legend of the Seagullmen is the debut full-length by the cinematic, psychedelic rock supergroup.
Love is what makes us human. It guides our decisions, shapes our worldview, and defines our experiences. Its absence equates to tragedy while its presence gives our lives meaning. “Love has been well worn theme throughout a lot of rock music, but most commonly in terms of love-lost, overly romanticized versions of new love, or as a veil for sexual conquest,” says SUMAC guitarist and vocalist Aaron Turner (Old Man Gloom, Mamiffer, ISIS). “It is rarely addressed in its more spiritual and vulnerable aspects.” Those less-traversed territories of humankind’s connective bond became the central theme SUMAC’s third full-length album, Love In Shadow, though their explorations of that motif are a far cry from traditional manifestations of love in the realm of art. Across four protracted songs, Turner and his cohorts—Nick Yacyshyn (Baptists, Erosion) on drums and Brian Cook (Russian Circles) on bass—interlace and mangle sounds from their instruments in a sonic homage to both the innate warmth of human magnetism and the cold realities of corrupted love—jealousy, obsession, perversion, addiction. Listeners who followed the Northwest trio down the tangled briar of mathematical riffs and hypnotic battery on The Deal or through the unfettered eruptions and methodical dissonance of What One Becomes are aware that SUMAC eschews the conventional balladry typically associated with odes to our spiritual connectedness. Saccharine sweetness or fatalistic tales of unrequited affection are nowhere to be found on Love In Shadow. Over the album’s hour-plus length, the band employs minimal tools to achieve a maximum overview of visceral passions. Yet while popular music puts an emphasis on conveying moods through well-tread tropes, cultural signifiers, and deeply ingrained associations between tempo, texture, melody and their respective emotional resonance, SUMAC approach their music with the tactile immediacy of abstract expressionists. The beauty is not in the content, but in the form. Love In Shadow comes crashing out of the gate with "The Task." SUMAC wastes no time churning out the meticulous bombardment of knotty riffage and dexterous drumming that drew cerebral metalheads to their early records, but at the moment when most bands would wrap up their song, the band pushes forward and the razor sharp delivery and dense polyrhythmic weave of instrumentation begins to crumble. Turner’s signature bellow escalates into a primal howl. Everything falls apart, and suddenly we’re left alone with a warped melody played on a broken guitar. The band locks back into a lurching, megalith groove, and then retreats into a tense, minimalist palm-muted rhythmic pattern while a fragmented stream-of-conscious guitar line slithers across the open space. The entire song, and indeed the entire record, grapples with a duality of intricately composed arrangements juxtaposed against unbridled improvisations. The freeform abstractions of Love In Shadow were hinted at on early songs like “Hollow King” and “Image of Control”, but SUMAC’s recent collaborations with esteemed Japanese artist Keiji Haino pushed the band completely into the realm of spontaneous composition. “Incorporating a lot of free and open space within the borders of our songs has been an ongoing goal for us,” Turner says. “While all of this material was written before our recording session with Haino, that experience further bolstered our confidence to travel further into territories free of preconceived structure and melody. Immediacy, intuition, and risk have become an increasingly important aspect of our music making.” Whether it’s the protracted guitar solos underpinned by a malleable rhythm section on “Attis’ Blade”, the woozy drones of bending guitar strings and feedback on “Arcing Silver”, or the intermissions of distorted amplifier groans and Eastern guitar trills on “Ecstasy of Unbecoming”, these adventurous sojourns add a new dimension to SUMAC’s ongoing explorations of dynamics. The polarized approaches of calculated composition and untethered expression now reside with fluctuations between space and density, complexity and brute force, and shrill noise and rumbling thunder in the trio’s arsenal of contrasts. Kurt Ballou recorded the album live with the goal of minimal overdubs or fixes over five days at Robert Lang Studios in Shoreline, WA. The result is an album that sounds more alive and human than the common computer grid-built mechanically perfect metal record. “Since many of the surface level aspects of our being are often used as divisive tools to separate and alienate us from one another, the intent with Love In Shadow is to reveal that all humans desire and need to be loved and accepted for who they are, for just being,” Turner says in closing. “The album also serves to highlight what some of the repercussions are for love that is scorned, suppressed or socially discouraged—we lash out against one another, our love turns to fear, we disparage ourselves, we try to fulfill the need for love through unhealthy means—and on a more destructive level, those in positions of power are compelled to annihilate and oppress others.” Love can be beautiful. Love can be ugly. But at its core, it’s alive, unpredictable, and volatile. On Love In Shadow, SUMAC captures that passion in the most primal and unfettered manner possible.
Behemoth’s 11th album doesn’t blast open with a gust of thunderous drums or shredding guitars. Instead, something far more terrifying: a children’s choir. Innocent voices, possessed, chant: “Elohim! I shall not forgive!/Adonai! I shall not forgive!/Living God! I shall not forgive!/Jesus Christ! I forgive thee not!” The unholy mantra sets a nightmarish scene for the Polish blackened death metal band’s most accessible—but no less diabolical—album yet. Flipping a middle finger at their nemesis, Christianity, Behemoth relish flaying and twisting hymns, Bible references, and prayers into infernal noise. The trembling “Havohej Pantocrator” revises the Lord’s Prayer: “Our father, who art in hell/Unhallowed be Thy name/Thy legions come/Thy enemies begone/On Earth as it is in the Netherworld.” Like 2014’s masterpiece *The Satanist*, *I Loved You at Your Darkest* pushes far beyond the extreme sound that they\'ve perfected for more than 20 years: Rock rhythms, acoustic guitars, and atmospheric melodies slice through pounding riffs and brutal howls in ways that, surprisingly, make this journey even *more* intense and exhilarating than ever.
D.C. grindcore titans Pig Destroyer—like Agoraphobic Nosebleed, the enigmatic troupe with whom they’ve shared multiple members over the years—have always excelled at finding beauty in brutality. *Head Cage*, their multilayered, ambitious sixth album, keeps in that vein—J.R. Hayes’ dark lyrics, set against aggressive, off-kilter riffs and thunderous blast beats, use poetry as a weapon. This LP is also a more of a collaborative effort than usual: ANb bassist John Jarvis makes his recorded debut with the band (resulting in the first bass to feature on a Pig Destroyer album), and significantly thickens the overall sound. Additionally, ANb vocalists Richard Johnson and Kat Katz show up (on the pummeling hardcore anthem “Army of Cops” and the short, nasty blast “Terminal Itch,” respectively), while Jason Hodges (Suppression, Brown Piss, Bermuda Triangles) joins in on the thrashy, self-explanatory “The Adventures of Jason and Jr.”
After six long, harsh years of absence, the mighty PIG DESTROYER have reassembled to eradicate eardrums and split skulls with their highly anticipated sixth full-length opus, entitled Head Cage (named after a grisly medieval torture device). A visceral vortex of animalistic rage and extreme sonic brilliance, Head Cage is a true work of extreme metal art, that with the addition of a bass player, is hands down their most dynamic and heaviest recording to date. Across twelve tracks, PIG DESTROYER weave together harrowing tales of philosophical dualities, touching on mortality and depression, fear and violence, and the darkest complexities of the human condition, all told through the distorted lens of delightfully transgressive vocalist/lyricist JR Hayes. Musically, the band continues to push the boundaries of metal, grindcore, noise and punk, ramping up the intensity and leaving you bludgeoned in a state of utter shock, all in less than 33 minutes. Head Cage was recorded by guitarist Scott Hull at Visceral Sound Studios, mixed and mastered by Will Putney (Exhumed, Every Time I Die, Body Count) and features striking artwork by Mark McCoy (Full of Hell, Nothing) along with guest vocal appearances by Agoraphobic Nosebleed's Richard Johnson and Kat Katz plus Full Of Hell's Dylan Walker. PLAY AT MAXIMUM VOLUME!
Album III inspired by Stanisław Lem’s book ‘The Invincible’ and historical/philosophical sources on the idea of swarm behaviour in crowds and civilizations from the era of Plato to Le Bon and the modern era. CREDITS Lychgate: J. C. Young “Vortigern” — Guitar Greg Chandler — Vocals T. J. F. Vallely — Drums A. K. Webb — Bass S. D. Lindsley — Guitar Guests: Alexandros Antoniou — Vocals Chris Hawkins — Additional vocals Vladimir Antonov-Charsky — Organ, piano and mellotron All music and lyrics by J. C. Young “Vortigern” Piano, organ and mellotron recorded at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, Vilnius, July 2017 Vocal sessions recorded at Priory Studios, Sutton Coldfield, UK, August 2017 Drums recorded at Orgone Studios, Woburn, UK, August 2017 Mixed and mastered by Jaime Gomez Arellano, September 2017 Artwork by Michel Guy / Artwork concept by Oksana Gulina and J. C. Young Logo by Luis Miguel Graphic design and layout by Petra Skubin Photography by Damian Hovhannisyan Individual portraits of Greg Chandler and T. J. F. Vallely by 17 Seconds Photography Individual portrait of Alexandros Antoniou by Maggy van der Beek www.lychgate.net [email protected]
When it comes to Swedish Death Metal, the traditional Stockholm way and death metal per se, there is one band you have to mention: Unleashed! Formed in 1989 by vocalist / bass player Johnny Hedlund, Unleashed have been delivering supreme death metal from day one. Dealing with Viking traditions and values, and honing their craft, they have become extreme metal pioneers, musically and lyrically, inspiring legions of other bands with their sound. The Hunt for White Christ is the fourth album in the continued story line of the World of Odalheim and their Midgard warriors – a story authored by Johnny Hedlund himself, comprising of the past, present, and what Hedlund’s deems as the future of the Viking traditions and values. The album was recorded in the Winter of 2018 at Chrome Studios, and does not simply mark the Swedes` 13th full-length album: it also solidifies the bands impact on history, paving the way to their 30th anniversary in 2019! Three decades of metal onslaught, and they have neither lost their bite, nor their love for pure death metal mayhem! The album opener ‘Lead us into War‘ breathes sheer aggression in conjunction with majestic undertones, followed by the blasting blizzard of ‘You Will Fall’ immediately set the scene. The album grabs you from the start and doesn’t let go, especially on, the fist-pumping future live classic, ‘The City Of Jorsala Shall Fall‘, as well as the steamrolling title track – will no doubt take any Hammer Battalion`s heart beat faster and faster! For Odin – and for Unleashed, the unchallenged kings of supreme Swedish death metal! © NAPALM RECORDS
CRAFT return to strike terror once again with their long-awaited new album 'White Noise and Black Metal'. Their first new album in over seven years, 'White Noise and Black Metal' sees the notorious and highly influential Swedish black metal band reclaiming their throne as one of the most intimidating and caustic entities in the underground. A cold and calculated attack on hope and the light, CRAFT spew nihilism and negativity in its purest forms. 'White Noise and Black Metal' is a true manifesto of hostility, and a testament to the genre's most elite and uncompromising band!
The word tends to get abused, but the California metal innovators’ fourth album exists largely to make sure “epic” won’t lose its proper meaning—and not just because four of the seven tracks clock in at over 10 minutes, although that doesn’t hurt. It’s the familiar squall of guitars, rapid-fire drums, and George Clarke’s curdled screaming, combined with more mannered flourishes like piano, spoken word, and Chelsea Wolfe’s guest vocals (“Night People”) that feels huge and relentless and wholly unique, surpassing the scope of even 2013’s instant classic *Sunbather*.