On their third full-length, the Los Angeles-based nu-metal quintet 3TEETH pays homage to the slick, cynical glory of industrial rock’s ’90s heyday. *METAWAR* plays like a digital-age upgrade of industrial’s stylistic must-haves—heavy drop-D chords, electronic accents, distorted vocals, misanthropy aplenty. Through layers of processed feedback and digital gloss, vocalist Alexis Mincolla excoriates corporate greed (“AFFLUENZA”), corrupt politicians (“PRESIDENT X”), and consumerism run amok (“EXXXIT”) against a backdrop of thudding rhythms and metallic riffs. And just like their stylistic forefathers Rammstein, Orgy, and Marilyn Manson, all of whom were handy with a nostalgic cover, 3TEETH knows that the future is little more than a dark reflection of the past: The final track here is a blast-furnace take on Foster the People’s breezy 2011 summer jam “Pumped Up Kicks” that strips the original down to the frame and rebuilds it to lay waste to the pit.
The majestic French duo Alcest has been mixing shoegaze textures with grinding black metal and hypnotic post-rock since 2005, essentially inventing the so-called \"blackgaze\" of bands like Deafheaven, Oathbreaker, and Bosse-de-Nage. They\'ve kept things mostly uplifting over the course of five records, but their sixth, *Spiritual Instinct*, explores some darker emotions. \"We\'d been touring a lot for the previous record, and I think I started to have some kind of burnout,\" leader and songwriter Neige tells Apple Music. \"I was feeling really, really down and I thought I was losing touch with myself and the things that I like. One of them being spirituality. And when it was time to write a new album, all these feelings went into the music. That\'s pretty much the idea about this album: trying to find the balance between my two sides.\" In turn \"Sapphire\" is a piece of gleaming alt-metal that ends in screams. The title track moves from churning to triumphant. Apple Music talked to Neige, who broke down the album\'s six tracks. **Les jardins de minuit** “The midnight gardens. The Alcest realm—it\'s a very bright and green and springtime type of place. \'Les jardins de minuit\' is like the same place but at night and when all the doubts are rising, and melancholy and the sadness. It\'s the other side of the coin. These are the midnight gardens; it\'s the place where you just wander at night to try to find peace and reflect upon yourself. Musically, it\'s quite fast. I think it\'s one of our fastest tracks. It has almost like a small Nordic black metal thing in the riffs. Some very, very dreamy vocals, and some much more pissed-off ones, too.” **Protection** “It\'s the first song that I wrote for this album. When we were done touring for \[2016\'s\] *Kodama*, I came back home and wrote this song. It all came out at once. Almost like some kind of exorcism. It means that the emotion in the song is very, very genuine. It\'s basically a song about protecting yourself from your own demons. And a song about inner struggle.” **\"Sapphire** “It\'s more or less like a pop song—you know, intro, verse, bridge, chorus. I like to write these type of songs because our fans know me for writing very, very epic songs with different parts that don\'t repeat necessarily. It has almost this \'80s post-punk vibe. I think I was a little bit inspired by The Cure for the riffs. It doesn\'t have any lyrics, just some kind of improvised language that I have. It allows me to not be limited by the sounds and the meaning of an actual language. It\'s a great way to have a very spontaneous way to sing. You don\'t have to follow any text. You just sing the way you feel like singing.” **L\'île des morts** “It\'s some kind of a tribute to this painting by the symbolist painter Böcklin \[\"Isle of the Dead\"\]. And for me, this painting is a great metaphor of the big mystery around spirituality and the question \'What is going to happen when we die?\' In the painting, you see this island that looks a little bit like some kind of cemetery. Some kind of place lost in the middle of nowhere. And you are this tiny boat that is almost reaching the island but doesn\'t reach it. The painter, he has done five versions of this painting over the years. And the boat actually never reaches the island. And I think that\'s a great way to summarize what spirituality is: It\'s the risk maybe not to get any answers at the end of your quest. All the work, you have to do it by yourself.\" **Le miroir** “This one is very, very different from the others. It\'s a bit more like a soundtrack. It also could sound like something from the band Dead Can Dance. Very ritualistic and ancient.” **Spiritual Instinct** “Unfortunately, I\'ve lost one of my friends. And I wrote this song right after. I think it was the last song I wrote for this album. I wasn\'t thinking about him necessarily when I wrote the song. But I can\'t help believing that there is a connection between his death and the fact that I wrote this song. As a paradox, the end is quite bright, you know? It\'s not as dark as the beginning of the album. Since the album was overall quite dark, I wanted to end on a more uplifting note.”
Forty years and more have passed since the original inception of Angel Witch rose from the inauspicious locale of suburban Kent with the doom-laden clangour of Black Sabbath ringing in its ears and leading a movement of bands that reinvented heavy metal as a form darker, heavier, faster and more intense than anything previously issued forth. With songwriter, lead guitarist and chief architect Kevin Heybourne engineering a psychic realm where horror and fantasy imagery locked horns with pulverising riffage and razorsharp hooks, the band were soon vying for supremacy amidst an alarmingly fertile scene that also included Iron Maiden, Diamond Head and Saxon, yet with arguably the heaviest and most otherworldly dimensions at their disposal of anyone in range. The band’s 1980 eponymous debut on Bronze records - led by its deathlessly infectious self-titled opening cut - thus created shockwaves that would resonate throughout the nascent realm of thrash, doom and death metal, with its feverish, vicious and incisive song craft manna to the ears of young and hungry musicians like Dave Mustaine, Tom G. Warrior and Chuck Schuldiner. Yet now, beyond a storied four decades in which the Angel Witch name has witnessed the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in extremis, the band remain custodians of a style that transcends era and archetype. The current incarnation of the band first formed eleven years ago, delivering the 2012 album ‘As Above, So Below’, which was widely considered one of the few records by a band of such vintage to stay true to the music’s original spirit. Yet in retrospect this was merely a precursor to a remarkable renaissance of Kevin Heybourne’s songwriting which saw him delivering a collection of compositions replete with the vim and vitriol of yore, along with the bold singularity of intent that marks him out as one of metal’s most distinctive songwriting forces. The result is ‘Angel of Light’, the band’s fifth album, and a veritable torrent of imperious confidence and riff-driven righteousness. Armed with such an arsenal of weapons grade material, the band - now comprising Fredrik Jansson-Punkka (drums) Jimmy Martin (rhythm guitar) and Will Palmer (bass) - decamped to the Stationhouse in Leeds to deliver the goods in as straightforward and direct a fashion as possible. Under the auspices of producer James Atkinson (Gentleman’s Pistols/Voorhees) the band set to buck the trend of the overly Pro-Tooled and interchangeable metal releases of the here and now by capture these infectious songs in the full trademark Angel Witch roar of heavy amplification and thunderous rhythmic drive. Thus, laying down his parts with the very same Marshall JMP amp head that he employed for his debut, Kevin Heybourne could both embrace and transcend the glories of his past.
BABYMETAL knows something about alternate universes. Since 2010, the Japanese band has carved a unique niche that embraces sugary J-pop and power metal. They are true rock ’n’ roll unicorns, with costumes, choreographed routines, and high-pitched vocals against a masked four-piece band thrashing out double bass drum rolls and squealing solos. Their third album swirls more music genres into the group’s kawaii metal, taking listeners on a wild excursion to infinity and beyond. “Sound-wise, we didn’t want to limit it to just metal but also wanted to explore different genres and widen the range of our music,” SU-METAL (Suzuka Nakamoto) tells Apple Music. “All the songs in the album are different, similar to the multitude of stars in the galaxy. The overall idea is that BABYMETAL is traveling on a spaceship to the metal galaxies.” And what a trip. The beatific “Shanti Shanti Shanti” uses Indian rhythm and melody. “IN THE NAME OF” has chorale movements, while “Oh! MAJINAI” traipses into Scandinavian folk featuring vocals from Sabaton’s burly singer Joakim Brodén. There are also nods to digital hardcore (“Distortion”) and hip-hop (“PA PA YA!!” featuring Thai rapper F.HERO). BABYMETAL remembers to pack flammable ground-and-pound on “Starlight,” “Night Night Burn!” and the ambitious power-metal closer, “Arkadia.” SU-METAL and MOAMETAL (Moa Kikuchi) took Apple Music through *METAL GALAXY*’s points of interest, track by track. **FUTURE METAL** SU-METAL: “This song is the album’s opening track, and only a computer was used instead of instruments. We would love for the listener to imagine himself/herself about to board a spaceship ready to travel the METAL GALAXY.” **DA DA DANCE** MOAMETAL: “This dance-metal song is a mixture of future music sounds crossed with Japanese ’90s dance music. The guitar is played by Tak Matsumoto, who is a very famous guitarist from the Japanese band B’z.” **Elevator Girl** SU-METAL: “Just like an elevator moving up and down, this song expresses the emotional ups and downs teenagers go through as they mature. Sound-wise, there are elements of jazz as well as a metallic riff and rhythm combined within the song. Because there are two versions (Japanese and English) of the song, we hope that fans enjoy both versions.” **Shanti Shanti Shanti** MOAMETAL: “Because this third album portrays an odyssey to the different metal stars, we wanted to also include Asian sound essences into the album, as if the listener has visited this territory while on their journey.” **Oh! MAJINAI** SU-METAL: “This song is inspired by Scandinavian folk metal, so we asked Joakim Brodén from Sabaton to appear as a guest vocalist. He and his band Sabaton joined BABYMETAL for BABYMETAL’s Japan shows in fall of 2018.” **Brand New Day** MOAMETAL: “Sound-wise, this song was a new approach for BABYMETAL. Polyphia appeared as guest guitarists in the song and we feel that their sound has made the song even better.” **Night Night Burn!** SU-METAL: “This song has actually existed for approximately the same period as ‘Megitsune,’ so it’s been around for a long time. Sound-wise, there are elements of Latin music, which has added more energy into the song.” **IN THE NAME OF** MOAMETAL: “This song also is an opener, and if ‘FUTURE METAL’ represents the light side, ‘IN THE NAME OF’ represents the dark side. With a tribal sound base and with a heavy rhythm, the song introduces the beginning of the dark side to the listener.” **Distortion** SU-METAL: “‘Distortion’ is a song that illustrates a human with a two-faced personality who exists in dystopia. We wanted to find someone whose voice would best represent the opposite of SU-METAL’s character. Arch Enemy’s Alissa White-Gluz was perfect for this role as her vocals/growls are amazing and we are so lucky to have her involved in this song.” **PA PA YA!!** MOAMETAL: “‘PA PA YA!!’ has a tropical/Asian sound element because we wanted to create a party-metal song. To add more of an Asian essence, we had Thai rapper F.HERO collaborate with us.” **Kagerou** SU-METAL: “This track shows a different aspect of BABYMETAL as the song has both a heavy and midtempo sound. The song and choreography are different than what we’re used to, so we definitely explored a new territory for this song.” **Starlight** MOAMETAL: “Elements of djent and a melodious heavy sound are combined in this track. When you hear the track, it’s as if SU-METAL’s powerful vocals shine light on an eternal path.” **Shine** MOAMETAL: “The acoustic guitar and the choir in the intro and outro are the highlights of the track. The song portrays life and depicts the ups and downs we all experience through life.” **Arkadia** SU-METAL: “This song concludes the album and portrays a new departure. It’s a cross between a fast-paced rhythm with a melodious sound.”
Featuring classic 1970s artwork by Sci-Fi god Bruce Pennington, “Hidden History of the Human Race” promises to be both a meditative inquiry on the Mystery & Nature of human consciousness, and a dynamic foray into the realms of progressive, brutal & atmospheric death metal, as revealed by BLOOD INCANTATION. Recorded completely analogue at World Famous Studios in Denver, CO, “Hidden History of the Human Race” expands the sonic cosmos explored on BLOOD INCANTATION’s critically acclaimed debut “Starspawn” (Dark Descent Records) and contains the following new tracks: 1. Slave Species of the Gods - 05:31 2. The Giza Power Plant - 07:06 3. Inner Paths (to Outer Space - 05:38 4. Awakening From the Dream of Existence to the Multidimensional Nature of Our Reality (Mirror of the Soul) - 18:05
Hallucinogen begins a new era for BLUT AUS NORD, ending the cycle of clandestine industrialised dissonance that culminated with previous transmission Deus Salutis Meae and moving skyward into freshly melodic territories of progressive clarity. Interweaving dreamlike choirs, inimitable harmonic developments, reflective clean guitars, palpable organic drumming and a welcome rock and roll swagger, Hallucinogen is a spacious, emotionally wide-ranging record that finds BLUT AUS NORD more open than ever, full of life and revelling in the element of surprise. Hallucinogen is yet another coherent universe from a band who have moved away from familiar tropes, aesthetics and comfort zones to unite - with Dionysian spirit - under/overland, surface/void, metropolis/mountain and the vastness of the mind’s eye into an indispensable addition to their unparalleled body of work.
"Candlemass have come full circle: their first singer Johan Langquist (who left the band after singing on the legendary 1986 debut Epicus Doomicus Metallicus) has returned! The Door To Doom unsurprisingly follows the plotline mastermind, songwriter and bass player Leif Edling established in the past years: epic world class doom metal that relies on slow mammoth riffing. With Johan Langquist`s highly dramatic vocal style and the love for details, the band made this album to the next “Epicus”. This masterpiece is rounded off by a beautiful guest appearance by none other than Black Sabbath`s Tony Iommi on ‘Astorolus – The Great Octopus‘." © NAPALM RECORDS
As longtime critics of human behavior, Cattle Decapitation once offered a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan “Humankind: The greatest natural disaster of all time.” Such is the theme of the San Diego death metal squad’s eighth album, *Death Atlas*, an interlude-laden extremity featuring contributions from an international cast of musicians including Riccardo Conforti of Void Of Silence, Laure Le Prunenec of Igorrr, Dis Pater of Midnight Odyssey, and, naturally, Jon Fishman of Phish. “This album is about how we’re an extremely destructive species,” Cattle Decapitation vocalist Travis Ryan tells Apple Music. “We’re like flies on a carcass. It’s an extremely pessimistic and sad record.” Below, Ryan takes us track by track through *Death Atlas*. **Anthropogenic: End Transmission** “The intro music is a collaboration we did with Riccardo Conforti from a phenomenal band called Void Of Silence from Rome. The transmission is meant to symbolize humanity’s place in the universe. At the end, it cancels out—the End Transmission—because we’ve been destroyed. We had to get clearance from NASA to use the sample that’s in this. It’s the 55 languages of planet Earth, taken from the Golden Record that’s on the Voyager space probe that was sent out in the late ’70s. The lady at NASA was super cool and we got everything cleared. It’s by far the best intro we’ve ever had on an album.” **The Geocide** “I came up with the title before we even had the song to go with it. I have an ongoing list of probably 150 song titles that aren’t even used yet—I’ve had it for years. With ‘The Geocide,’ I was thinking it’s weird that no one’s ever used it before. It’s not even a real word, I don’t think, but any idiot can look at it and figure out what it means: the destruction and death of a planet. So the song is basically talking about what’s happening on the album cover.” **Be Still Our Bleeding Hearts** “I actually went into this one wanting to call out people like myself. I don’t want to get into politics or anything, but I think it’s fair to say that I’m left-leaning. I can’t be considered a bleeding-heart liberal, though—I just have too many fucked-up ideas and thoughts on life. But to me, that’s true liberalism. You have to take everything into consideration. But that’s not what’s happening \[in the world\] right now. People are staying on their own side and not really wanting to hear anybody out. So the song is basically just saying, ‘Chill out. We\'re not really worth it.’” **Vulturous** “This started out as a song about being very angry at certain people in our lives, but it took a different turn. I like the idea that we\'re vultures. It’s another way of explaining the human condition. This was also the first song where I started getting poetic in the lyric writing, which I didn\'t really see coming. I didn\'t go into this going, ‘I\'m going to be all Johnny Poetic’—it just ended up being this way, and I had a lot more fun with it.” **The Great Dying** “This interlude has my sister on it. She’s awesome—she quit her job and sailed the Pacific Ocean with her husband for about a year. She comes home, trying to figure out what to do for a job, and she just wakes up one day and goes, ‘You know what? I’m going to get into voice-over.’ And she did. Within six months, she’s making insane money, makes her own hours, and I couldn’t be more proud of her. For this, I wanted her to sound robotic, like a computer, and she completely nailed it. Then I did all the synthesizer stuff myself. It’s neat to be able to collaborate with your sister on a death metal release.” **One Day Closer to the End of the World** “I was looking through some old paperwork from when I was in kindergarten and doing bad in school. I was hyper and distracted, and they were trying to figure out what was wrong with me. It was the ’80s, with Ritalin hysteria and all that, and I was diagnosed with ADHD. I saw this analysis from the therapist, and one of the things he said, which still rings true today at age 45, is, ‘Travis sees each day as an opportunity for failure.’ That really bummed me out, because I realized I\'m still that way. So that\'s where this song actually came from. It’s like the extreme metal version of therapy, but in a very pessimistic way.” **Bring Back the Plague** “So we put this song out and of course there’s all these keyboard warriors going, ‘The plague never went away—look at China!’ Dude, I know. The song is supposed to be cheeky. There\'s a concurrent thing, while we\'re dealing with really sad topics or very important topics, there’s always a tablespoon or so of tongue-in-cheek-ness to it. I think that comes from me being the class clown, but it’s also a coping mechanism. I like to throw some comedy in there to try and cover as many dynamics in the spectrum of human behavior and thought as possible. But yeah, the plague never exactly left. It’s just not taking out millions of people anymore.” **Absolute Destitute** “This was originally going to be called ‘Despair Porn,’ but the entire band fought me on it. I can’t remember a time when I wrote a song title or a lyric and everybody unanimously went, ‘You’re *not* going to fucking call it that.’ They were like, ‘Dude, we can’t have a serious song with the word “porn” in the title.’ I think they’re crazy, but I get it. Anyway, this is a song about how our behavior seems to suggest that we are obsessed with destruction, or that we’re in love with being sad or being depressed or having a problem. It’s like we’re getting off on it.” **The Great Dying II** “This is literally part two of the first ‘Great Dying’—the same text was used, but this time it’s me and a vocoder, and I’m doing some more synths. I went for a slightly different feel on this. I like noise and ambient stuff and just brought a little more weirdness to it. It ends with a really cool clincher statement, too: ‘Annihilation is necessary.’ These interludes will also double as filler during live shows so I don’t have to talk to the crowd—because I honestly don’t like it. I’m not good at being a hype guy.” **Finish Them** “This is a fun one—this is the album’s ‘Forced Gender Reassignment,’ I guess you could say. It’s a heavier song, and I did some really weird vocals on it that I’ve never done before. It’s just a brutal beatdown, talking about purging everything with fire, just deleting everything. So it’s a very angry song, but it also has a bit of a funny vibe to it. One of the lyrics is ‘We fuck biology’s eye sockets, we skull-fuck futures for our profits.’ It’s just talking about how ridiculous we are.” **With All Disrespect** “This is just a very point-blank call-out to the human race—with certain people in mind, but we won’t really get into that. I’ve never been a fan of hardcore or punk because I’ve always felt it was too blatant and too ‘Fuck the government—oi!’ There’s not enough art in there for me, I guess. But I fall into that trap sometimes, too. So this song is just me being pissed off.” **Time\'s Cruel Curtain** “This song is about how time is actually our enemy, and it doesn’t give a shit. It’s static, there’s no changing it, and it doesn’t give a fuck about you and your feelings. In that way, it’s rather cruel. And the curtain is the actual closing of your life, of any person’s life, whether it’s all of humanity or one single person. It’s one of our more...I hate to say pretty, because we’re talking about extreme death metal...but it’s 2019—come on. It’s one of the more emotional songs on the album.” **The Unerasable Past** “So this is actually Jon Fishman from the band Phish talking on this one. He’s a big Cattle fan, which still trips me out, because that dude has sold out Madison Square Garden three nights in a row. He came to see us maybe 10 or 11 years ago—it was \[drummer\] Dave \[McGraw\]’s first tour with us. He saw Dave playing and his jaw dropped. Then he bought our record and looked into what we were about, and now he’s seen us a bunch of times, which blows my mind. So we gave him this text to read, which he recorded out at his place in Maine, under the night sky—you can hear crickets in the background. He ad-libbed a little line at the end which is very Phish, very psychedelic. And we got the dude from Midnight Odyssey, this very obscure Australian one-man band, to do the music. It just fell right the fuck into place.” **Death Atlas** “Whereas ‘Geocide’ is the actual act of destruction, ‘Death Atlas’ is the aftermath, the conclusion. It has the longest fucking fade-out ever—the fade-out is longer than half our discography. I went into this song saying, ‘Guys, I want that feeling like your dog just died. Just utter despair.’ Why? I don’t know. Maybe I just don’t see it being done in extreme music. But it’s a side that we all share and maybe don’t show. The track ends with this lady, Laure Le Prunenec from Igorrr, this phenomenal operatic singer, basically giving you goosebumps.”
Nothing Left to Love is the sixth studio album. It was released on November 1,2019.
The band’s blistering new full length platter, Wretched Illusions, raises the stakes with undeniable and unrelenting anthems like “Bloodlust Contamination,” “World Decay,” “Corroded from Within,” and album opener “Ripping Through Flesh.” Each of the record’s ten tracks is a certified ripper, keeping those baseball bat swings coming, over and over. Devotees of influential death metal merchants like Blood Red Throne (Norway), Gorguts (Canada), and Grave (Sweden) have a new American band to champion. Creeping Death draw liberally from the template set by those bands along with the speed of early Sepultura (Brazil) and the hammering epic crush of Bolt Thrower (England). All of these classic sounds are reforged together and reflected through Creeping Death’s own fresh and unique prism.
CRYPT SERMON return with their highly anticipated new album, “The Ruins of Fading Light”! A follow up to 2015's critically acclaimed debut "Out of the Garden", "The Ruins of Fading Light" is a collection of existential meditations set to the backdrop of looming, apocryphal vestiges from a lost dark age. The lyrics explore the limits of faith and family, life and loss, strength and pride. Between thundering riffs and plaintive moments of acoustics, the music explores new territories on the landscape of epic doom and heavy metal. Still, one message echos as Crypt Sermon march onward, "We're doomed."
Building on twenty years of creating some of the most epic, emotive and inventive heavy music unleashed on the world, there is no denying that Cult Of Luna's A Dawn To Fear is a monster of a record. An album comprised of eight tracks running seventy-nine minutes, it embodies everything the band's faithful have come to expect from them while covering new ground. "We knew exactly the album we wanted to make, and that was the antithesis of everything we've done before," says vocalist/guitarist and lead songwriter Johannes Persson. "For pretty much every album there's been a very concrete theme. We've known from the start the kind of story we wanted to tell, and I didn't want that to be the case. I've seen a lot of subtle changes and patterns in my own behavior and my own thinking the last couple of years, and I wanted this to be a completely spontaneous process. I just wanted to see what came out of me, and 'A Dawn To Fear' is the result of that." From the ominous drone and hammering drums that herald the start of opener "The Silent Man" through to the collapsing crescendo of "The Fall" that ends the record, there is not a moment wasted. Since their inception, they have had a peerless capacity for being able to shift effortlessly between moods, switching from aching melancholy to sinister in an instant before bringing the sky crashing down with pulverizing riffs a moment later, doing so in a natural and unforced way and always achieving maximum impact. Their capacity for doing so has only grown greater over time, but that does not necessarily mean that songs always come together easily. "It took a very long time to write the record, but it also felt very fast, because for me, writing a song can take anything from one day to maybe a year. There's one song on there, 'Nightwalkers', which took forever to write. The main riff was written and I tried a lot of different ways of tying it together, and it took a lot of different versions to finally complete it." Persson's tactic is to keep writing every day, to push through moments when he finds himself stuck, and he admits a great deal of what he comes up with goes nowhere, while some songs came together very fast. It's a technique that works for him, and he is philosophical about it. "You need to go through that and that's hard work, and you need to drag that long rope because sooner or later there's going to be something at the end. If you don't write, you've stopped pulling that rope." He also states that once the rest of the band get involved, the whole process shifts gear. Now living far from each other, they do not have the opportunity to be in the same room very often, so they make the hours they spend together count. "We're a collective, and when I say that I mean that the band's sound is the sound of us as individual members doing what we naturally do. Having the guys in the band come in with input, we create an actual song from the ideas I've come up with very quickly because I'm lucky enough to play with a lot of talented people. There's a lot of varied instrumentation on the record and everything you hear on there is played by someone in the band, there are no guest musicians involved." Admitting he is perhaps still too close to the record to objectively describe the sound of A Dawn To Fear, Persson believes that it has a more organic feel to it, largely achieved through the use of organs and other acoustic instruments in place of electronic keyboards, and that it is perhaps a more melancholic collection. It is also arguably heavier than their last full-length, 2013's Vertikal and their 2016 collaboration with Julie Christmas, Mariner, both in terms of the sheer density of the music and its tone. Rather than discuss the subject matter of the songs, Persson prefers to leave them open to interpretation, and like the music, lyric-writing takes a great deal of application. "Sometimes it takes a long time for me to write lyrics - it takes a very long time - but then there was one song I needed lyrics for when we were going to do a demo version, and I wrote them in an hour or so and knew exactly what I wanted to write about. But most of it, it's things that come to me and it forms an idea and gets its own rhythm. Usually I evaluate what I need for a song that's otherwise written and write to fit that need. I've done that on some songs here, but I've allowed myself to go wherever my mind takes me." When it came to tracking the album, the band opted to work at Ocean Sound Recordings in Norway, which, as the name suggests, is located right by the coast, far from the nearest town. For eleven days the band lived at the studio, and enjoyed the process of constructing the record. "We all produced it like we always do, and I will say I don't think we've ever had this relaxed an atmosphere in the band. We've grown, and everybody is okay with their different roles. We had two different stations so we could record bass in one room and guitar in another room simultaneously. Then Andreas could take a break and Kristian could record keyboards in that room, and I'd track vocals in the other. It was very organic and nice, and I had some quality time with my friends, and I'm really glad that we did that. I can't recommend that studio enough if you want to have a very special experience." With the finished product running to the length of a double CD, there was some discussion of cutting a track, but this did not get far. "We sat down and looked at that song list and we couldn't. It would make it easier for us and everyone involved to cut one song, making it no problem when it comes to LPs and CDs, but we just couldn't see the album any other way. These songs are the songs that make sense. If we cut this song or that song, it would screw up the whole dynamic of the record." The band will of course be touring A Dawn To Fear, though they have never had a punishing touring regimen and have no intention to change the way they operate at this point. "We're not a band who will be out there for months and months and months, that's not what we have been and not what we are going to be. I don't want to tour the passion away, and I think one of the reasons we've been able to do this for such a long time is that we haven't toured that much. The day where I think touring isn't fun or playing live isn't fun will be the day I stop writing music, and right now I just want to continue writing good music and being friends with these guys."
After 6 long-awaited years, DEVOURMENT return to form, embodying brutality with their ferocious new album, Obscene Majesty. Featuring drummer Brad Fincher and Ruben Rosas back on vocal duties - a lineup previously only heard on the band's 1999 landmark album Molesting the Decapitated, the pioneers of brutal death metal sharpen their blades once again, and unleash some of the most disgustingly heavy slam ever! Clubbing blows from tracks such as "Cognitive Sedation Butchery", "Narcissistic Paraphilia", and "Dysmorphic Autophagia" see the veterans as imposing and menacing as ever. Buzzsaw guitars shred through limbs against head-caving, hammering drums. Deathly, blood-soaked vocals personify pain and torture. Obscene Majesty is the epitome of uncontrollable destruction from beginning to end, as DEVOURMENT crush through break-neck speeds, deafening ears and melting faces along the way. Honing in on the very elements of gore, death, and mutilation that have crowned the band as kings of the scene for over 24 years, DEVOURMENT force you to bare witness to the Obscene Majesty!
ENTERPRISE EARTH, a band committed to brutal audio onslaught and proficient excellence, carves out personal meaning from the darkness. They conjure self-determination and iconoclastic independence, from within the bowels of extremity. Acclaimed producer Jason Suecof (The Black Dahlia Murder, August Burns Red, Demon Hunter) has lent his seal of approval, producing and mixing what is certain to be a landmark album in the scene, a 12-song slab of molten fury called Luciferous. Luciferous is a rich and unrelentingly punishing work of mature song craft. ENTERPRISE EARTH remains rooted firmly in death metal; with flourishes of low-tuned riffage to make nü-metal devotees and industrial freaks sweat; a flirtation with blackened thrash; and their maiden voyage into classical style acoustic guitars.
With their second album, Arizona death metal squad Gatecreeper would like to coin a phrase: Stadium death metal. “Our goal has always been to write catchy songs,” Gatecreeper vocalist and co-songwriter Chase Mason tells Apple Music. Like its 2016 predecessor, *Sonoran Depravation*, *Deserted* sees Mason taking lyrical inspiration from the blast-furnace temperatures and arid landscape of the band’s home state while indulging in some handy double meanings. Musically, he and guitarist and co-songwriter Eric Wagner take cues from Swedish death metal masters like Entombed and Dismember while incorporating unlikely sludge and funeral doom influences. Here Mason takes us track by track through *Deserted*. **Deserted** “I wrote this song with the purpose of it being the intro track. It’s got a D-beat-type chorus on it, which is something we\'ve never done before; usually we\'re doing verses faster and then the chorus slows down a little bit. This is the opposite. And there’s a riff on there I was jokingly calling ‘the Papa Roach riff’—for some reason, it reminds me of their song ‘Last Resort.’ And for the first time in any Gatecreeper song, it has two guitar solos trading off. Nate \[Garrett\] does a solo and then Eric does a solo. The lyrics and title are pretty literal—about the end of mankind and apocalyptic sorts of themes.” **Puncture Wounds** “This is a song that started out as an Eric song and then it kind of became a collaboration. It has a cool dive-bomb intro, a very Slayer sort of thing. I wanted to try to incorporate some Freddy Madball into the vocal performance, so it’s a hardcore-influenced chorus. And then the second half is very Dismember *Massive Killing Capacity* with a super Iron Maiden harmonized lead, which I think is cool. When we were writing it, we thought, ‘This is the circle pit song.’ Lyrically, it’s a more of a traditional horror/violence Cannibal Corpse kind of thing. It’s basically just about stabbing somebody.” **From the Ashes** “This is another mostly-Eric banger. It’s definitely more melodic for us. I know it’s influenced by Amon Amarth and bands like that, so we went full melodic on a lot of the parts—way more than we usually do. For the lyrics, it’s sort of motivational: It’s about overcoming difficulties, getting rid of things that are holding you back and facing your fears head-on. So I think that’s something people could relate to.” **Ruthless** “For this one, I tried to write the most simple song that I could. Riff-wise, I wanted to use as few frets as possible and see what I came up with. So it’s super Obituary- and Celtic Frost-influenced. There’s also some different kind of Motörhead double-bass beats on there. The part at the end is like the push-pit part, where people are going to take their shirts off and push each other around. It’s fun to write songs with that in mind. Lyrically, I’d say this is the dirt-doer’s anthem. It’s about committing crimes, basically—just not giving a fuck and doing what you want.” **Everlasting** “This was one of the first songs I wrote for the album. The stuff I write tends to be kind of more murky, atonal death metal stuff, so this one was definitely influenced by that—and a lot of Finnish death metal. I do this kind of black-metal yell in the middle of the song, which is something I’ve never done before. I just tried it in the studio and everyone was like, ‘Yeah, we gotta keep that!’ And then it has a part at the end that’s like a New York death metal slam part. The lyrics are about a higher power or some sort of supreme force—something that’s bigger than me and you—but it’s intentionally vague.” **Barbaric Pleasures** “This is an Eric song. It’s very catchy, very Carcass/Dismember-influenced. To me, it’s almost kind of poppy-sounding at times while still being death metal. It has a kind of groove to it, and I think it\'s a really cool song. On our last album, I did a death metal love song, ‘Rotting as One,’ so I wanted to keep that theme going lyrically. But this isn’t necessarily a love song—the lyrics are just about fucking, I guess. It’s a very horny song. It’s like a cool, obscene version of a love song.” **Sweltering Madness** “We initially released this song as a single \[in 2017\], and then re-recorded it for this record. It’s not too much different than the original, but I think the vocals are a little bit different—not lyrically, but performance-wise, because I think I’ve improved since the last time we recorded it. Lyrically, it has a typical Gatecreeper heat and desert sort of theme. It’s about having the heat boil your brains to the point where you go insane and lose control. It’s kind of a desert anthem.” **Boiled Over** “Eric mostly wrote this one, but we collaborated on it and it’s definitely got a Bolt Thrower influence. It just sounds like a tank rolling towards you. Then, in the bridge part, it kinda sounds like Crowbar. We wanted to incorporate that into the death metal formula, which I don’t think a lot of bands are doing. This song could also be interpreted as having a desert theme, but what I was really going for in the lyrics was more of the idea of being angry or resentful and letting it boil over until you explode—or like a fire inside that eventually burns you to death.” **In Chains** “This is another song that Eric came up with the idea for, but then we collaborated. I want to say it almost has some Six Feet Under or Jungle Rot influence, as far as the verses. The chorus has some cool melodies, but it’s not *too* melodic. Vocally, I tried to do the Cannibal Corpse, more traditional death metal sort of style. And then Eric actually helped me write some of the lyrics. He sent me an article about that sex cult that the girl from *Smallville* was in—NXIVM, I think it’s called. So the song is about this idea about the leader of a sex cult branding the members and having them almost as slaves.” **Absence of Light** “Eric came up with the first riff for this, and I thought it sounded really sad. I’d been wanting to do a slower death/doom sort of song to end the record—the same way we did on the last one. So I took what he had and wrote the rest of it. It’s basically funeral doom, but in the Gatecreeper style. It’s slower than what we usually do, and there’s a part in there with a three-part guitar harmony, which we’ve never done before. There’s also a little bit of keyboards in there that Nate played. The lyrics I think are on par with the music—I just wrote about depression and suicide. I thought it was fitting to have the album end with a funeral.”
GATECREEPER return with their highly anticipated new album Deserted. The new album, a furious mix of snarling guitars and driving, rhythmic pummeling takes death metal from its 80's Floridian roots and 90's Swedish expansion straight into the here and now. In fact, the vanguard of death metal in 2019 can be found under Arizona’s searing sun. That’s where GATECREEPER members—Chase Mason, guitarist Eric Wagner, bassist Sean Mears, drummer Matt Arrebollo and guitarist Nate Garrett—make their homes. Of course, the band nodded to their scorching home state with the title of their 2016 full-length debut, Sonoran Depravation. The theme continues on Deserted, which boasts songs like “Sweltering Madness,” “Boiled Over” and the double-meaning title track. You can hear the results on “From The Ashes,” a crushing cut primed for the European festival circuit. Over on side two, “Boiled Over” fuses classic BOLT THROWER with the pulverizing power grooves of sludge titans CROWBAR. Album closer “Absence Of Light” upholds GATECREEPER's tradition of finishing their records with a deathly doom dirge. Deserted was recorded at Homewrecker Studios in Tucson, where GATECREEPER co-produced the album with engineer Ryan Bram. CONVERGE guitarist Kurt Ballou handled the mix at Godcity in Salem, MA, and Brad Boatright mastered the album at Audiosiege in Portland, OR. Deserted’s hallucinatory cover art was created by Brad Moore (TOMB MOLD, MORPHEUS DESCENDS, and more.)
After gaining notoriety with their 2014 cover of Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space,” I Prevail made it clear early on that they’re not your typical metalcore band. This follow-up to 2016\'s debut LP *Lifelines* pushes the extremes of their sound further, often within the same song: Witness “DOA,” an amalgam of crushing riffing, pop production techniques, and wild synths. “Goodbye” floats on skittering electronic beats, and “Rise Above It” incorporates dubstep and guest vocals from Ohio hip-hop artist Justin Stone, contrasting with the thundering riffing, brutal metalcore breakdowns, and tortured vocals of co-vocalist Eric Vanlerberghe in “Bow Down.” *TRAUMA* is aptly named given that Brian Burkheiser, who handles all the “clean” vocals, was diagnosed with a vocal polyp in 2017 and contemplated leaving the band before mounting a full recovery from surgery. The episode compounded his existing battles with depression, as essayed in songs such as “Low” (“Even when I’m high I still feel low”) and “Breaking Down,” which concludes with Burkheiser whispering, “I don’t really like myself.”
Ukrainian progressive groove metal wrecking machine JINJER have returned with their long-awaited new album Macro and once again prove why the unique blend of singer Tatiana Shmayluk's beautifully aggressive harmonies and vocal hooks, and the bands sheer technical brilliance and precision have set them apart from the pack. From Macro's opening track 'On The Top', which showcases all of their trademark sounds at once, to the superior musicianship and delivery of tracks like 'Pausing Death' and 'Home Back', to the viciously heavy reggae induced vibe on 'Judgement (& Punishment)', JINJER are making it known that they are here to take over in a huge way. "A cocktail of modern prog metal, 'Macro' is the album where Jinjer show us what the future of heaviness sounds like.” - Loudwire © NAPALM RECORDS
When Jesse Leach uncorks his first full-bodied roar on “Unleashed,” the leadoff track on Killswitch Engage’s eighth album, you can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. The singer’s first real test since undergoing throat surgery in 2018, *Atonement* is a bracing tour de force for one of metalcore’s most durable and influential acts. Huge riffs buttress soaring choruses on the uplifting “Us Against the World,” the muscular rocker “I Can’t Be the Only One,” and the confessional “I Am Broken Too,” a reflective acknowledgment of Leach’s struggles with depression and a showcase for his polished croon. Supplemented by a few pinch hitters (Testament’s Chuck Billy lends his growl to “The Crownless King,” while former KsE vocalist Howard Jones trades verses with Leach on “The Signal Fire”) and the barrage of sound from guitarists Adam Dutkiewicz and Joel Stroetzel, *Atonement* somehow feels like a glorious return to form for a band that never lost its edge.
Korn\'s 13th album is one of the group’s most searing, the band\'s trademark ugly-beautiful stomp meeting the savage charge of more extreme strains of metal. Much of the credit can be given to vocalist/raw nerve Jonathan Davis: In the aftermath of his wife\'s death in August 2018, an artist already renowned for plumbing emotional depths pushes his throat and lungs to visceral extremes: wailing, panting, whispering, and roaring. Preview singles \"Cold\" and \"You\'ll Never Find Me\" set the template for their new direction: hard syncopation, basement-scraping riffs, radio-unfriendly growls. But there are also some phoenix-like songs (\"Can You Hear Me,\" \"Finally Free\") that juxtapose Davis\' wounded lyrics with anthemic hookwork. He screams in metalcore ferociousness, gurgles in death-metal-fried agony, soars in power ballad majesty, and leaves the sounds of crying on the recording. His band is both fierce and desolate, with bassist Fieldy finding new sludgy lows and drummer Ray Luzier driving everything with a savage precision.
Back with producer Drew Fulk—who also worked with them on 2017’s *Graveyard Shift*—the Scranton, Pennsylvania, quintet turn their creative energies to an electro-industrial sound that complements their alchemy of metalcore and goth metal. Known for collaborating with some of hard rock’s biggest names, like Jonathan Davis (Korn) and Dani Filth (Cradle of Filth), the band wanted to separate themselves from any outside influence. “Disguise” and “Holding on to Smoke” show frontman Chris Cerulli at his most vulnerable, unbottling his personal struggles with identity and mental health. He welcomes all the misfits to unite on the soul-baring “/c0de,” positioning himself as an empathetic frontman who’s committed to promoting a message of individuality. “Legacy” quells the intensity just a notch, as Cerulli leads the charge with a call to arms: “What will your legacy be?”
For their 13th album, Swedish metal titans Opeth did something they’d never done before: They recorded two versions—one in English, one in Swedish. But if you’re hoping for a deep, meaningful reason behind it, you’ll be sorely disappointed. “There is no why,” vocalist, guitarist, and bandleader Mikael Åkerfeldt tells Apple Music. “For the most part, I don\'t know why I do things. The lyrics are very spontaneous and impulsive. I don\'t sit around pondering. The decision was made in the car, taking my daughters to school. It doesn\'t sound cool. I wish I could say I was at the top of a mountain, that I’d just climbed Mount Everest. But I was in my old Volvo.” Meaning or not, there are plenty of layers to *In Cauda Venenum*, a Latin phrase meaning “the poison is in the tail.” “I want music that you can play over and over again and always discover new things,” he says. Below, Åkerfeldt talks through each track on Opeth\'s most dramatic, diverse album to date. **Garden of Earthly Delights** “We used to open our concerts with a piece by a German band, Popol Vuh, who wrote scores for a lot of Werner Herzog films. It’s from *Nosferatu*, one of my favorite films of all time. We used it for many years, and when the guy who wrote it, Florian Fricke, passed away, the publishing was taken over by his son, who wanted a lot of money from us. I wrote ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’ trying to almost rip them off—to get something that sounded like Popol Vuh, but it\'s ours. It’s supposed to pull the listener into the record, as if you’re about to hear something special.” **Dignity** “When I was working on this piece, I knew I needed something here. I found a speech by Olof Palme, this colorful, controversial politician who led the Social Democratic Party from the ’60s until he was killed. It’s a New Year’s speech to the nation. There’s no political agenda. It’s basically about concerns about the future, the turning of the year. I knew I needed it, but of course you can\'t just put it out or you’d get sued. Eventually I got the number of one of Palme’s sons. I explained what we were doing and sent him a demo. He replied a few days later, saying that it was a beautiful presentation of his dad. Out of all the samples that we had, that was the one I wanted to get cleared the most.” **Heart in Hand** “I wanted a song that began sounding chaotic, but feels calm and nostalgic by the end, like the sun is shining. It sounds straightforward, but it’s written in a weird time signature. I was inspired by pop songs written in odd signatures, like Kate Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights.’ Obviously, being Swedish, I grew up with ABBA, but I rediscovered them in the middle of our career and had this epiphany with their music. I heard it differently to when I was a child, when they were just big pop songs. Now, it’s like, ‘My god, it\'s genius.’” **Next of Kin** “The working title for this one was ‘Floyd’—as in Pink Floyd. I was trying to emulate Syd Barrett during the opening part. It took about 10 seconds until I realized that\'s a bad working title—it doesn\'t sound anything like Floyd. It escalated into something that almost sounds like a Broadway musical. People could almost dance to it on a stage.” **Lovelorn Crime** “I wanted to do something heartfelt and beautiful and big, with a nice guitar solo at the end courtesy of Fredrik \[Åkesson\]. I remember playing that song to both my girls, and \[prolific Canadian musician\] Devin Townsend, who was staying at my place one night. He just went, \'I love that one. I love it.’ If you like ballads, especially our type of ballads, you\'ll probably love this song.” **Charlatan** “Both myself and Fredrik played bass for this song; there are no actual guitars on it. We brought the kids into the studio—Fredrik’s daughter and my two—and we asked them big questions. ‘Who is God?’ ‘What happens when you die?’ It was the first time I’d heard them say anything on those subjects—I don’t talk to them about God because I don\'t believe in God. And I edited it because I wanted it to sound eerie and spooky, not cute. But of course it still sounds very cute to me. It’s my children!” **Universal Truth** “This was the first one we finished, and it sounded nice, but there were so many parts in the song, and it didn\'t really make sense to me. So I basically rewrote it, and now it sounds like a prog-rock musical. I really like it.” **The Garroter** “This one could have been absolute shit. When we try a different genre to the one we\'re comfortable in, we want it to sound as authentic as possible. I want to sound like a jazz band, not like some metal guys trying to play jazz. And I wanted it to sound dark, with lots of strings, which is a major part of the whole record. I presented it to the guys in the band and thought they were going to hate it, but they didn’t. I especially remember our bass player—he sat up straight and got really, really excited about how much stuff he could do with this song. Oddly enough, the people that have heard it, even some of the more hardcore metal fans, seem to like this song the most.” **Continuum** “I’m really happy with this song because it’s so different; there are weird chords I never usually use, like major chords. I\'m careful with major chords. I don\'t think I\'ve written anything like it before. The ending really came out nicely too.” **All Things Will Pass** “Out of all the songs, we decided early that it was going to be the last one. I wanted something really heartfelt and epic, with a magical touch. Honestly, I\'m not always a fan of my own music. I like it, but it’s a different thing to me. The songs are not going to open up to me like they hopefully will for other people. But I knew what I wanted with this song, and to me, it’s almost perfect. You never know if you\'re going to do more records. If this is the last record for us—not that I’m saying it is—then this is a nice way to end it.”
In their 25th year, German electro-industrial steamrollers Rammstein remain *der Goldstandard* for New German Hardness, with their mix of industrial sternness, techno hedonism, and metal aggression. Their seventh album lands somewhere between Faith No More and Franz Ferdinand, taut grooves meshing with bludgeoning riffs and disturbing stories. Lead single \"DEUTSCHLAND\" is scabrous, politically volatile doom-disco laying out conflicted feelings about living in their homeland, even tweaking the verse of the national anthem used in the country\'s fascist past. The rest follows the chug and bombast of albums like 2001\'s *Mutter* and 2009\'s *Liebe ist für alle da*: \"RADIO\" is like a heavy metal Kraftwerk, \"SEX\" is snaky glam-sludge, and \"PUPPE\" is a creeper with a coming-undone performance from lead singer Till Lindemann.
As aggressive and intense as Slipknot looks and sounds, their approach to creating music is as tender and nurturing as a doe’s love for her fawn. For their sixth studio album, *We Are Not Your Kind*, the Iowans took their time—four years—working on their communication and brotherhood. Most of all, they responded with force to a world in crisis. Slipknot percussionist Clown (aka #6, government name Shawn Crahan) has noticed that fans (lovingly called “Maggots”) constantly praise 2001’s *Iowa*, but he encourages them to read the room. “I always have to stop and remind them of the temperature of the world at that time,” he told Apple Music. “And then they step back a little and realize that the world was upside down, and you needed music to get through. We feel that the world\'s like that again.” On this album, anti-authoritarian anthems (“Birth of the Cruel,” “A Liar’s Funeral”), martyrdom (“Unsainted”), and heady meditations (“Insert Coin,” “What’s Next”) are dropped into the band’s swirling circle pit of electronic-tinged thrash metal. Clown took Apple Music through *We Are Not Your Kind* track by track. “We gave the music and ourselves a deep breath,” he explained. “Everybody\'s all in.” **“Insert Coin”** “It\'s a way of saying, ‘I\'m here waiting for everybody else. And here they come.’ It\'s like being on a foothill overlooking the ocean, and just seeing everybody making their way through rough waters. It\'s an aligning. Insert the coin. Let\'s go.” **“Unsainted”** “The whole album has that theme where you look at a song, measure by measure, beat by beat. And you wonder just how much color, temperature, and love you can give it. And it was an amazing experience, and it fit perfectly. And it was the mentality of the album. When that song came about, years ago, I do remember hearing the guitar riff and the chorus. And I can remember just being like, ‘This is the first song on the album.’ It was just magical. This is new, this is us, this is where we\'re at.” **“Birth of the Cruel”** “That’s one of my favorites. It shifts. It\'s intense. It\'s driving. We\'ve had it for a while. Corey Taylor says, ‘I\'m overthrown/I\'m over your throne.’ These plays on words I just live for.” **“Death Because of Death”** “That\'s another example of what life is. It’s very atmospheric, making you question things. It\'s another little puzzle piece. It\'s like a snake that creeps up on you, and it\'s gone before you realize what you can do. They may be short, but it may be very venomous. And that may affect you in a way you didn\'t seek, if you give in to it.” **“Nero Forte”** “I challenge myself personally. I\'ve learned a lot from people that have been in this band. Just being out on the road, the peers that I\'ve been around, and the respect level that I have for these people, I recognize it\'s so beautiful. I wanted to take everything I\'ve learned to write a little cadence—the breakdown area that you hear was really important to me. And the chorus just blows me away. The falsetto—20 years in the gig and Corey Taylor’s singing falsetto. What’s better than that? Talk about evolution and still taking chances, and just loving music. It\'s like hitting the beach running for your life.” **“Critical Darling”** “This one draws a lot of reaction. The vocal melody is my favorite. I love his headspace. Corey\'s my favorite singer of all time because he\'s able to delve so deep into his own self and bring up this personal stuff that most people may not want to do for themselves. But he does it for himself and all of us. It\'s very different for us, but at the same time, it’s exactly us. I think it really helps the other colors of the album.” **“A Liar’s Funeral”** “These sorts of tunes can be very difficult for many different reasons. It starts off with a demeanor that you think you know what\'s going to happen, but you realize this is the heaviest you’ve heard Corey sing so far on the album. It gets to a place you find yourself still in the chair with a stare. And this is one of those songs that I battled personally for and the song got its due. Everything got dot-crossed, and here it is: ‘Burn, burn, burn, liar!’” **“Red Flag”** “That\'s your traditional Slipknot feeling right there. It\'s got a very thrash feel. It\'s fun, it swirls, and it’s not like ‘Get This (Or Die)’ or ‘Eeyore’ different. I believe it\'s much needed in the temperature and the ingredients of the album.” **“What’s Next”** “Intermission is a nice way of saying it. I mean, I\'ve never really thought of it that way, but maybe that\'s why it falls into the slot that it does. Innately, we don\'t have these ideas about how to get people back into the reality of the music, and not get caught up and giving their dog some water or something. This sort of vibe is so us and where we\'re at, and even where we’ve been from 1998 to here. So, yeah, ‘What\'s Next’ is like ginger—it\'s like resetting the palate, countered with a potentially condescending notion. It\'s a nice little trot.” **“Spiders”** “‘Spiders’ is an anomaly—the song everybody thinks they understand and has something to say about. We\'ve been talking about this quote that gets passed around: ‘It\'s easy to make something simple sound crazy, but it\'s almost impossible to make something crazy sound simple.’ Listening to ‘Spiders,’ it sounds simple, but it goes into some weird places. It’s a pivotal part of our career, because we\'re always searching ourselves. We\'re always gaining further and further as artists, because music\'s God to me. So I don\'t shame anything we make. In the end, it\'s got to have everybody and it\'s got to be Slipknot. And ‘Spiders’ is as Slipknot as it gets. ‘Spiders’ is coming for you.” **“Orphan”** “A very, very heavy, heavy song. ‘Orphan’ was the very first song that we had arranged and figured out early. And then we got away from it forever because everything else came in. Corey came in about a year and a half after some things were written, and ‘Orphan’ was one of those songs that he had been given to write lyrics to. I can\'t remember what it used to be called. He texted me and said that he was naming it ‘Orphan’—I knew it was going to be really heavy-duty personal. And just that word, orphan, creates a color in one\'s mind that is, for me, very gray, numb, just monotone and unable to move. I remember staring at my text. Then Greg Fidelman, the producer, looks over at me. I\'m like, \'This song\'s going to be called \"Orphan.\"\' We\'re all just like, ‘Whoaaaa.’ So it\'s a very deep song with a traditional sort of feeling for us.\" **“My Pain”** “‘My Pain’ has been around for a second. And again, it\'s all about communication. That is a very, very important song for the world, for individuals. We have songs like that: ‘’Til We Die,’ ‘Heartache and a Pair of Scissors,’ ‘Skin Ticket,’ ‘Prosthetics,’ ‘Danger - Keep Away.’ We have this otherworldly source that we go to. And I think this is one of those songs, but it\'s a little more focused into its own reality.” **“Not Long for This World”** “It draws heavy imagination. It paints pictures in my brain. It’s like we’re taking you to *Fantasia*—the Walt Disney movie. Mickey goes in to mess with the wizard’s wand, and he gets into these brooms while getting water. I’m 49, but as a kid, that was frightening. This song paints the end of the world not to be contrived. It’s very important in the steps of the album. You start on step one, and you work your way to the end, till you\'re at the top. You either jump or you go back down. You could say it\'s setting up ‘Solway Firth.’ I don\'t know if it\'s a concept, because everything we do is a concept. I could cite that everything from \'98 till now has been a concept, because art is heavy with us—in the music, in everything.” **“Solway Firth”** “When I heard Corey at the end say, ‘You want a real smile? I haven\'t smiled in years,’ I cried. I hurt. I hurt for me. I hurt for my family. I hurt for people around me. I 190% hurt for him. I hurt for whoever he was talking about. I hurt for everyone. And it was like: This will be the last song on the album. Nothing can follow that line. Anybody who\'s going through shit on this planet, that\'s a way of saying it, ending it, getting up, and changing your potential immediately. And there\'s this little false ending before it. So you\'re like whisked away for a moment, and then it\'s like, bam! You get the biggest smack in the face, and it\'s up to you to get up and believe that you have control to change your destiny.”
As the title suggests, the Swedish metal veterans’ 11th album is an uncompromising work that finds them staring down reality. Bjorn “Speed” Strid contrasts clean highs and growls, giving headbanging songs like “The Wolves Are Back in Town” a compelling balance. The band demonstrates exquisite range on “Full Moon Shoals”, and “Arrival” spotlights the harmonic firepower of axemen Sylvain Coudret and David Andersson. In keeping with recent releases, Soilwork also collaborate with notable guests such as Arch Enemy vocalist Alissa White-Gluz and Tomi Joutsen of Amorphis, the latter contributes to the all-out assault of “Needles and Kin”.
We could keep agonizing over why TOOL took so long to release *Fear Inoculum*, or to put their catalog onto streaming services, or all the ways the world has changed since the alt/prog-metal band’s last album came out in 2006. But we just spent 13 years doing all that. Instead, put on the best headphones you can find. It’s time to explore the 87 minutes of music we waited thousands of hours to hear. Whether or not this album is the “grand finale… swan song and epilogue” that Maynard James Keenan alludes to in “Descending,” the first thing to say is that *Fear Inoculum* will not disappoint. On their longest-ever album (despite only containing seven songs, broken up by three brief ambient interludes), TOOL refines and expands on their greatest strengths to create a meditative, intensely complex album that may, in terms of sheer musical skill, be their most impressive yet. Danny Carey’s extraordinarily creative and technical approach to rhythm takes center stage, from assaultive double pedaling to atmospheric tablas and electronic tinkering, heard best on “Chocolate Chip Trip,” a five-minute, multidimensional percussion solo. Guitarist Adam Jones unleashes more jams and solos than ever, particularly on the 15-minute opus “7empest,” which begins by sounding like the most traditionally TOOL song of the lot—but it sure doesn’t end that way. (Plus, Jones apparently wrote part of it in 21/16 time.) Justin Chancellor’s bass riffs are hypnotizing and powerful, unique in their ability to be both repetitive, even monotonous, and completely engulfing. Keenan’s lyrics—layered, poetic, often elegiac—are as fun to analyze and interpret as ever. And though the album is easily their most drawn-out and ambient, it’s also immensely heavy. The balance is calculated and sublime. So, what’s *Fear Inoculum* actually about? Keenan deliberately evades explanation, allowing the listener to find their own meaning. But in the most lyrically lucid moments, you’ll find reflections on life, growing up and facing your fear (he’s stated it could mean giving in to *or* becoming immune to it). There’s no pretending that 13 years haven’t passed—on “Invincible,” he sings: “Age old battle, mine/Weapon out and belly in/Tales told, battles won… Once invincible, now the armor’s wearing thin.” Still, there’s no sign of weakness, just acceptance and the kind of wisdom that comes with age. “We’re not buying your dubious state of serenity,” he knowingly roars on “7empest.” “Acting all surprised when you’re caught in the lie/It’s not unlike you… We know your nature.”
The follow-up to the Floridian metalcore unit's 2017 sophomore effort Deadweight, Pressure sees Wage War working with producer Drew Fulk (Motionless in White, Lil Peep), and delivering their most melodic and muscular outing to date. Featuring the punishing single "Low," the 12-track set successfully combines punitive breakdowns and neck-snapping riffs with arena-ready choruses and an overall positive message.
