Metal Hammer's 50 Best Albums of 2019

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.”

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.”

To put it mildly, San Diego-based artist Kristin Hayter’s second album under the Lingua Ignota name is not for the faint of heart. (Her first, it’s maybe worth noting, is called *All Bitches Die*.) A dark communion of neoclassical strings, industrial atmospherics, and Hayter’s classically trained vibrato, *Caligula* is an arresting meditation on abuse, recovery, and revenge. The opening “Faithful Servant Friend of Christ” sets the album’s tone early, showcasing both Hayter’s stirring vocal range and the complex religious themes that underpin most songs. On the funereal “Do You Doubt Me Traitor,” she sharpens her lyrics into weapons, even enlisting the Devil himself as an ally in her personal war against her abuser and herself (“I don’t eat/I don’t sleep/I let it consume me/How do I break you/Before you break me?”). This is not an uplifting journey through trauma to peace, however—the strangled wails and purgative screams of “Butcher of the World” and “Day of Tears and Mourning” speak to a catharsis without resolution or relief, only riddance. It’s an exhilarating, intense, apocalyptic jeremiad told with disarming honesty and starkness.

“CALIGULA”, the new album from LINGUA IGNOTA set for release on July 19th on CD/2xLP/Digital through Profound Lore Records, takes the vision of Kristin Hayter’s vessel to a new level of grandeur, her purging and vengeful audial vision going beyond anything preceding it and reaching a new unparalleled sonic plane within her oeuvre. Succeeding her self-released 2017 “All Bitches Die” opus (re-released by Profound Lore Records in 2018), “CALIGULA” sees Hayter design her most ambitious work to date, displaying the full force of her talent as a vocalist, composer, and storyteller. Vast in scope and multivalent in its influences, with delivery nothing short of demonic, “CALIGULA” is an outsider’s opera; magnificent, hideous, and raw. Eschewing and disavowing genre altogether, Hayter builds her own world. Here she fully embodies the moniker Lingua Ignota, from the German mystic Hildegard of Bingen, meaning “unknown language” — this music has no home, any precedent or comparison could only be uneasily given, and there is nothing else like it in our contemporary realm. LINGUA IGNOTA has always taken a radical, unflinching approach to themes of violence and vengeance, and “CALIGULA” builds on the transformation of the survivor at the core of this narrative. “CALIGULA” embraces the darkness that closes in, sharpens itself with the cruelty it has been subjected to, betrays as it has been betrayed. It is wrath unleashed, scathing, a caustic blood-letting: “Let them hate me so long as they fear me,” Hayter snarls in a voice that ricochets from chilling raw power to agonizing vulnerability. Whilst “CALIGULA” is unapologetically personal and critically self-aware, there are broader themes explored; the decadence, corruption, depravity and senseless violence of emperor Caligula is well documented and yet still permeates today. Brimming with references and sly jabs, Hayter’s sardonic commentary on abuse of power and invalidation is deftly woven. Working closely with Seth Manchester at Machines With Magnets studio in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, Hayter strips away much of the industrial and electronic elements of her previous work, approaching instead the corporeal intensity and intimate menace of her notorious live performances, achieved with unconventional recording techniques and sound sources, as well as a full arsenal of live instrumentation and collaborators including harsh noise master Sam McKinlay (THE RITA), visceral drummer Lee Buford (The Body) and frenetic percussionist Ted Byrnes (Cackle Car, Wood & Metal), with guest vocals from Dylan Walker (Full of Hell), Mike Berdan (Uniform), and Noraa Kaplan (Visibilities). “CALIGULA” is a massive work, a multi-layered epic that gives voice and space to that which has been silenced and cut out.

By now, Savannah, Georgia, metal band Baroness is down to one original member—singer/guitarist and album cover artist extraordinaire John Baizley—and based in Philadelphia. But the steady turnover during the past decade and a half hasn\'t made Baroness feel any less cohesive or consistent. Their fifth full-length album throws in a few stylistic changes (the post-rock interludes “Assault on East Falls” and “Sevens,” the hushed acoustic guitars comprising the first minute of “Tourniquet,” and “Blankets of Ash,” which is a little bit of each) but is as much of an endpoint for the band as it is a springboard. Baizley has said this will be the last Baroness album to be named after colors, an overarching concept that stretches back to 2007\'s *Red Album*. Whatever that portends, it won\'t be due to a lack of ideas. Frantic pulse-quickeners like “Throw Me an Anchor,” “Seasons,” and “Broken Halo” sit alongside the beat-heavy, atmospheric “I\'m Already Gone,” which Baizley himself has described as “Massive Attack meets TLC\'s \'Waterfalls.\'”

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."

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.”

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.”

Swiss black metal vanguards SCHAMMASCH return with their brand new album 'Hearts Of No Light’, which lays its foundation in the heights of their past work whilst presenting their most flowing and organic approach to date - jet-black at its core whilst vast and expansive in experimentation.

FULL OF HELL make their Relapse debut with their most explosive album to date, Weeping Choir. Dynamic, pissed, and wholly urgent, the highly anticipated Weeping Choir is a definitive statement of intent by one of the underground’s most dynamic and virulent entities. FULL OF HELL have once again culled the extreme elements from hardcore, metal, and power electronics to redefine darkness and sheer brutality. Distorted guitars, and ominous, disparate electronics grind and gnash against rapid-fire drumming, as FULL OF HELL take themes of religion, loss, hatred, and set them ablaze. Recorded by the critically acclaimed Kurt Ballou at GodCity Studio, Weeping Choir sees FULL OF HELL fully unleashed. Abrasive, confrontational, none equal!

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.

With the epic new album Futha, the enigmatic HEILUNG return with their signature Amplified History. A counterbalance to their rugged debut Ofnir, Futha reveals a more melodic and beautiful side of the mysterious ensemble. Their primeval musique concrete blends ancient Germanic tongues, lush geophonic recordings (crackling fires, breaking ice), and the percussive thunder of archaic weaponry (swords, shields, arrows) into a reverential ceremonial experience. HEILUNG are in a class all their own, and Futha is an entrancing masterstroke of profound worldly music.

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.

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.

CD by Northern Heritage / No Solace 2019. LP coming soon. Available at: www.no-solace.com www.northern-heritage.net

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

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.”

Richmond's INTER ARMA, reigning masters of the slow build, continue to trace a distinctly ambitious trajectory through modern metal. Their impulses tend toward the epic, but never bloat; they meld several styles — doom, sludge, and hard psych — without coming off like dilettantes. This newest full-length, Sulphur English, finds them mining deeper in the proggy organic doom fields that made both Paradise Gallows and Sky Burial so thrilling while expanding further the on the psych-folk strain that made those albums' peaks seem so lofty. Few metal bands have ever made such effective use of acoustic instruments in truly heavy environments as INTER ARMA do; the acoustic guitar that stitches "Stillness" together is as effective as any overdriven bass; a two-minute gloomy piano-and-feedback piece titled "Observances of the Path" rolls out the carpet for "The Atavist's Meridian," an album highlight that rides a gigantic, roomy drum sound into realms akin to a murkier Paradise Lost, a more aggressive Om, and a dreamier, more stoned Kylesa all playing together at once. Few bands make music as engrossing as INTER ARMA; their lengthy, almost meditative songs rumble patiently forward until you're ready to get thrown off a bridge — and then they throw you, with great force. - Words by John Darnielle

Long awaited second album from the witches coven.

THE NORWEGIAN BLACK METAL LEGENDS MARK THEIR RETURN WITH A SUBLIME NEW SLAB OF RELENTLESS RIFFING IN THE TRUE SPIRIT OF THE UNDERGROUND Over the course of 30 years, Norway’s Darkthrone has become a staple of the global black metal genre, forging a legacy as one of the most renowned and influential bands in its illustrious & often infamous history. In their formative years, Darkthrone initially started making their mark with a strong concoction of thrash & then death/doom metal experimentation, before the debut album ‘Soulside Journey’ was unleashed in 1991. Never ones to follow convention or stand still even then, the band soon embraced a much darker, more primitive form of expression with the now iconic second album ‘A Blaze in the Northern Sky’, & the rest became history. Now the longstanding duo of Fenriz and Nocturno Culto return with their first studio album since 2016’s hugely popular ‘Arctic Thunder’ opus, in the shape of ‘Old Star’. With a mastery and endless dedication to the art of the riff, the Norwegian legends cut through 6 new epic tracks, taking in the best of the old school of heavy & extreme metal plus a large dose of doom-laden riffing, & channelling it through the grime of the underground. Engineering and production duties were all carried out by vocalist/guitarist Nocturno Culto, complemented with a perfectly organic mix courtesy of Sanford Parker (Voivod) at Hypercube Studios, & mastered once more by Jack Control at Enormous Door. The stellar cover artistry comes courtesy of Chadwick St John, titled “The Shepherd of the Deep”.

RELEASE DATE: 1st February 2019

At a time when the Southern California underground scene was overrun with hardcore punk bands, the Lomita-based quartet Saint Vitus submitted a musical statement that was diametrically opposed to prevailing trends. Though it represented everything punk rockers hated, the band’s shockingly slow take on Black Sabbath\'s blues-metal proved to be the beginning of a whole new genre: doom metal. “Zombie Hunger” and “The Psychopath” upended not just the tenets of punk rock but also the lightning tempos and theatricality of \'80s heavy metal. Meanwhile, songs like “Burial at Sea” made even Sabbath look swishy by comparison. At its heart, Saint Vitus’ eponymous debut belongs to the tradition of the American garage band. There\'s no pretense to the playing, no added effects, no attempt to embody the image of rock gods. In what it refused to do, the young band was bold. Where other garage bands found inspiration in the teenage energy of the \'60s, Saint Vitus dedicated its art to the near-comatose alienation of every small-town malcontented stoner.

Seven years after their epic comeback album, 'Lillie: F-65' (2012), legendary doom metal trailblazers SAINT VITUS return with their eponymous new album. The band sees the return of their original vocalist, Scott Reagers, as well as the addition of new bassist Pat Bruders (DOWN, ex-CROWBAR), who join long-time drummer Henry Vasquez and founder/guitarist Dave Chandler. As if in a time machine, the seasoned quartet pick up where their 1985 classic 'Hallows Victim' left off. Saint Vitus delivers nothing less than the truest and most enduring representation of original and fundamental doom metal.

It’s no longer possible to call Bring Me the Horizon a rock band. On their sixth album, the Sheffield four-piece draw on so many genres and ideas, they evade any attempt at categorization. “I’ve always thought there’s too many borders, too many bridges, that people don\'t cross in music,” frontman Oli Sykes tells Apple Music. “The real world has too much of that as it is. I guess that’s our crusade.” *amo*—Portuguese for “love”—stretches from bittersweet pop to electronic experimentalism, calling on an art-pop visionary, a legendary beatboxer, and an extreme-metal icon along the way. Here, Sykes breaks down their crusade, track by track. **i apologise if you feel something** “We knew it was almost impossible to give anyone a heads- up of what this album was going to sound like. It was important for that first track just to be like, ‘Forget whatever you think it’s going to sound like, because you\'re not going to be able to guess from anything we’ve shown you before.” **MANTRA** “At the end of the writing process, I had a bit of a meltdown. Even though we did have a lot of stuff, we didn\'t have that song where we were like, ‘This is what we\'re going to show the world first.’ ‘MANTRA’ was born out of that: \[It\'s\] not so different that people are alienated, but \[it\'s\] giving you a taste that it\'s not the same as the last record. It’s about the similarities between starting a relationship and starting a cult—how you can throw away your whole life for something and you have to put all belief and faith into this thing that might or might not be right for you.” **nihilist blues (feat. Grimes)** “We had no idea if Grimes would even be interested in doing a song with us. But she was really just gushing, like, ‘This is one of the greatest songs I’ve ever heard.’ I’ve always loved dance songs that had a dark edge—something almost primitive that triggers me. Getting it into our sound was really exciting.” **in the dark** “When we first started writing this, it sounded more like something we would have written on the last album. But it turned into this dark, poppy ballad that we all really loved. I love bittersweet, dark pop songs.” **wonderful life (feat. Dani Filth)** “I did all the lyrics and vocals in a day in the studio. I think it was the day The 1975 released ‘Give Yourself a Try\'—that inspired me to get up on the mic and just say stuff that came out. I dropped \[Cradle of Filth frontman\] Dani Filth a line on Instagram to see if he’d be interested in working on the song. He didn\'t believe it was me at first. I think he said something very quintessentially English, like ‘If this is indeed you, young man, then, yes, I would love to.’” **ouch** “It was one of those bittersweet realizations that you’re happy something\'s happened, but a lot of heartache or pain came with getting to that realization. I just wanted to present the lyrics in a way that wasn’t too dark, a way that feels low-key—and the jammy sound came from that.” **medicine** “‘ouch’ is a kind of prelude to this, quite linked to its vibe. It\'s that idea that you often don’t realize you’re in a toxic relationship until you\'re out the other side. It\'s not like a ‘f\*\*\* you’ song, it\'s just, ‘This is finally me having my say, and I\'m actually going to think about how it affected me and not how it affected you for once.’” **sugar honey ice & tea** “It sounds ridiculous, but just with the drums and everything, we approached it differently and ended up making something that felt quite fresh. It started off a lot more, dare I say, hip-hop- sounding, electro, and there’s elements in there that still remain. We kept a little bit of each version it went through.” **why you gotta kick me when I’m down?** “I was quite scolded by the way I was treated when I was going through hard times with my divorce and stuff that no one knew about. I was quite hurt by the way I was treated by people that I thought were there for me. The song’s saying, ‘I totally get it, it\'s fine, but stop pretending it’s coming from a place of love or care, because it’s not—it’s coming from a place of your own problems where you don\'t want someone to change or grow.’” **fresh bruises** “This was a very organic song, it came very naturally. It was one we just wanted to make—a song that wasn’t verse, chorus, verse, chorus, but more of an electronic vibe. The kind of music I listen to is like that, centered around a hook, and it has a drop and it has a buildup. Not in an EDM sense, but more like lo-fi electronic, avant-garde. It just felt cool to make something more jammy and free like that.” **mother tongue** “\[Love\] is really all this addresses—saying to someone, ‘There’s no need to play games, just be open about the way you feel and everything will be fine.’” **heavy metal (feat. Rahzel)** “Getting \[beatboxing legend\] Rahzel was \[keyboardist\] Jordan \[Fish\]’s idea, because we had this beat that almost sounded like there was beatboxing on it. We used to be this death-metal-sounding, crazy band, and now we play pop music—it’s something that pisses some people off. We’re so confident and proud of what we\'re doing, and at the same time, we’re human and we have our insecurities. This track is just a little in-joke that it can still ruin our day if some kid goes, ‘This is the biggest load of s\*\*\* I’ve ever heard. What happened to this band?’” **i don’t know what to say** “It’s about a friend that passed away from cancer. It’s me trying to figure out what to say in that situation and my regret that I didn\'t see him in his final few days—but also an explanation why. To do my best to talk about how speechless I am at his strength and his courage, and the way he took it all in stride. You’ll hear that story echoed from so many people who have lost people to cancer—they just become unrealistically strong and courageous.”

After five albums in 15 years, Alter Bridge quickly exited nervy adolescence (remember “Metalingus”?) and has comfortably matured. Their sixth album *Walk the Sky* shows their updated priorities, from banging heads to moving hearts. Yes, the curling, snarling guitars that permeate “Native Son,” “Pay No Mind,” and “Wouldn’t You Rather” speak to their sharpened metal pedigree. But it’s singer Myles Kennedy and lead guitarist Mark Tremonti’s melodious thunderstorm that is both crushing and refreshing; songs like “Godspeed,” “Forever Falling,” and the album closer “Dying Light” firmly secure their place in the melodic hard rock universe.

Alter Bridge expand their musical creativity on their latest release Walk The Sky! For over 15 years, Alter Bridge has been a band known for blurring the line between hard rock and heavy metal. Building upon the sound that has won the band worldwide critical acclaim and a devoted global fan base, the band returns with their sixth studio album, Walk The Sky. The fourteen-track opus marks a creative highpoint for the quartet comprised of Myles Kennedy on vocals/guitars, Mark Tremonti on guitars/vocals, Brian Marshall on bass and Scott Phillips on drums. Walk The Sky is a complete career retrospective drawing upon elements from each of the band’s previous releases to create something new from the band. Recorded in a way never done before, the album was born from complete song ideas created by Kennedy and Tremonti. These songs would then be worked on by the entire band to create the fourteen songs that would make Walk The Sky the listening experience it is. This varies from the band’s previous method going back to their sophomore release Blackbird where Kennedy and Tremonti would combine individual ideas and riffs alongside producer Michael “Elvis” Baskette to form some of the band’s most revered songs. From the opening vocal melody on “One Life” to the moving finale of “Dying Light,” Alter Bridge have created a formidable addition to their music catalog. Songs like “God Speed,” “Native Son” and “Walking On The Sky” are sure to be early additions to the live set. The first single “Wouldn’t You Rather” is quintessential Alter Bridge and “Forever Falling” also marks a lead vocal return from Tremonti with Kennedy taking the chorus as done previously on the Fortress favorite “Waters Rising.” Alter Bridge will be heading out on a worldwide tour beginning in September in the United States before heading over to Europe to close out 2019. © NAPALM RECORDS

Astronoid is: Brett Boland Daniel Schwartz Casey Aylward Matt St. Jean All songs and lyrics written by Brett Boland. Mixed by Brett Boland & Daniel Schwartz. Mastered by Magnus Lindberg. Brett Boland - Vocals, Guitars, Drums Daniel Schwartz - Bass, Synthesizers/Arrangements Casey Aylward - Guitars Michael DeMellia - Guitars ***PLEASE NOTE*** This album is downloadable for free - as we do not want pirates to profit from this music. Please donate as you see fit if you enjoy the music. Our suggested pricing scheme: Low budget = 3-4 EUR Average budget = 7-8 EUR High budget = 10-15 EUR Please tell everyone to download from the official sources only.

"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