Revolver's 20 Best Albums of 2019 So Far

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.\'”

In February of 2018, the members of Cave In gathered at their rehearsal space in Boston to work on material for their next record. It had been nearly seven years since their previous album, White Silence, had been released. But they’d been writing and rehearsing methodically, off and on, to craft a worthy follow-up. In that time, guitarist/vocalist Steve Brodsky had started prog-metal power trio Mutoid Man, drummer J.R. Conners and guitarist Adam McGrath started psych-punk outfit Nomad Stones, and bassist Caleb Scofield was busy with simian rock supergroup Old Man Gloom and his own band, Zozobra. After jamming all weekend with Cave In, Caleb got in his truck and drove home to New Hampshire. It was the last time his bandmates would ever see him. On March 28th, 2018, Caleb was killed in an auto accident. There are no words to describe what a devastating blow this was to his wife and children, his friends, family and bandmates—not to mention his countless fans around the world. A light had gone out—a light with a monstrous bass tone and a feral roar. An occasionally stubborn light with a million-dollar smile who loved his family and music above all else. To describe his death as a tragedy would be a colossal understatement. Caleb didn’t live to see 40. Originally intended as demos, Final Transmission marks the first Cave In album in eight years and the band’s last with Caleb, who performs on all of the songs. Caleb’s voice—musical and physical—are everywhere on Final Transmission. The opening title track is a voice memo of a song idea he sent to his bandmates the last time they saw each other. “Hearing his voice fucks you up a little bit,” Adam says today. “We were surprised to get it from him, actually, but we thought it was great. And that was it. In a weird way, it’s the end of the story as far as our relationship together.” Caleb plays bass on six of the album’s remaining eight songs, and guitar on the other two. Even a cursory listen of Final Transmission will offer glimpses of past Cave In eras, from the scintillating space rock of their 2000 breakthrough opus Jupiter to the ripping metal melodies of White Silence. All told, it’s a direction that was largely spearheaded by Caleb. “When I look back at our email correspondence about the demos, Caleb had a really crystallized view of how to navigate the whole thing,” Steve reveals. “He was really digging the stuff that was spacey, heavy, a little bit weird, but with very pretty melodies and hooks. I think he was encouraging us to embrace what we’ve always been good at and what sets us apart from our contemporaries.” Half the proceeds from Final Transmission will be given to Caleb’s wife and children. “I feel really lucky to have this record,” Adam concludes. “I love it, but I don’t like listening to it. I’m sure I’ll listen to it eventually, but right now it’s difficult. Just hearing him play kills me. I’ll miss him forever.”

Philadelphia's DEVIL MASTER stake their claim as one of the most venomous, twisted entities in the underground with their hellish debut, Satan Spits on Children of Light. The album, recorded, mixed, and mastered by Arthur Rizk (POWER TRIP, MAMMOTH GRINDER, OUTER HEAVEN, and more,) rattles the very gates of hell with a vile dose of black metal-infused punk mayhem. Commanding the steel of VENOM, the fury of BATHORY's earliest years, and the raw, uncompromising nature of the notorious GISM, Satan Spits on Children of Light sees DEVIL MASTER emerge from the grave and reach new blasphemous heights. Give in to the Satanic panic and obey your DEVIL MASTER!

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!

On December 31, 2016, a poem was recited at a party in Australia to a small group of friends at the stroke of midnight. Penned a few hours earlier, it was both a lamentation and a critique, inspired by the disturbing and disorienting events of the preceding year, which, like all of history’s worst moments, had created a radical new context for all art to come. While that poem was being recited, Fury, the hardcore band from Orange County, California, was playing in Berlin, some 10 time zones and 10,000 miles away. The band —singer Jeremy Stith, lead guitarist Madison Woodward, rhythm guitarist Alfredo Guiterrez, bassist Daniel Samayoa, and drummer Alex Samayoa — was probably disheveled, their T-shirts wrinkled, their hair slightly undone. I wouldn’t know, I wasn’t there. But having seen the band many times, I’d bet that Stith spoke with his elbows out between songs,expressing with unmatched earnestness his love for any number of people and things; that the band sounded tight in spite of their being in constant motion and of the stagedivers who were probably stepping on pedals and unplugging cables; and that after the set everyone there would have been willing to believe that the new year could be better than the last. Fury finished their tour about a week later, returning home suspecting they had more to say and would write another record. They also came home with a poem in mind that would guide their way, one recited a week before In Australia, at a small gathering of friends, at least one of whom had sent Stith the transcript. “The poem sparked something in me like white heat,” he said. Forming in 2014, Fury established themselves quickly, releasing both a demo on Washington, D.C.’s Mosher Delight Records and the “Kingdom Come” EP on Boston’s Triple B Records in the same calendar year. They built on the melodic legacy of Orange County by way of heavy, rhythmic, start-stop guitars and Stith’s wordy and referential lyrics. Then, in 2016, came their debut LP on Triple B Records, “Paramount,” which was met with respect from the hardcore community and praise from outsider critics. Now, two New Year’s Eves later, Fury releases “Failed Entertainment,” their sophomore LP and debut with Boston-based Run For Cover Records. As with their previous records, “Failed Entertainment” was recorded by Colin Knight and their own guitarist Madison Woodward at Paradise Records, in Anaheim. This time, though, the band also sought new surroundings and outside expertise, collaborating with engineer Andrew Oswald at Secret Bathroom Studios, as well as mixing engineer Jack Endino (Nirvana, Soundgarden, Seaweed). The new batch of songs shows growth in all directions: the slow parts more brooding, the melodies catchier, the lyrics out even further on the limb. From the hammer-ons at the beginning of “Angels Over Berlin” to the tambourine on “Crazy Horses Run Free,” Fury complements their past without complicating their understanding of their present, keeping their feet firmly planted in hardcore while bringing in complementary influences, from literature to film to myriad bands and visual artists. The songs are littered with nods to lines that Stith said “sparked or reaffirmed whatever it was I was going through/thinking about.” “Failed Entertainment” documents the work, both personal and creative, undertaken since the release of “Paramount,” a period of time marked by as many difficulties as successes. Stith said, “I’ve asked myself ‘Why have I done this?’ and ‘Why do I continue to do this?’ more times in the last two years than the rest of my life combined.” Those eternal, existential questions form the thematic foundation of the new songs, which look past the superficial concerns about status and popularity that preoccupy so many musicians, focusing instead on life’s inevitable, inescapable problems and the ways in which they can be compounded by the banal realities of art-making — the isolation of being on tour, the pressure of being expected to somehow transform that universal angst into nice, catchy songs that provide simple lessons. “I wanted a record about failure and acceptance of unknowingness, how necessary they are for growth. I wanted to reflect duality and greyness, the spectrums of life. Never black or white, always more to the story, never too much context.” At first, the record feels bleak as Stith sings the daunting opening lines: “The grey is clear, but too cold to continue / No / Not there / Here.” But the fatalism proposed by those words never actualizes. Instead, there is a yearning for connection and understanding alongside a belief that, even under tremendously dour circumstance, hope for redemption can still be exist. As Stith sings on “Birds of Paradise: “Done pretending that it’s all out of reach / Unafraid for the day we die / Found a way to clip my wings and fly.” What finally emerges is nothing less than Fury’s take on the human experience, an attempt to describe every person’s life and how it interacts with others through unmatched highs, desperate lows, and mundane middles. And it all comes to a head on the penultimate track, “New Years Eve (Melbourne),” a group recitation of the very poem recited in earnest among friends that night in Australia. Though the idea that the human experience is something that can be understood and labeled is either right on the nose or too grandiose. But to Stith, the goal was to fit every last drop of humanity in between the grooves of the record, and that’s where the success and failure of this entertainment lies. “I’ll never be able to communicate every single thought and feeling,” says Stith “, a Failed Entertainment.”

In *VOL. 4 :: SLAVES OF FEAR*, the LA noisemakers distinguish themselves from the industrial pantheon by further mitigating the visceral electro-punk of 2015’s *Death Magic*. The trio are not softening up by any means, only pushing their typically abrasive sounds into a more tuneful direction. The gray-hued, decrepit landscape they envision in *SLAVES* plays like an allegory for our trying times; the future isn’t just looking bleak—it *is* bleak. Longtime producer Lars Stalfors assists in amplifying drummer B.J. Miller’s clanging beats and guitarist Jake Duzsik’s speed-metal breakdowns on “GOD BOTHERER,” while on the anxious “STRANGE DAYS (1999),” bassist John Famiglietti’s mechanized EDM bass drops obstruct its loud/soft dynamic stretches with great intensity. The band even channel their inner Jerry Bruckheimer on \"STRANGE DAYS (1999)” as they fuse icy synths and thrilling drum pounds with the sheer magnitude of a sci-fi action sequence. HEALTH thrust their hammering rhythms within a pop framework—they invite us to find some escape in their cyberpunk-themed party before all chaos erupts.

RELEASE DATE: 1st February 2019

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.

Flashback to 2017: Spirit Adrift dropped its 2nd LP ‘Curse Of Conception’ via 20 Buck Spin, a huge step forward following the debut, landing at #2 in Decibel Magazine’s best albums of the year and carving out a sound now patently its own. Lazily labelled Doom by some, the band is in fact the true representation of what modern Heavy Metal should be, a direct descendent of the widely-appealing arena-filling superstars of the ‘80s and ‘90s without a whiff of anachronistic cosplay fantasies. Spirit Adrift’s third album ‘Divided By Darkness’ delivers on the promise first revealed on ‘Curse Of Conception’ and then advances far beyond it in every way achieving a timeless album for the ages. First single ‘Hear Her’ pummels with the concise urgency and unforgettable chorus of a vital radio hit while ‘Angel & Abyss’ has the classic progression that leads from reflective ballad to rapturous anthemic triumph. The continued evolution of Nathan Garrett as a top vocal talent in modern Heavy Metal shines through amidst the masterful musicianship and huge production value engineered by Sanford Parker. Among the many stylistic divergences within rock and metal, Spirit Adrift’s ‘Divided By Darkness’ understands that there is no substitute for huge ambition, soul-bearing lyricism and most importantly the ability of a pristinely penned riff and impassioned chorus to alter hearts and minds. Astonishingly ‘Divided By Darkness’ is Spirit Adrift’s heaviest and most accessible album to date and will stand as the apex of Heavy Metal songcraft in 2019.

On their eighth studio album, Sunn O))) wanted to take their signature drone metal back to its most minimalist form. During the past decade, the Stephen O’Malley- and Greg Anderson-led unit ventured into a series of collaborations—with artists ranging from Norwegian experimental collective Ulver to the late singer/composer/producer Scott Walker—before releasing 2015’s *Kannon*, which incorporated death-metal growls into their guitar assaults. For *Life Metal*, the band hired studio veteran Steve Albini—whose recordings distill a band\'s bare essence—to capture their expansive, amplified noise live to tape. “Troubled Air” is mired in their typically impenetrable feedback, though a gleaming pipe organ (arranged by Australian composer Anthony Pateras) faintly clears the darkness toward the song’s end. The lumbering “Between Sleipnir’s Breaths”—inspired by the creature from Norse mythology—plays like an orchestral piece, contrasting trenchant dissonance with Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir’s ghostly vocals. Simplicity is at the core of these four lengthy tracks, but those unexpected elements—and O’Malley and Anderson\'s broader palette of sounds in general—add a newfound depth to the band\'s arsenal.

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