Stereogum's 40 Best Metal Albums of 2017

With their second full-length album “Infrared Horizon”, NY-based death metal band ARTIFICIAL BRAIN have created a sophomore release more advanced than their lauded debut album “Labyrinth Constellation”. By taking their brand of singular brutal guttural yet technical and ambient sci-fi death metal to a new galaxial plateau, “Infrared Horizon” sees the sonic architecture laid down by the band go further into the beyond and infinite. Conceived in 2011 by guitarist Dan Gargiulo (Revocation) and vocalist Will Smith (ex-Biolich), the band would be rounded out by bass player Samuel Smith (Luminous Vault), guitarist Jon Locastro, and drummer Keith Abrami. The band would align themselves with Profound Lore Records and drop their debut album “Labyrinth Constellation” in 2014 to wide praise within the circles of death metal that range from accolades from within technical, dark, guttural, and progressive death metal respectively. Along with decent touring around “Labyrinth Constellation”, the band would also have their music played and were even name dropped on multiple occasions in the popular CBS television shows Elementary and Limitless. Once again produced by Colin Marson (Gorguts, Dysrhythmia, Krallice) at The Thousand Caves, “Infrared Horizon” (featuring art by Adam Burke) sees ARTIFICIAL BRAIN traveling towards a sonic realm where the music has become more brutal and dissonant, technical, atmospheric, and just overall more otherworldly. Delving into the lyrics and themes of “Infrared Horizon”, themes such as dealing with the concept of a dystopian future in which robots and cyborgs have outlived human beings. Robots and Cyborgs who believe themselves to be not of creation of the long extinct humans but a more perfect evolution of them. The scenarios take place all over outer space and on unnamed planets (not necessarily Earth).

Inmesher - Guitar, Drums, Vocals & Additional Bass Harbinger - Bass Gaarentwynder - Additional Guitars Production assistance by Damian Herring www.subterraneanwatchtower.com [email protected]

On their first album in 14 years with returning vocalist/bassist Steve Tucker, Floridian extremity experts Morbid Angel rediscover death metal after 2011’s industrial-influenced *Illud Divinum Insanus*. Led by guitarist and founder Trey Azagthoth, the revamped band careens through an intense hellscape of rapid-fire riffs, whiplash-inducing arrangements, and swarming blast beats on “D.E.A.D,” “Garden of Disdain,” and “From the Hand of Kings,” while tracks like “Paradigms Warped,” “The Pillars Crumbling,” and “Declaring New Law” decelerate the relentless pace with grinding, mid-tempo grooves.

Gilead Media announces the July 28th release of Contempt, the second album by Couch Slut. From Brooklyn, New York, Couch Slut shook the underground in 2014 with the release of its debut, My Life as a Woman. Stereogum called that album "engagingly smart and terrifyingly blunt" and pegged the sound as "a little bit Oxbow and a little bit Today Is the Day during the AmRep years... It's catharsis through pain, both for the listener and the band. But it's also smart in the way it sets expectations and subverts them." New album Contempt carries on in this fashion – Couch Slut's savagery and intelligence are both in full effect, adding up to an album that thrills on two levels. Opening track "Funeral Dyke" sets the tone, with a skronking saxophone buried under a grimy, blackened, noise-rock blitz. Later in the song, a tambourine rattles along happily with the beat as vocalist Megan Osztrosits screams, "I will fuck you, now you're dirt!" Contrasts such as those on display in "Funeral Dyke" are what make Contempt the engrossing, dynamic affair that it is. The band's foundation rests on the scorched earth between Unsane's pounding NYC hate-rock and Darkthrone's mournful metal, but Contempt is filled with surprises. The songs are peppered with odd instrumentation – the aforementioned saxophone and tambourine, as well as tuba, trombone, accordion, viola, and concert bells – and tend to begin on one path and end on another. A cold dirge erupts into a chugging thrashfest; a sludgy rocker slides into a wistful jam recalling Sonic Youth's more tender moments. A consistent force throughout the album is Osztrosits' wild-eyed, hair-raising voice. Harsh and unsettling, every snarled word slashes at nerves. Atop the twisting, writhing, and rocking of guitarist Kevin Wunderlich, bassist Kevin Hall, and drummer Theo Nobel, her confessional lyrics paint horrific pictures of "anger, depression, terror, drug abuse, mental illness, violence, the surreal, longing, and loss." Gilead Media owner Adam Bartlett says this: "As a label that releases a fair amount of black metal, doom, and other varieties of 'extreme music,' the concept of visceral and transgressive art is nothing new to Gilead Media. But Contempt may stand as one of the most vicious and unnerving releases in the label's history." Contempt was recorded by Couch Slut's Kevin Wunderlich and former member Amy Mills. It was mixed by Caley Monahan-Ward (Extra Life, Voice Coils) and mastered by James Plotkin (Leviathan, Sumac). The cover art was created by Leandro De Cotis, the artist behind the X-rated My Life as a Woman cover which sparked many discussions upon its release. Sporting brains and brawn, Couch Slut makes music that punches the gut and stimulates the mind. Contempt's harrowing version of rock reflects its hometown – dirty, dangerous, dazzling – and secures the band's place in the line of great NYC documentarians, from Sonic Youth to Swans, from Unsane to Pyrrhon.

Released on 2LP/CD by Stickman Records and Armageddon shop. US: armageddonshop.com Europe/World: www.stickman-records.com/shop/elder-reflections-of-a-floating-world/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reflections of a Floating World is Elder's fourth full length album and second LP released via Stickman Records (EU) and Armageddon Label (US). Long, undulating and dense tracks float between psychedelic passages and progressive rock without missing a beat; adventurous and unpredictable songs are punctuated by hypnotic jams, all colored by the tendency toward melody and dynamism that has become the band's hallmark. In keeping with their motto of expanding and expanding upon their repertoire, guest musicians Mike Risberg and Michael Samos joined the core three in the studio to add extra guitar, keys and pedal steel, adding vibrancy and lushness to the album. In all regards, Reflections shows a band with a clear vision honing their skills with every year.

ENTER TCHORNOBOG ____________________________________________________ First conceived in 2009, "Tchornobog" is not a worship of the Slavic "Black God". It is a result of heavy meditation in a desert landscape from the perspective of a vessel mountain which harbors a nest for the mind's eye to be imprisoned. I witnessed -- without any hope of my eye closing -- the terrible sensory overload of the black vomit of Tchornobog. The recordings provided here are a sonic journal of empathy, and the desert of I. "TCHORNOBOG" is the first chapter in a book of many events in a universe born off the ashes of the inner pupil. ...Perpetually disemboweling... self devouring... ...Self devouring...perpetually disemboweling... ...Perpetually disemboweling... self devouring... ...Self devouring...perpetually disemboweling... ____________________________________________________ MORE INFO: prophecy.lnk.to/tchornobog-aureole-drown vigordeconstruct.com ____________________________________________________

Order Vinyl & CD: gileadmedia.bandcamp.com/album/immersion-trench-reverie

Turia: Statement of Purpose Turia was started in the winter of 2014. The band aims to evoke gripping black metal, stripped to its bare necessities. Utilizing a minimal setup of drums and guitar they bring to life a mirage of sound while anguished screams drag the listener into a vastness of desolation. Their first album “Dor” is a strong statement of purpose in both its fury and its entrancement. Four tracks of minimalistic rage and power will put Turia on the map for those seeking worth within the rubble of our modern world. Originally released on cassette by the Dutch Haeresis Noviomagi, “Dor” has since been released on vinyl by the Portuguese cult label Altare Productions. Turia has now returned for their second album entitled “Dede Kondre”. The record further develops the soundscape laid out in their previous effort “Dor”. An enveloping fury of manic primitive drumming, swirling riffs and haunting howls of torment; “Dede Kondre” strikes a balance between a triumphant paganism and melancholic seclusion. Recorded live in the summer of 2016, the second album further develops the signature breathing atmospheric swirl of “Dor”, while showcasing a more diverse and experimental focus. The title is Sranan Tongo for 'land of the dead'. Released by Haeresis Noviomagi in limitation of 200 cassettes, as well as by Altare Productions in limitation of 250 slabs of vinyl.

Pallbearer’s third album stretches the Arkansas outfit’s brand of doom metal to mountainous new heights. More polished—but no less punishing—than *Sorrow and Extinction* or *Foundations of Burden*, *Heartless* is a gleaming bulldozer of a record, shifting effortlessly from the operatic melancholy of “Cruel Road” to “A Plea for Understanding,” which blows out the spacey grandeur of Pink Floyd to nearly 13 minutes.

Pallbearer’s third album, Heartless, is an inspired collection of monumental rock music. The band offers a complex sonic architecture that weaves together the spacious exploratory elements of classic prog, the raw anthemics of 90’s alt-rock, and stretches of black-lit proto-metal. Lyrics about mortality, life, and love are set to sharp melodies and pristine three-part harmonies. Vocalist and guitarist Brett Campbell has always been a strong, assured singer, and on Heartless, his work’s especially stunning. This may in part be due to the immediacy of the lyrics. Written by Campbell and bassist/secondary vocalist Joseph D Rowland, the words have moved from the metaphysical to something more grounded. As the group explains: “Instead of staring into to the void—both above and within—Heartless concentrates its power on a grim reality. Our lives, our homes and our world are all plumbing the depths of utter darkness, as we seek to find any shred of hope we can." Pallbearer emerged from Little Rock, Arkansas in 2012 with a stunning debut full-length, Sorrow and Extinction. The record, which played like a seamless 49-minute doom movement, melded pitch-perfect vintage sounds with a triumphant modern sensibility that made songs about death and loss feel joyfully ecstatic. Pallbearer possessed what many other newer metal groups didn't: perfect guitar tone, classic hooks, and a singer who could actually sing. For their 2014 followup, Foundations of Burden, the band worked with legendary Bay Area producer Billy Anderson (Sleep, Swans, Neurosis) for an expansive album that was musically tighter and especially adventurous. Armed with a more technical drummer, Mark Lierly, Foundations feels like it was built for larger shared spaces—you could imagine these songs ringing off the walls of a stadium. It was a hint of things to come. While the debut earned the band a Best New Music nod from Pitchfork and rightly landed the band on year-end lists at places like SPIN and NPR, along with the usual metal publications, Foundations of Burden charted on the Billboard Top 100 and earned the band album of the year from Decibel and spots on year-end lists for NPR and Rolling Stone. Returning to where it all began, the quartet recorded their third full-length, Heartless on their own in Arkansas, and it’s grander in scope, showcasing a natural progression that melds higher technicality and more ambitious structures with their most immediate hooks to date. The collection, which follows the 3-song Fear & Fury EP from earlier this year, was captured entirely on analog tape at Fellowship Hall Sound in Little Rock this past summer and then mixed by Joe Barresi (Queens of the Stone Age, Tool, Melvins, Soundgarden). From the gloriously complex, sky-lit opener “I Saw the End” to the earth-shaking (and heartbreaking) 13-minute closer “A Plea for Understanding,” the entire group puts forth the full realization of their vision: More than a doom band, Pallbearer is a rock group with a singular songwriting talent and emotional capacity. Heartless finds the group putting forth their strongest individual efforts to date: Campbell and Rowland, along with guitarist/vocalist Devin Holt and drummer Mark Lierly, turn in peak marathon performances. Both Campbell and Rowland also handle synthesizers alongside their normal duties, and there are plenty of gently strummed acoustic guitars amid the crunchy electric ones, adding a moody, ethereal spareness to the towering metal. The almost 12-minute “Dancing in Madness” opens with dark post-rock ambience and moves toward emotional blues before exploding into a sludgy psychedelic anthem. A number of the seven songs feature a humid rock swagger. By fusing their widest musical palette to date, Pallbearer make the kind of heavy rock (the heavy moments are *heavy*) that will appeal to diehards, but could also find the group crossing over into newer territories and fanbases. After having helped revitalize doom metal, it almost feels like they’ve gone and set their sights on rock and roll itself. Which doesn’t seem at all impossible on the back of a record like Heartless.

Necrot’s second album is a blissful nightmare come true for death metal diehards who prefer the raw and pummeling over the precise and technical. The band’s slow, low-end assault veers between shuddering songs that threaten to devolve into muddy formlessness (“Layers of Darkness”) and deliriously dense blast-beat workouts splattered with guttural vocals (“Shadows and Light”). As with their debut, buzzsaw riffs and moshpit beats abound, threading through “The Blade” and cementing their sweaty, chaotic edge.

Recorded by Greg Wilkinson at Earhammer Studios Mastered by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege Art by Marald Van Haasteren Released by Tankcrimes