🌶️ To The Teeth: it's death metal day with Blood Incantation, Tomb Mold, Alkaloid, Brujeria & Suffocation (but it's also: Baroness day)
Plus: Shining, Altarage, Gridlink, Fabricant, Cruciamentum, Cirith Ungol & more!
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This is my favourite release day of the year so far.
New Albums
🌶️ Baroness (progressive sludge from the USA. FFO: Mastodon, Neurosis, The Sword)
There was a time where I didn’t really understood the appeal of Baroness, until one night I was in the bathtub listening to Yellow & Green once more after reading yet another rave review, and it suddenly clicked. The beauty is that often it’s those ‘difficult’ bands and albums that grow to be your favourite. Baroness sure did for me! But Grey & Gold made it difficult again, and not in a good way: I just couldn’t get through it. They were live still so amazing, more than ever - why didn’t that magic work on record? Well. In the end, it did. Stone is the album I was hoping they’d make, and more. So dynamic, adventurous and just fun.
I did an interview with John, in Dutch.
🌶️ Blood Incantation (death/ambient from the USA. FFO: Tomb Mold, Morbid Angel, Timeghoul)
What a day! Blood Incantation - with Horrendous and Sweven my favourite modern death metal band - are back with a two track ep, easing the time it’ll take to release the new full length (next year, is what the label told me). This time they didn’t choose exclusively death metal nor just their ambient side, but combined it on one release and they’re both great (as a matter of fact, I feel a bit the ambient track a bit more). You just can’t really predict where Blood Incantation goes, and that’s why I love them so much.
🌶️ Tomb Mold (death from Canada. FFO: Blood Incantation, Incantation, Ulthar)
As I already thought this was going to be a stacked release day (see above), and then last monday this motherfucking band announced a new album. There seems to be a little more movement and freedom in the fabric of their sound than before. Some people in the YT comments pointed out the Dream Unending influence, and that makes total sense. It’s all the better for it, anyway. Fantastic album.
🌶️ Alkaloid (prog death from Germany. FFO: Obscura, Cynic, Theory in Practice)
Supergroup? Yes. But the star in this galaxy is Florian Magnus Maier. He’s not only guitarist and vocalist of Alkaloid - formed by him and Hannes Grossmann - he is also a classical composer ánd studied flamenco at famous guitarist Paco Peña. He’s as much influenced by Morbid Angel as by Stravinsky, and when he made a piece for the 100th year existence of Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra (in my city), he used pieces of gabber music and football songs. What a guy. Anyway, this new album? Hooks, grooves, riffs, melody and shredding for days!
🌶️ Brujeria (death/groove/grind from the USA. FFO: Napalm Death, Carcass, Terrorizer)
Por motivos de seguridad, lamentablemente no puedo decir nada sobre este nuevo disco de Brujeria.
🌶️ Shining (black from Sweden. FFO: Forgotten Tomb, Taake, Totalselfhatred)
Bleak as all hell and noone is surprised. (Unless you thought this was the Norwegian Shining…)
There’s more: Altarage (🌶️ experimental death from Spain), Fabricant (🌶️ death from the USA - w/ members of Mefitis), Gridlink (🌶️ tech grind from the USA), Tesseract (prog from the UK), Blood Oath (death from Chile), Torpor (sludge/doom/post from the UK), a split from Floodhag & Lust Hag (black/dungeon synth & raw black from the USA), Tar Pond (doom/post from Switzerland), Great Falls (noise from the USA), The Chronicles of Father Robin (progrock from Norway), Behold The Arctopus (tech/prog from the USA), Oblivion Castle (🌶️ black/doom/ambient from Mexico - another VHC project, IFYKYK), Thorn (death/doom from the USA), Circle of Ouroborus (experimental black from Finland), Psygnosis (instrumental industrial/prog death from France) and a live album from Mayhem (black from Norway). The rest is in the playlist!
New songs
There are new songs out from: Suffocation (🌶️ brutal/tech death from the USA), Cruciamentum (🌶️ death from the UK/USA), Cirith Ungol (🌶️ epic/heavy from the USA), Wolves in the Throne Room (atmoblack from the USA), Blackbriar (symphonic from The Netherlands), Brutus (prog/post-hardcore from Belgium), Myrkur (atmoblack/folk from Denmark), Ghosts of Atlantis (symphonic/melodic death from the UK), Ibaraki (prog/metalcore from the USA - Matt Heafy’s solo thing), END (hardcore punk from the USA), October Tide (melodic doom/death from Sweden), Krieg (black from the USA) and a live track from Watain (black from Sweden). The rest is in the playlist!
Non-heavy & next week
Non-heavy album of the week: Mitski (indiepop from Japan/the USA)
I’m looking forward to next week because of: Hexvessel, Cannibal Corpse, Bekor Qilish, KEN Mode, Rebaelliun & Profanatica.
(The Carathis I announced last week was a re-release, sorry!)
What was your favourite? What did I miss? Let me know!
Completely agree on Baroness. Y&G is where they really clicked for me, Purple was great, G&G was a slog, and now Stone makes it all fun again. Also, new Tomb Mold is crazy good. Easily their best and most adventurous material yet.
No no no no no! Please don't say 'I didn't like it at first, but after extensive listening, I realised it was the best I've ever heard!'. It's already utterly impossible to get through all new releases, and now I've also have to dive in and in and in and in to make sure I reeeeaaallly don't like each and every one of them?
Don't do this to me, Peter! If not for me, do it for my daughter. She too sometimes wants to see her dad. Think about all these neglected children. You have a moral responsibility!
(looking forward to this Blood Incantantion, new wave of oldschool death metal and their ambient work combined = bliss)