🌶️ To The Teeth: The Halo Effect, Arch Enemy, Locrian, Fugitive, Revocation, Sodom, Bloodbath & much more
New albums
🌶️ The Halo Effect (melodeath from Sweden. FFO: old In Flames, Dark Tranquillity, At The Gates)
I'm surprised it didn't happen earlier. In Flames seemed to have burned out (heh) long ago and there were enough ex-members to pick up the broken legacy of that band. The pandemic has given five ex-In Flamers the final push to go resurrect the exciting Gothenburg sound they once mastered with The Halo Effect. (The fact that the latest In Flames singles are also pretty pretty good is a bit like Soulfly and Sepultura both releasing good records again, too. More good is more better).
🌶️ Fugitive (thrash/crossover from the USA. FFO: Power Trip, Enforced, old Sepultura)
Power Trip's Blake Ibanez wanted to do something that was like Power trip - the band that lost it's iconic singer Riley Gale in 2020 - but wasn't the same. He did just that with the surprise ep from his bone dry riff machine Fugitive, topped with the vile vocals of Seth Gilmore (Skourge). It's four songs plus a Bathory cover and they're all fucking barn burners. My favourite is Hell's Half Acre, which half way slows down to consume your every brain cell and makes your face do this.
There's more: Arch Enemy (melodeath from Sweden), Locrian + extra ep (experimental drone/doom from the USA), Boris (various/everything from Japan), Hell Fire (🌶️ heavy/speed from the USA), A-Z (prog/rock from the USA - ex-Fates Warning), Aronious (prog/tech death from the USA), Barbarian (speed/thrash/black from Italy), Bergfried (🌶️ medieval heavy goth metal folk rock what? from Austria), Carrion Vael (tech/melodic death from the USA), Seventh Storm (heavy/gothic from Portugal - project of ex-drummer of Moonspell), Blasted Heath (black/thrash from the USA), Ritualization (blackened death from France), Grotesqueries (death from the USA), Weregoat (black/death from the USA - w/ the drummer of Mournful Congregation), a split from that same Weregoat & Eggs Of Gomorrh (black/death from the USA & black/death from Switzerland) and a single track monolith from Abyssal (🌶️ funeral doom from Mexico).
New singles
There are new songs out from: Bloodbath (🌶️ death from Sweden - feat (ex)-members of Katatonia, Opeth, Paradise Lost), Sodom (thrash from Germany), Razor (speed/thrash from Canada), Delain (symphonic from the Netherlands - new lineup), Revocation (🌶️ tech death/thrash from the USA - feat the last recording of Trevor Strnad plus George 'Corpsegrinder' Fisher), Slipknot (nu-metal from the USA), Sonja (heavy/goth from the USA - members of Crossspitter, ex-Absu), Sumerlands (heavy from the USA), Pušča (post-black from Ukraine 🌻), Ares Kingdom (thrash/death from the USA), Exmortus (tech thrash/death from the USA), Dawnwalker (post/prog from the UK), Gonemage (🌶️ experimental post-black/chiptune from the USA), Lustre (atmoblack/ambient from Sweden), Athar Aghanon (black from Norway), Pijn (post/drone from the UK), Lacrimas Profundere (melodeath/gothic from Germany), Acephalix (death from the USA), Netherlands (experimental noise/sludge from the USA) and Russian Circles (post from the USA).
Non-metal & next week
Non-metal album of the week: haven't heard something!
I’m looking forward to next week because of: Spirit Adrift, Soilwork, Russian Circles & Dawnwalker.
Have a great weekend people, stay safe - Peter
PS I’ve added a small batch of merch here