Second release batch of the year is the week of EPs, apparently, with a pair of devastatingly heavy contenders leading the way.
Alluvial – Death Is But A Door (EP)
Genre: Progressive/technical death metal
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 4/5
A powerful, technically brilliant, yet not overwhelming effort that encompasses most, if not all, of the death metal style realm. It’s impressively tight, and doesn’t mess around too much with immersion-breaking tempo shifts, retaining an awesome, beefy fullness that still allows for detail and melody. A lot of the time it feels like a non-conceptual, or experimental, outcome of Whitechapel meets Rivers of Nihil.
Highlight: “Death Is But A Door”
Cariosus – Will, Until Beauty
Genre: Melodic death metal/deathcore
Subjective rating: 2.5/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Technical, semi-melodic death metal touting all the modern bells and whistles and a few rhythm approaches out of deathcore.
Domination Campaign – A Storm Of Steel
Genre: Death metal/hardcore
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Highly rhythm-driven death metal with the directness of hardcore evident in each and every song on this album. It’s a pounding, mechanical beast that’s sure to get your blood pumping.
Drown In Sulphur – Dark Secrets Of The Soul
Genre: Blackened deathcore
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
Unholy, theatrical, symphonically boosted deathcore that outputs just the right amount of force and bravado to ride the balance between heir-raising brutality and infernal melody.
Engulf – The Dying Planet Weeps
Genre: Technical/progressive death metal
Subjective rating: 2.5/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Cold, cynical prog death with precise, accomplished instrumentation and a lean production.
Escuela Grind – Ddeeaaatthhmmeettaall
Genre: Death metal
Subjective rating: 4.5/5
Objective rating: 4/5
While there are still traces of Esquela Grind’s other stylistic traits on this EP, the overall feel definitely matches the name. It’s rhythmic, grindstone-brutality measured out in a controlled, city-leveling crush. It’s rife with hostility, yet doesn’t need to descend into chaos in order to keep the moshpit going for the entire duration.
Highlight: “Ball and Chain”
The Grandmaster – Black Sun
Genre: Power metal
Subjective rating: 2/5
Objective rating: 2.5/5
Symphonic power metal with an 80s vocal style and early 2000s electronic melodies.
Infant Island – Obsidian Wreath
Genre: Experimental black metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 4/5
This is black metal that has dived deep into a mire of heavy, sullen emotion, and stayed for the melancholy, spiritual beauty. It’s forceful, and at times raw and chaotic, but retains that mist of condensed atmosphere throughout.
Iron Front – Hooked
Genre: Death metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Properly grotesque, earth-shaking death metal that sounds like it’s using your house piping for percussion.
Mourning Dawn – The Foam Of Despair
Genre: Black/doom metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
Incorporating harmonious melody and unsettling dissonance in equal measure, and neither overpoweringly so, this is a bleak, blackened doom record, like My Dying Bride but in constant physical pain.
No Terror In The Bang – Heal
Genre: Progressive/avant-garde metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 4/5
If you’re comfortable with prog metal that exists as much in the realm of soothing, ethereal beauty as it does in that of soaring, rhythmic wrath, and several other places in between, then check this out. You get a mostly symphonic style that swings wildly in intensity, and takes side trips into hardcore, pop and industrial metal.
Ryujin – Ryujin
Genre: Folk metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
You don’t mind your folk metal a little silly as long as it’s also shreddy as hell? And you wouldn’t mind it not being Finnish for once? Ryujin’s got you covered. While Matt Heafy’s all over this, both production and performance wise, the style is definitely enough of a departure that there’s no point getting hung up on it. It both dips into both ballad-y power metal and roars into thrashy melodeath, which makes for delightful variation rather than anything immersion-breaking.
Splitknuckle – Breathing Through The Wound
Genre: Hardcore/death metal
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
This is white-knuckle, shaking-with-fury tension from beginning to end. It’s blunt force trauma over finesse, but the band clearly doesn’t mind working some groove into those rhythms. It’s also a solid step above your typical, super-efficient sub-30 minute affair in terms of runtime, working in enough substance and variation to keep it interesting for over 40.
Highlight: “Gutter Thoughts”.
As always, if you think I’m completely off on an observation, unfairly dissed your favorite band or need to give an album another shot, do feel free to express yourself in the comments section below.
The Metal Dispatch 