A week of trying different approaches – the straightforward, the off-kilter, the innovative and the reinventive. You decide which suits you best.
Aardvark – Tough Love
Genre: Heavy metal
Subjective rating: 2.5/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Classic, scuffed-knuckle heavy metal that’s got a bit of punk, and a bit of darkness to it, but mostly a pretty faithful retro piece.
Aborted – Vault Of Horrors
Genre: Deathcore/death metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
With the instrumental intensity, penchant for breakdowns and grandiose production all being dominant factors on Aborted’s latest effort, you could almost consider them a pure deathcore band at this point. In any case, they do not let off on the gas on this one. It’s massive chugs, roaring vocals and apocalyptic drums all the way. For those wishing a significant conceptual, or at least tonal lean into horror, you might be slightly disappointed, unless your idea of horror is a sentient, mobile, building-sized meatgrinder unleashed on a busy city street.
Armagh – Exclamation Point
Genre: Heavy metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3/5
This feels, at least tonally, like a black/heavy metal mashup, yet with a fairly pronounced psychedelic side as well. But with clean vocals and a prog rock-y melodic tendency, this is something a bit out of the ordinary,
Armagh – Exclamation Point
Genre: Thrash metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 2.5/5
Sharp and aggressive thrash metal that sounds like it’s trying to spook you. Its rhythm transitions are not the smoothest, but it’s got a wicked tone and delivers when it’s on the attack.
Brat – Social Grace
Genre: Grindcore/hardcore
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 4/5
A high-energy, yet surprisingly controlled, groove-oriented grindcore debut record. With a sub-21 minute runtime, it’s over before you know it, and, like a well-measured hit of chili spice, leaves you going “Whoa, that stings! Can I have some more of that?”. Apart from its obvious heaviness it plays a lot like hardcore, and the visceral quality of the production almost makes you feel like you’re in a small room with the band performing the music live.
Highlights: “Hesitation wound” and “Human Offense”.
Defect Designer – Chitin
Genre: Experimental death metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
Steering into the experimental end of your subgenre can result in breaking new musical ground and creating something truly unique. The question you still gotta ask is what kind of listening experience you want to leave at the end. When it’s as bonkers as this, very much in the vein of experimental jazz, the reception is obviously going to be divisive, but the dedication is still admirable. And that album art is just awesome.
DragonForce – Warp Speed Warriors
Genre: Power metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
Dragonforce offers up some real feelgood-toned power metal that feels conceptual, but doesn’t really feel obviously so. The playing is, as usual, insanely fast and very fun, although the mid-part of the album leaves a bit of a gap in the intensity that slightly deflates the experience overall.
Hadit – Metaphysical Engines Approaching The Event Horizon
Genre: Death/black metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3/5
A very bleak, yet still punishingly heavy death doom record, that seems to abhor melody. The result is a distinctly monotone sound, that still manages to produce a bleak, enveloping atmosphere.
Leather Lung – Graveside Grin
Genre: Stoner/doom metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
Is there such a thing as too much groove? Leather Lung certainly dares to test the limits, cooking up a heavy, syrupy soundscape made up of fuzzy riffs, raspy, coarse vocals and bad habits.
Lords Of Black – Mechanics Of Predacity
Genre: Power/heavy metal
Subjective rating: 2.5/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Classic power metal backed up by more traditional “leather metal”, slightly rougher style guitar work. It sounds epic in scope, although tonally it doesn’t quite stay on target throughout.
Lutharo – Chasing Euphoria
Genre: Symphonic/heavy metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Melodic, symphonic heavy metal jazzed up with harsh vocals and energetic instrumental work. There are lots of tasty parts sprinkled throughout as goodies, although the melodic parts that tie it all together could have used some more work.
Malsten – The Haunting of Silvåkra Mill
Genre: Atmospheric doom metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Doom metal that paints a subtly nuanced, abstract picture of misty mystery. Not quite enough happens on the album to call it truly engaging, but it has some very solid sections.
Nastergal – The Untold War
Genre: Melodic black metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Pedal-to-the-metal black metal that hits you like a hailstorm of pins and needles, to the point where the sharpness of the production can be a tad distracting. Virtuosic playing has clearly been a priority, and it brings some moments of maliciously toned melody that suits the overalls style quite well. Not quite outstanding, but strong for a debut full-length.
Necrophobic – In The Twilight Grey
Genre: Black/death metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 4/5
Necrophobic is one of those bands that has such an in-your-face style that it’s almost hard to get it wrong for those who know what they’re expecting. Still, the band has clearly made an effort with this one, as is evident in the vigorous onslaught of violent darkness that awaits the listener. As is customary, you get that classic metal-style penchant for a bit of melodic guitar work, but the tone is as sinister as always – maybe even a tad colder than usual – and the vocals and drums sound like they’re trying to attack you from a multitude of different angles.
Highlight: “”Clavis Inferni”.
Prisoner – Putrid | Obsolete
Genre: Industrial/doom metal/grindcore
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
How about an album that combines the darkest sides of industrial- and doom metal, gives it a brain-scratching noise workover and fuels its attack with the inconsistent fury of a deathgrind/punk combo? While not the most varied or conceptually satisfying, it’s heavy as fuck and deeply unsettling in just the right way.
Shock Withdrawal – The Dismal Advance
Genre: Death metal/grindcore
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3/5
A band that very effectively layers an insanely aggressive grindcore assault with death metal heft. You get some meaty riffs, hyperactive drums, and non-stop energy for about 21 minutes of runtime.
Stress Angel – Punished by Nemesis
Genre: Death/black metal
Subjective rating: 2.5/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Echo-y, thrash-paced death metal with a distinctly first-wave-of-black-metal chaotic and “ugly” sound. Apart from the style, it’s not the most distinct thing you’ll hear, but satisfying in its own right.
Throne of Exile – The Endless Sky
Genre: Avant-garde/progressive extreme metal
Subjective rating: 2.5/5
Objective rating: 3/5
How heavily can you offset a highly aggressive and brutally heavy, technically progressive metal base with tonally opposing, avant-garde tangents, before your stylistic concept simply breaks apart? For many listeners, this album will be well past that point. But the insanely precise instrumentality is impressive.
UdÅd – UdÅd
Genre: Black metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 4/5
It’s an interesting thought, taking the concept of black metal back to a point beyond the subgenre’s birth, and imagining what that’d sound like. In some alternate universe, this might be it, although there are unmistakable elements in here tying it to that established proto-sound of the early 90s. The album feels almost naïve in its raw simplicity, with a distinctly “damaged” production, but is so strongly grounded in haunting, folk-derived melody and thematically on-point songwriting that there’s no reason not to take it seriously.
Highlight: “Bakenfor Urskogens Utkant”.
Vltimas – EPIC
Genre: Black/death metal
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 4/5
Leaving behind some of the complexity of their 2019 debut “Something Wicked Marches In”, Vltimas returns with the same core sound, blending black, death and a bit of thrash metal into a potent concoction of “best of”- like sounds. The output is effortlessly grandiose on this one, almost operatic in scope, and more melodic than I had expected. This is not the blackened death metal you go to for the most “evil” sound, but it also in no way feels overblown or flippant, delivering solid variety, plenty of punch and a highly convincing delivery.
Highlights: “Scorcher” and “Exercitus Irae”.
Weston Super Maim – See You Tomorrow Baby
Genre: Mathcore/deathcore
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
A band that perhaps imagines itself as a bit more off-kilter than it practically is, what it gives us is fairly complex and deathcore-level heaviness with a bit of daydream-y melodic atmosphere. It works best when you can tell the band is trying to be conceptually nuts, rather than technically so.
Whom Gods Destroy – Insanium
Genre: Progressive metal
Subjective rating: 2.5/5
Objective rating: 3/5
A new prog supergroup that clearly tries a conceptually slightly darker approach, which in itself is refreshing, but it’s still so filled to the brim with prog instrumental show-off-y abandon that everyone but diehard fans should tire rather quickly.
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, why not pop a comment down below?
The Metal Dispatch 