Set aside some time. Seriously. This week is absolutely packed.
Antichrist Siege Machine – Vengeance Of Eternal Fire
Genre: Blackened death metal/grindcore
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 4/5
Rarely do you hear music that so thoroughly lives up to its name. This album is nothing but fiery, hateful rage, to the degree that you start to feel sorry for the instrumental hardware that went into making this. The tone is all the way blackened death, but the intensity comes from grindcore and the angriest hardcore imaginable. If you can make it through extended waves of utter pummeling, you get rewarded with some slightly more reigned-in, ultra heavy riff sections that will make you start a pit wherever you might find yourself at the time.
Highlights: “Prey Upon Them” and “”Vanquishing Spirit”.
Ater – Somber
Genre: Progressive/black metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3/5
An album that cloaks itself in the bleakness of black- and gothic metal, but plays like fairly straightforward, djent-form, modern prog.
Atræ Bilis – Aumicide
Genre: Technical death metal
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 4/5
You gotta love technical metal that knows how to be so selectively. This is tech death that isn’t just trying to impress or overwhelm you. And it adds elements like dissonance, pauses, and tonal shifts, not just to seem progressive or stylistically up to date, but to craft music that is equally forceful and flexible. Even though this incorporates a good deal of different influences, it feels like a unified style that the whole band stands firmly behind, and the result feels both mature and highly convincing.
Highlights: “Salted In Stygia” and “Excruciate Incarnate”.
Balance Of Power – Fresh From The Abyss
Genre: Heavy metal
Subjective rating: 2/5
Objective rating: 2.5/5
Heavy metal that sounds like a blend of modern and classic. It needs a fuller production and perhaps a bit more thought put into the lyrics.
Blaze Of Perdition – Upharsin
Genre: Black metal
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 4/5
This is black metal that both spits bile at you and seeks to hypnotizes you with its sweeping, melancholic melodies. The production on this album is excellent, allowing for the band’s unique blend of powerful aggression and distinctly-toned atmosphere to shine through in equal measure. Each song stands as an individual statement, living in the same space as the others but fulfilling a different role.
Highlight: “Młot, miecz i bat” and “W kwiecie rozłamu”
Blazing Eternity – A Certain End Of Everything
Genre: Gothic/doom metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3/5
A mellow, dark gothic metal album that mostly travels at doom tempo. It sets aside heaviness and overt harshness for emotionally charged melodies that feels calming, even with the sadness inherent.
Dvne – Voidkind
Genre: Progressive metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 4/5
If you got into Dvne with their stellar 2021 release, “Etemen Ænka”, then don’t worry, you’re in very good hands. This is prog metal meant to fill your consciousness. Not in the way that it feels overly complicated or busy, but in that it’s compelling. The album flows effortlessly between atmosphere-rich melodic sections and hard-hitting highs of intensity. The rhythm work is exceptional, but doesn’t try to shove it down your throat. Personally I found it to be an overall less engaging experience this time around, but that doesn’t mean that the band has lost any of its songwriting touch.
Highlight: “Reliquary”
Folterkammer – Weibermacht
Genre: Operatic black/gothic metal
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 4.5/5
How to make German, operatic, dominatrix-themed black metal as un-tacky as possible? Whatever the exact recipe, Foltenkammer seems to have found it. Even though the song titles and lyrics are pretty straight to the point, there is such a level of confidence, conviction and proficiency in both vocal- and instrumental delivery that any flippant attitude towards it is instantly strangled. It’s fairly dramatic as black metal goes, with a stunning vocal performance switching between snarls and pure opera, and an overall solemn tone, but the rhythms play a big role in alternating between different moods, which shows a very flexible approach to the genre that feels highly refreshing.
Highlights: “Algolagnia” and “Anno Domina”.
The Ghost Inside – Searching For Solace
Genre: Metalcore
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
Rhythmic modern metalcore that does a great job of balancing beat-heavy aggression and emotionally charged melody, although generally shying away from riff-led grooves.
Haunted – Stare At Nothing
Genre: Doom/stoner metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Doom metal with classic female vocals and stoner-styled rhythms, but with a heavy and punchy bass end that beautifully contrasts the more serene melodies.
High on Fire – Cometh the Storm
Genre: Sludge metal
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 4/5
One thing’s for sure, you’re gonna struggle to find meatier sludge metal than this. High On Fire’s newest instantly gets into the groove, and never skips out of it for the duration of the album. It feels music that would be able to shake a building off its foundation, like if you heard it live you would be constantly struggling not to get pushed away from the stage by the shockwaves emitted from the speakers. The rhythms on here vary just enough to keep it interesting all the way through, and every now and then the band explores some darker, more sinister moods that fit them really well.
Highlights: “Lambsbread” and “Cometh The Storm”.
In Vain – Solemn
Genre: Progressive/melodic death/black metal
Subjective rating: 4.5/5
Objective rating: 4/5
A masterclass in balancing a progressive and melodic approach to modern extreme metal. The overall impression you get is that of blackened melodeath, although adhering to no real genre conventions, and neither trying to sound old-school nor being bound to tropes of the zeitgeist. It’s a fairly clean sound, rich and detailed but not overly heavy, allowing the melody to guide the flow as it swells into triumphant highs or gently trickles down the snaking path left by the vivid rhythms.
Highlights: “Season of Unrest” and “Where the Winds Meet”.
Lightworker – How The Beautiful Decay
Genre: Metalcore
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
An engaging meld of old school and modern metalcore, incorporating both heavy rhythms and guitar-led grooves. The melodic sections are well ingrained with the rest, although the choruses don’t quite elevate the songs as well as they should.
Maere – …And The Universe Keeps Silent
Genre: Experimental death metal
Subjective rating: 2/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Very dissonant death metal that does a good job of invoking unease and a feeling of misery, although can come off as very clunky if you don’t “get” it.
My Dying Bride – A Mortal Binding
Genre: Doom metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
No one makes doom quite like My Dying Bride, and if their style speaks to you, then this album will feel like an embrace. The folk-tinged tone defines the experience, and while not being as abjectly miserable as on some earlier work, it’s certainly austere. While lacking that expansive feeling that might have elevated the album, the rhythms do a great job of keeping it moving, so it never becomes bogged down.
Nocturna – Of Sorcery And Darkness
Genre: Symphonic metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Female-fronted symphonic metal with a gothic feel, some power metal galloping speed, and plenty of fun, virtuosic guitar escapades.
Oak, Ash & Thorn – Our Grief Is Thus
Genre: Folk/heavy metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
If you like the idea of folk-y melodic black metal going down a heavy/power metal path, then you should really check this out. You get a little bit of everything on here, and yet it doesn’t feel silly or half-hearted in any way. It’s full of life and delivers both thundering aggression as well as soaring epicness. Ever so slightly uneven in quality, perhaps, but a lot of fun.
Opium Death – Genocidal Nemesis
Genre: Death metal
Subjective rating: 2.5/5
Objective rating: 2/5
Not-quite-mature death metal combining melody and some hardcore savagery, suffering from a sub-par production.
Praying Mantis – Defiance
Genre: Heavy metal
Subjective rating: 2.5/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Jazzed up, classic NWOBHM of the melodic and slightly anthemic kind. It’s got a real positive vibe over it that makes this a good time to listen to.
Satanic North – Satanic North
Genre: Black metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
It’s a safe bet that when the Finns try their hand at classic black metal, it’s not gonna be quite as stone-faced as with their Scandinavian cousins to the west. Satanic North jump face-first into the fray with this one, fully embracing the hallmarks of the genre, and if it wasn’t for their obvious enthusiasm, it would probably sound completely interchangeable with its influences. Instead, it’s just really engaging, full of hissing aggression, while being as serious as black metal with a sense of irony can be.
Selbst – Despondency Chord Progressions
Genre: Black/doom metal
Subjective rating: 4.5/5
Objective rating: 4.5/5
This album spans the realms of atmospheric and depressive black metal, as well as doom, and really only uses the minimum of what it needs from the different styles in order to craft its musical journey as intended. As you can expect, it’s a melancholy one, but not truly miserable. There is life and energy in the melodies, more than enough to grab a hold of you and force a reaction, and they get to be the guiding force of the music. The rest, while powerful in their own right, play more supporting roles, with highlights being the sweetly bitter tremolo and agonized vocals. The progression feels completely organic, and deeply arresting in the sincerity of its drama.
Highlights: “Chant of Self Confrontation” and “Stench of a Dead Spirit”.
SRD – Vragvmesiton
Genre: Black/folk metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
It’s bands like this that contribute to showcasing the versatility of black metal. You can try to pinpoint all the different elements that add to the standard sound – “is that gang vocals?” – “that almost definitely qualifies as folk” – but in the end it’s musicians making music the way they want to, and that sentiment is abundantly clear on this album. It’s a great mix of tasty tremolo, clear-cut rhythms, rusty vocals, and warm melodies.
Tomorrow’s Rain – Ovdan
Genre: Avant-garde doom/gothic metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
This is a band that don’t care too much about staying in a lane. It blends the darkness of black metal with the haunting, slow torment of sullen doom, and gives it a gothic makeover. It’s a little all over the place, but scores big on atmosphere.
Uragh – Maelstrom
Genre: Groove/alternative metal
Subjective rating: 2.5/5
Objective rating: 2.5/5
An aggressive meld of groove, prog and alternative metal that unfortunately falls a bit between all of those chairs.
Vanden Plas – The Empyrean Equation Of The Long Lost Things
Genre: Progressive metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3/5
A fresh serving of highly melodic, classic prog metal from these German veterans. No new tricks, really, but great if you like to get lost in vibrant instrumental escapades and colorful atmosphere.
Verikalpa – Tuomio
Genre: Folk metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3/5
How about some rowdy Finnish folk with Children of Bodom vibes? It’s a great, cave-dancing, accordion playing, upbeat time that also has cool riffs.
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 