This week’s new heavy metal releases include chaos, Sabbath covers, an album of the year contender, and more!
To the metals…
ALSO! Today, Bandcamp is doing their monthly day of giving 100% of what you pay directly to the labels and artists as Covid-19 Pandemic relief. So if you can get stuff from Bandcamp, please do.
All Them Witches – Nothing As The Ideal
Genre: Stoner/hard rock
Origin: Nashville, Tennessee
Label: New West Records
Buy now on Bandcamp
All Them Witches have always been a band rooted in riffs. However, they have a tendency to meander in interesting ways. Nothing As The Ideal includes a little twang, some folk, atmospheric moments, blues, and more. In a subgenre of a subgenre that can run together, I am thankful for an album like this that seemingly sets out to shake things up.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MbkyLaAysI][/youtube]
Cloudkicker – Solitude
Genre: Progressive metal
Origin: Columbus, Ohio
Label: Self-released
Buy now on Bandcamp
On his follow-up to last year's Unending, Ben Sharp is bringing is trademark prog instrumental with some 2020 vibes. The songs are heavy and they feel oddly sad. Sort of makes sense for a record recorded in quarantine. Another stellar record from Sharp.
Code Orange – Under The Skin
Genre: Acoustic
Origin: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Label: Roadrunner
Download/Stream here
A while back Code Orange did an unplugged streaming show and this is that show for those that missed it. It has them taking on their tracks "Ugly," "Autumn + Carbine, " and others on acoustics. A highlight from the show is their cover of Alice In Chain's "Down In A Hole," and that alone is worth the price of the download…or the Spotify stream, or however you decide to listen.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbjj0oBr2cQ][/youtube]
Deafkids & Petbrick – Deafbrick
Genre: Experimental
Origin: São Paulo, Brazil/London, England
Label: Neurot Recordings/Rocket Recordings
Buy now on Bandcamp
What would happen if you mixed the rhythmic noise of Deafkids with the industrial hardcore of Petbrick? Chaos and the portmanteau of "Deafbrick." It's really hard to nail exactly who else this sounds like, which is praise for the album really, but it really is a sum of its part. This is chaotic, noisy, industrial, hardcore.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVCU1rJ6rdk][/youtube]
Oceans Of Slumber – Oceans Of Slumber
Genre: Progressive doom
Origin: Houston, Texas
Label: Century Media
Oceans of Slumber have been a band I've enjoyed for a while now and I feel like this album should be the album to break them into the metal elite. It's easily their most diverse, their heaviest, and their most poignant. The icing on this doomy cake is that the album wraps with their take on the Type O Negative classic "Wolf Moon," which has vocalist Cammie Gilbert shines on.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB9vV5z6w7k][/youtube]
The Pineapple Thief – Versions Of The Truth
Genre: Progressive
Origin: Yeovil, England
Label: Kscope
Buy now on Bandcamp
Here's one for my fellow prog dorks. A couple years ago Pineapple Thief released the stellar Di§olution and they're already back with Versions of the Truth which feels like an unofficial sequel to that record. Bruce Soord seems to be looking inwards a bit more this time, but you're still getting spacey, adventurous tracks that take on the media and how it impacts our world.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O32DMyXN-mI][/youtube]
Serpent Omega – II
Genre: Doom/sludge
Origin: Uppsala/Stockholm, Sweden
Label: Icons Creating Evil Art
Buy now on Bandcamp
On their appropriately titled second album II Serpent Omega are bringing you an album a wildly diverse album. There are heavy, epic moments that are reminiscent of The Ocean that flow into riff-fests like Lucifer would give you, that then of course conclude with blackened blast beats. That often is all in one song.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2D_WHjjZ0M][/youtube]
Two Minutes To Late Night – Covers Vol. III
Genre: All-star heavy metal covers
Origin: Various
Label: Self-released
Buy TODAY ONLY on Bandcamp
Two Minutes To Late Night pivoted their whole thing during this quarantine and have been putting out fun star-studded covers. Today (September 4th) and today only, they are putting out their third Bandcamp exclusive EP to help out the artists that have contributed to these covers. Get it before it's gone.
Zakk Sabbath – Vertigo
Genre: Black Sabbath covers
Origin: Los Angeles, California
Label: Magnetic Eye
Buy now on Bandcamp
After several years of touring as the Black Sabbath cover band that utilizes the pinch harmonic more than any other, Zakk Wylde and his pals have hit the studio. In a fun twist, they set out to recreate Black Sabbath's debut album exactly like Tony and them did it. So this was recorded in a single day, in an analog studio, to tape. If you're a fan of Zakk, you'll dig him and the guys taking on "N.I.B.," "Black Sabbath," and the rest of the album that started all of this.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kox2WjYyI8w][/youtube]
Also dropping today…
- '68 – Love Is Ain't Dead (Cooking Vinyl) – Noise punk
- Black Magnet – Hallucination Scene (20 Buck Spin) – Industrial
- Bulb – Archives: Volume 3 (3DOT Recordings) – Progressive/djent
- Cult Of Lilith – Mara (Metal Blade) – Death metal
- Dead Lord – Surrender (Century Media) – Hard rock
- En Minor – When The Cold Truth Has Worn Its Miserable Welcome Out (Housecore) – "Depression-core"
- Eave – Phantoms Made Permanent (Bindrune Recordings) – Atmospheric black metal
- Evaporated Sores – Ulcerous Dimensions (Sentient Ruin) – Death metal
- Fawn Limbs – Sleeper Vessels (Sludgelord Records) – Blackened sludge
- Foretoken – Ruin (Prosthetic Records) – Symphonic melodic death metal
- Gold, Frankincense & Myhrr – Operation Take Over (self-release) – "Beautycore"
- The Glorious Dead – Into Lifeless Shrines (Bindrune Recordings) – Death metal
- In Parallel – Fashioner (Wiretap Records) – "Dramatic rock "
- Persistence in Mourning – Dying in the Darkness (Dying Sun Records) – Funeral doom
- Rikard Sjoblom's Gungfly – Alone Together (InsideOut) – Progressive
- Rot – …As One (War Against Records) – Hardcore
- Stryper – Even the Devil Believes (Frontiers) – Hard rock
- Various Artists – Jesse Draxler' Reigning Cement (Federal Prisoner) – Experimental/noise
- Watertank – Silent Running (Atypeek Music) – Post-hardcore/noise rock
