This week's new heavy metal releases include a triumphant return, old school thrash, new school guitar noodles, and more! To the metals…
-(16)- – Dream Squasher 
Genre: Sludge
Origin: Los Angeles, California
Label: Relapse
Buy on Bandcamp
Starting this week heavy. On their eighth album, these feedback loving sludge masters are squashing dreams and eardrums. I can't think of another album title that includes the word "Squasher," so that's a pretty neat thing they having going for them this time.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnGaBGLD490][/youtube]
Covet – technicolor 
Genre: Progressive/math rock
Origin: San Francisco, California
Label: Triple Crown Records
Covet have been bringing progressive, technical mathrock for a while now, and technicolor might be their finest slice of music so far. It includes all the noodling of Yvette Young fans have come to know and love, but includes the band's foray with vocals. They have never really NEEDED them, but this might be the thing to get them an audience outside of us prog/mathrock dorks with out "selling out."
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-lpxJA-AjA][/youtube]
End – Splinters From An Ever-Changing Face 
Genre: Extreme metal
Origin: New Jersey
Label: Closed Casket Activities
Buy now on Bandcamp
With folks from Fit For An Autopsy, Misery Signals, and others, you know you're in for a heavy ride with this one. This album's sound is hard to pinpoint. It has moments of death metal, hardcore, metalcore, and more. Regardless, this album hits hard, and hits over and over and over.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vx0OyMXKrRw][/youtube]
Frost* – Others EP 
Genre: Progressive
Origin: England
Label: InsideOut
On Others, their first release of new music in four years, these prog gods are kicking off a bigger project called “13 Winters.” This project is an anthology-art book of some sort to be released later. While you wait some amount of time for that whole thing, this EP should hold you over with six stellar, spaced-out prog tracks. Fans of Falling Satellites should be stoked, because these songs were written around the time of that album.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKO0FICV6YQ][/youtube]
The Ghost Inside – The Ghost Inside
Genre: Metalcore
Origin: Los Angeles, California
Label: Epitaph
On their first album since their tragic bus crash that took the life of two drivers, their drummer's leg, and any sense of normalcy for the band for quite some time, The Ghost Inside are back to prove they can still do this. And they absolutely can. There is so much frustration and emotion in this album. They really put everything they had into this album.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CdFBfKMAU4][/youtube]
Witches – The Fates
Genre: Thrash
Origin: Paris, France
Label: Mighty Spells Records
Order yours here
I'm ending this week with some chaotic French thrash. On their third album (which seems weird for a band that started in 1986) the band are putting out an album that would stand up alongside both classic Exodus and modern Power Trip. There are even tinges of black metal and death metal here, so those that aren't into straight up thrash are getting some dynamics. I'm surprised this band isn't bigger.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v35O2h44SBg&feature=emb_logo][/youtube]
Also dropping today
- 156/Silence – Irrational Pull (Self-released) – Metalcore
- Azziard – Liber Secondus – Exégèse (Malpermesita Records) – Black metal
- Blight – Temple of Wounds (Svart Records) – Black Metal
- Currents – The Way It Ends (SharpTone) – Metalcore
- Death Courier –Necrotic Verses (Transcending Obscurity Records) – Death metal
- Descend into Despair – Opium (Funere) – Funeral doom
- Ebonyivory – The Long Dream I (Wild Thing) – Progressive
- Exhumed/Gruesome – Twisted Horror Split (Relapse) – Death metal
- Geist & The Sacred Ensemble – Waning Hymns (Scry) – Folk/doom
- Re-Armed – Ignis Aeternum (Black Lion Records) – Death metal/thrash
- The Rentals – Q36 (Self-released) – Rock
- Witching – Vernal (Self-released) – Blackened sludge
