Happy Black Friday! Don't be dicks to the people working retail if you're out shopping today!
To the metals…
Accept – Symphonic Terror: Live At Wacken 2017 
Genre: Heavy metal
Origin: Solingen, Germany
Label: Nuclear Blast
Last August at Wacken Accept became the latest band to document a show with an orchestra, and this is that set for your viewing and listening pleasure. It features tracks you'd expect like "Balls To The Wall," but where this excels is the section with Wolf Hoffmann and the orchestra performing classical pieces. The Mozart song below is a prime example of that portion of the show.
Cattle Decapitation – Medium Rarities 
Genre: Death metal/grindcore
Origin: San Diego, California
Label: Metal Blade
It's been three years since The Anthropocene Extinction dropped, and fans will need to keep on waiting for a proper follow-up. In the meantime, Cattle Decapitation are dropping this nasty twenty-three track compilations of demos, rarities, and b-sides. This is a must have for Decap completists.
Death Ray Vision – Negative Mental Attitude
Genre: Hardcore/thrash
Origin: Massachusetts
Label: Bullet Tooth
This hardcore collective with past and present members of Killswitch Engage, Overcast, and more has returned with their second album after a five year gap. Ex-Shadows Fall vocalist Brian Fair is no longer fronting the band, but the guy filling his shoes, Jeff Gard, is solid. Over all, this is a enjoyable melodic hardcore album.
In The Woods… – Cease The Day 
Genre: Progressive metal/avant-garde
Origin: Kristiansand, Norway
Label: Debemur Morti
This is the most Winter sounding album I've heard in a long time. This is bleak and haunting, yet quite melodic and beautiful. This is a band that I slept on and this album will be my personal introduction to a band that seems very cool.
Sodom – Partisan EP 
Genre: Thrash
Origin: Gelsenkirchen, Germany
Label: SPV/Steamhammer
These thrash legends are giving fans just a little something something between albums. This is a three track offering (or four tracks if you go digital, apparently) with two new songs, a live version of "Tired & Red," and the included track below (again, if you go digital). Just some no frills thrash here.
Unearth – Extinction(s) 
Genre: Metalcore
Origin: Boston, Massachusetts
Label: Century Media
With this album the band breaks a four year silence and simultaneously celebrates their their twentieth year. And after twenty years of melody and breakdowns, this band knows what they're doing, and they know how to do it well. The guitar work here is especially good here with lots of memorable and well written lead lines.
Also dropping today…
The Record Store Day Black Friday List
Arcadian Child – Superfonica (Rogue Wave Records / Ripple Music) – Psychedelic
Bast – Nanoångström (Black Bow Records) – Sludge/doom
Blackrat – Dread Reverence (Shadow Kingdom) – Crust/thrash
Foghound – Awaken To Destroy (Ripple) – Hard rock
Paganizer – Promoting Total Death Reissue (Vic) – Death metal
Witchthroat Serpent – Swallow The Venom (Svart Records) – Stoner/doom
Mark Zavon – Mark Zavon (EMP Label Group) – Heavy metal
