There is no way the album title is meant to foreshadow what’s on the coming horizon. However, Amongst The Low And Empty (Century Media Records) accurately describes Signs Of The Swarm’s newest release. Lacking in ingenuity or inspiration, the deathcore purveyors recycle a small handful of techniques – over-exaggerated marble mouth, sparsely timed drum hits – to muster a record that has value as something intense and heavy, but decidedly not something ground-breaking by any means.
Powered by an insatiable appetite for thoughtful tempos and laborious aggression, Outer Heaven exhausts everything they have with Infinite Psychic Depths (Relapse Records), eleven songs rife with bombastic energy and acidic vocals.
It would be redundant to label End Reign an angry band. Metal tends to breed a dime a dozen of those. And metallic hardcore isn’t a previously untapped subgenre. Besides, the two have probably worked in tandem long before we subdivided every possible combination for the sake of clarity.
Crown Magnetar does deathcore the right way.
Forgoing the oft-used technique of blubbering legitimately incoherent nonsense, the titans of the industry insert vulgar, spiteful lyrics all over Everything Bleeds (Unique Leader Records). The record comes fresh off the heels of 2022’s EP, Alone In Death, signaling a need for the Coloradans to constantly wreak havoc.
It’s hard enough as it is to pick a standout track from Freakazoid (Pure Noise Records). It’s even harder to find any two tracks that sound the same. Therefore, expect a bevy of entertaining, ear-pleasing tracks from The Pink Spiders, because that’s what this new record is. The songs might transport you to another time in your life, or they might play perfectly as a soundtrack to a montage.
Somewhere deep in the recesses of a troubled soul, the pure darkness and bleak machinations of Ensemble Under The Dark Sun (Transcending Obscurity) materialized, and it’s not for the faint of heart.
Israeli-based tech-death outfit Structural are no strangers to taking time to hash out any kinks before finishing a full-length. Five years removed from their self-released debut album, the five-piece accentuate their talents on Decrowned (ViciSolum Productions/Sound Pollution).
Blending dark cinematics with frightfully forceful instrumentations, The Arcane Order effectively combine the two for their explosive full-length Distortions From Cosmogony (Black Lion Records).
Two things are apparent when delving into Cloak’s third full-length: the Atlanta-based four-piece is not your run-of-the-mill black metal outfit, and they have no interest in churning out a vanilla, run-of-the-mill black metal record.
The most telling feature of Tomorrow Never Comes (Epitaph Records) is the cover. A band logo and four headshots are framed in a grid. It’s like seeing a novel that puts more emphasis on the well-known author instead of the book’s title, and it’s a testament to the longevity and the roots (radical) of Rancid, a band that’s been active since the early 1990s. Their tenth full-length focuses on the musical experience instead of a flashy album appearance.