In late 2020, Foretoken warned the entire world of one thing: the Virginia Beach-based duo is on a mission to completely shake up the status quo. Three years later, Triumphs (Prosthetic Records) is proof positive the mission is so far a smashing success.
When an EP is presented, it’s easy to cast it off as a minor installment added to a band’s overall body of work. But Dirge composed four independent, uniquely structured tracks that makes their self-released, self-titled opus bigger and more complex than what the runtime would suggest.
Fifteen unfinished chapters don’t combine to make a novel.
A New Tomorrow, the debut long-player from eclectic power-violence outfit Zulu (released via Flatspot Records), feels too much like a compendium of skeletal songs that largely fail to take off to truly work. Three of the first four tracks – the exception being the introductory ‘Africa,’ a piano and strings-infused number – start off heavy and emphatic, but they all conclude with a divergence. ‘For Sista Humphrey’ turns gospel; ‘Our Day Is Now’ descends into sound clips; and ‘Music To Driveby’ is marred by soft singing.
Following 2019’s Global Warning debut, Deathcore visionaries To The Grave continue their activist-minded foray with Director’s Cuts (Unique Leader Records), a forty-four-minute escapade that builds on the band’s mission to “expose a societal and environmental hell on earth,” per the press release.
If you’ve ever been in a position of power that requires you to sift through a dictionary-thick pile of resumes, Ulthar would be the candidate that instead offers a cover letter, three recommendations, and a pristinely polished curriculum vitae.
Ten years removed from their last record, and armed with as solid a lineup as ever in their history, Man Must Die throws a wrench into everyone’s 2023 album of the year considerations, not a month into the new calendar.
As I was sampling the new barn-burner from Distant, the lethal vocals featured on ‘Plaguebreeder’ actually scared off my fiance (as in she left the room, not that she gave back the ring!).
The juxtaposing contradiction that is Mithridatum’s debut album Harrowing makes it surprisingly difficult to reach a conclusion.
The Willowtip release sees the newly formed trio (featuring former members of Abhorrent, The Faceless) jockeying with a myriad of other bands in an ultra-saturated landscape that is just begging for a group to come along and shatter the mold. As such, it’s nearly career suicide not to stand out from the rest (unless you’re AC/DC). Continue reading
Chipping away at the putrid exterior, Antimony (Transcending Obscurity) is Ashen Horde tackling a litany of musical techniques, touching upon elements of technical black and death metal. In doing so, guitar solos feel completely organic; the drums drive the rhythms throughout; and the sheer blasphemy housed within the guitars is palpable.Continue reading
The vaunted Mariana Trench is nearly seven miles deep underneath the ocean surface. Or in other words, it plummets down into the Earth more than Mt. Everest stands tall. The creatures that occupy that type of ecosystem need to withstand unimaginable pressure, cold temperatures and a complete lack of light.
And if that’s not terrifying enough, Dryad took this notion to the next level and crafted a thirty-five-minute opus that does as good a job as anything else in positing what the environs found down there might actually sound like via the medium of biting blackened metal: The Abyssal Plain (Prosthetic Records) captures and exploits the paralyzing nightmare of finding oneself in such an alien, unknown world. Foggy, muffled production represents the complete disorientation that would be felt so far below.