Moths, the five-piece stoner/prog outfit from San Juan, Puerto Rico, take a voyage into space on their debut LP. As cosmic and inter-galactic as the results are, this mission perhaps required more focus, more direction and a tad more discipline. The myriad metal genres, frequently-changing time signatures and disparate musical sections idiosyncratically grafted together into songs can make it hard to grasp or nail down any plan behind it all.
Italian Doom Metal band Messa has completed the follow-up to their critically acclaimed Feast For Water (Aural Music) entitled Close (Svart Records). Messa is one of those bands that instantly caught my attention by combining melancholic, haunting music with impressive, powerful vocals. After the release of Feast For Water, which is considered one of the best Doom Metal records in the past five years, I was already wondering about how a new album from the band would turn out. I believe that there is always a bit of extra pressure to write a follow-up album after a “breakthrough album”, but the Italians were able to just knock it out of the park once again with Close.
Versatility is something that, depending on the bands and or sub-genres I listen to, has become the main characteristic I look at when listening to new bands and/or new records. Zeal & Ardor checks all of the boxes when defining versatility. This is a band that exceptionally fuses heavy music with some more popular sounds. Have you ever thought you were going to listen to a Black Metal album with R&B melodies and more? Zeal & Ardor has it for you in their latest release Zeal & Ardor (MVKA).