New Music Report – May 15, 2020

This week is another short one, but we got a few really solid releases and actually a bunch of really excellent singles too.

The Acacia Strain – Hoooooo boy, these keep getting better and better with each release. I seriously can’t get over how good this release is, and how cool the release schedule is for the album. This new installment in the DECAY album series – A – is presumably the second to last release in the series, and they went HARD on this one. This is an unrelenting barrage from The Acacia Strain mixes their metalcore and deathcore influences with grinding, sludgey choruses and brutal, emotional vocals. The genre-blending that TAS does is incredible, and this is a great example of it. This installment feels very much like what you’d expect from TAS, but at the same time, features two of the best songs they’ve ever written.

Lights & Motion – Lights & Motion is one of my favorite little-known gems. This is a one man project by a Swedish artist. His first album came out in 2013 and it was quickly heralded as one of the most impressive post rock releases in some time. Since then, he’s continued to develop his style of vast, cinematic post-rock and ambient into something truly polished and consistently impressive. Since his debut, he’s ventured fairly heavily into film scoring, and you understand exactly why as soon as you hear his music. He has a brilliant ear for giving life to instrumental music in a way that makes you feel the full experience of a movie just by listening to the album. This album is a beautiful experience all the way through, and I highly recommend checking it out.

Singles – There have been a lot of great singles this week, and I’m not going to talk about each one, but there are more than a few that are worth checking out like The Ghost Inside, END, Misery Signals, Protest the Hero, Slaughter to Prevail, and Sharptooth. There’s also a new Behemoth single but it’s fucking awful, don’t bother.